Scarce with such attributes

CARR, J. L. ~ The Harpole Report : Signed With A Personal Quote From The Author

First UK Printing : Secker & Warburg, London: 1972

8vo., pink publisher’s boards, ruled and lettered in gilt to backstrip; in the clipped pictorial wrapper featuring a design of a headmaster by Mike Dempsey; The BOOK is a near-fine copy, lightly sunned to head and foot and spotted to the fore-edge; in the near-fine WRAPPER which is neatly price-clipped, evenly lightly toned with some light creasing and shelf-wear, one small closed tear (1.5cm) to lower edge of front panel. The wrapper is protected in a removable Brodart archival cover. First edition, with a personal quotation neatly written by Carr to the title page: “this really is a very serious educational text book. Jim Carr.” Carr’s third novel, preceded by A Day in Summer and A Season in Sinji. James Joseph Lloyd Carr (1912-1994), known as 'Jim' to those that knew him, famously mined his own life for his books. His first two were based on his own experiences in the RAF, where he flew to Japan, China and Malaya (now Malaysia) and served as an intelligence officer at bases in Kent, Norfolk and Scotland. Before the war, Carr worked at South Milford Primary School, as well as stints in Hampshire, Birmingham, and South Dakota in the US. It was, however, his appointment in 1951 as headmaster of Highfields Primary School in Kettering that formed the basis for The Harpole Report. There, he stated his conviction that “Juvenile lawlessness is caused by lack of self-esteem and lack of self-esteem by lack of success and lack of success by an inability to read.” Consequently, he pledged that ‘No child shall leave here at 11 a non-reader’, and apparently only a single child under his tenure ever did. He remained in the post for 15 years, from 1952 to 1967, and subsequently gave up teaching to concentrate on his writing. Told in the form of a journal kept by temporary headmaster George Harpole as he attempts to climb the career ladder, Carr described The Harpole Report as "an evangelical tract that got away". The book has subsequently gained somewhat of a cult following within the teaching profession, with Carr later writing: “there is just about everything here - free meals, hymn-signing, caretakers, the New Maths, school visits, log books etc…perhaps not so many readers take it seriously as about education. But some do and it has been said that all teachers whilst training should read it”. Collectible.

BINDING: Hardcover
CONDITION: Near Fine
JACKET: Near Fine