A New York publisher sells J. B. Priestley's Britain at War for 35 cents

A Harper & Brothers flyer for J. B. Priestley's Britain at War, with a cover design signed E. McKnight Kauffer, sells a 118-page book with 46 photographs for 35 cents and ends in a tear-off order form. The archive dates it 1939. It is a commercial advertisement, held in the National Archives' foreign-poster file (44-PF-111).

What it is

This is a bookseller's flyer, not a government poster. The archive describes two colours, two helmeted profiles above the title and the author's name, a block of sales copy, and an order coupon to cut off along a dotted line. The issuer is a New York publishing house, Harper & Brothers, and the cover design is signed E. McKnight Kauffer.

BRITAIN AT WAR

J. B. PRIESTLEY

35¢

118 PAGES OF TEXT 46 LARGE PHOTOGRAPHS

J. B. Priestley and the Art of the Camera at their best

This book is war-time Britain in all its aspects — the Army, the Navy, the battle of production, the civilian at war. Harper & Brothers have published it beautifully at the amazingly low price of 35 cents a copy.

Order from your nearest bookseller or direct from the publisher.

(TEAR HERE) [...]

How it sells

The archive tags testimonial. The reason to buy is a name, Priestley's, paired with a promise about the photographs. The copy is ordinary publishing puffery: "beautifully," "amazingly low price." The order form asks for a name, an address and the money. Nobody is told to buy it for their country.

The subject is the war as Britain lived it, sold to American readers by an American firm. That is what a free market in books looks like during a foreign war: a publisher decides there are buyers for a picture book about Britain and prints a flyer. The government does not appear on the sheet.

Date and rights

The FRAME record dates the flyer 1939. The sheet itself prints no date, so this page leaves the year where the catalog puts it and draws nothing from it. The rights line reads "Held by NARA, Unrestricted; hosted by owner decision," not the public-domain line the archive gives U.S. government works.

Other sheets about foreign causes in the same National Archives file include the Chinese-language America's Resources Are China's Resources and the Free French France Forever poster. For the government's own treatment of Britain's war, see the single frame on this site from the 1943 Army film The Battle of Britain.