High Street.

London: Country Life Ltd.,, 1938. Ravilious's original lithographs First edition, first impression. Published in an edition thought to be 2,000 copies, High Street was never reprinted, as the original lithograph stones were destroyed during the Blitz when the Curwen Press premises in Plaistow, East London, received two direct hits. The Country Life warehouse was also a victim of the London Blitz, hence the rarity of this publication. As a result of the bombing at that warehouse, copies of Mervyn Peake's Captain Slaughterboard Drops Anchor (1939) were also, famously, lost. Ravilious's beautiful and evocative book "had a long gestation, starting from an idea of Helen Binyon's [a contemporary of Ravilious at the Royal College of Art] for an alphabet of shops, but also resembling certain of the lithographed 'Père Castor' children's books from Paris that Ravilious collected, such as Faites votre marché, by Natalie Parin, of 1935, which was intended to be instructive as well as decorative. Ravilious deliberately looked for odd shops with special and often Victorian visual appeal" (Powers, p. 22). A review of the book in the Manchester Guardian noted "High Street... is in a category by itself. Mr. Eric Ravilious presents two dozen attractive coloured drawings of different kinds of shops, while Mr. J. M. Richards, lifting the veil of secrecy, tells us what goes on in each case behind the scenes". Octavo. Monochrome vignette title page and 24 original colour lithographs by Ravilious. Original lithographic boards printed in brown, blue and black, spine lettered in black. Edges rubbed, spine tips with light wear, otherwise a very good copy. Alan Powers, Eric Ravilious: Imagined Realities, 2012; Manchester Guardian, 9 December 1938.