Olden Life: What were Observer’s Books?

It was an amazing invention... It fitted neatly into a pocket, you could hold it in one hand and read it anywhere, and it could give you almost everything you wanted to know about almost any subject. But it wasn’t a smartphone. And it predated ubiquitous access to the internet by more than half a century. It was an Observer’s Book.

Each book measured three-and-a-half inches by five-and-three-quarter inches, with 150 to 200 information-packed pages. The first – British Birds (pictured) – was published in 1937 by Frederick Warne & Co. Wild Flowers, Butterflies, Trees and Wild Animals soon followed.

These natural history pocketbooks were a development from an earlier series known as Wayside and Woodland. But as the Observer’s Books grew in popularity, they spread out to cover not just all aspects of nature but hardware including aircraft, cars, ships and railway engines, and ‘softer’ subjects such as architecture and art.

By the time Warne was bought by Penguin in 1983, there were nearly 100 Observer’s titles, and some, including planes and motors, had gone through many updated editions.

There had even been international collaborations to produce foreign versions, most notably in Germany (where there was a great appetite for aircraft and car guides) and Australia (snakes and lizards, rocks and minerals).

To those who had their childhoods in the 1950s and 1960s, the books were part of growing up. They were designed to be your companion as you went out to explore the world. But they never talked down to you. Reading them was like having a lesson on your favourite subject with your favourite teacher. The text was factual but passionate; illustrations were accurate and enticing.

You could read them anywhere. The original spotter’s guide

Under the bedclothes with a torch; in the back seat on a boring car journey; or, of course, out in the countryside or at the seaside. They whetted your appetite for what you might discover, and helped you identify it correctly when you found it.

The original paper jackets wore out quickly, leaving you with a brown- or blue-covered book. Improved glossy jackets lasted longer, and eventually the hard covers themselves were laminated. My well-thumbed copy of Railway Locomotives helped me recognise steam engines passing through the cutting near my childhood home, and showed me exotic locos that I would probably never glimpse – and thus were even more exciting.

But my world – and the wider world – moved on and moved faster, and the appetite for Observer’s Books waned. They came to an end in 1982 with Opera, number 98 in the series. But seventeen years later came The Observer’s Book of Observer’s Books and finally, in 2003, the 100th title, Wayside and Woodland.

You can pick up many titles on the internet for a few pounds – but rarer editions fetch hundreds. Yet the books were never meant to be a financial investment – their purpose always seemed to be to enrich young lives.

But now, as one of the websites that sells them (www.observer-books.com) muses: ‘Perhaps these charming little books play a role as a comforting reminder of lost days of innocence, of endless summer holidays spent tramping through the countryside or turning over stones in rockpools, of marvelling at a world that now stands on the brink of disappearing without trace.’