WITH THE RARE WRAPAROUND BAND.

[UNEMPLOYMENT]; Felix GREENE [Ed.] ~ Time to Spare. What Unemployment Means, by Eleven Unemployed.

SOLE UK PRINTING. George Allen & Unwin Ltd, London: 1935.

8vo., publisher's black cloth, lettered and lined in white to upper cover and spine; together in both the unclipped printed dustwrapper (5s. net to front flap) featuring a striking design by Arthur Wragg; and the rare publisher's wraparound band; THE BOOK with some very light bumping to spine tips and a couple of light spots to the endpapers and outer edge of text block, else near-fine; THE WRAPPER very good, with the front panel retaining almost all of its original brightness; the other panels evenly toned with some shelf darkening to the lower; rubbing along folds, and some nicks/chips/darkening to the extremities; the wraparound a little darkened and rubbed, particularly along the backstrip portion; completely unrestored internally. The wrapper is protected in a removable Brodart archival cover. SOLE UK EDITION. Arthur Wragg was born in Eccles, and raised in Yorkshire. He trained at Sheffield School of Art before settling in London as a freelance commercial artist. Throughout the 1920s his output was predominantly confined to women's magazines, but he later branched out into dustwrapper design, particularly for left-wing newspapers such as Tribune and Peace News, as well as for books and pamphlets about Christian socialism, pacifism and social justice, movements which he felt particularly strongly about following the Great War and the subsequent Depression. Wragg became a sponsor of the Peace Pledge Union and was a conscientious objector during the Second World War. Alongside his friend Cannon Sheppard, he produced propaganda artwork which conveyed their cause in stark imagery. This is perhaps best illustrated in the present example, where a couple are silhouetted against a ball of light, and a child held on their mother's hip looks out, directly into the eyes of the onlooker. The enclosed work is just one of a series of inter-war books published at the time by George, Allen & Unwin which sought to give a voice to those directly affected by unemployment. Supplemented by commentary from leading figures at the time, they were initially broadcast on the radio. Scarce with both the wrapper and the band.

BINDING: Hardcover
CONDITION: Near Fine
JACKET: Very Good