Murray and Koster - the series, and who were they for?

The Odhams knitting books by Murray and Koster were published over nearly a decade, starting in 1941, and must have been helpful to the war effort, teaching women to knit, and how to reuse old yarn to make new garments.

All the Odhams books were by  Margaret Murray and Jane Koster and published by:
Odhams Press, Long Acre, London, WC2



'glamgirl' on the Ravelry Historic Knitting Forum has provided the following information about the books:

January 1944

Practical Knitting Illustrated: The Key to Hundreds of Garments You Can Make Yourself
March 1941, and May 1941

Knitting for All Illustrated
October 1941 – handwritten D.V. Bartlett (1942)

Complete Home Knitting Illustrated
October 1942

Knitted Garments for All
January 1944

Modern Knitting Illustrated
January 1945, and February 1948

Practical Family Knitting Illustrated
October 1946, and Reprinted September 1947

Knitting Illustrated
February 1948

Complete Family Knitting Illustrated 
October 1949 

None of my collection of these books have a dust jacket, but I imagine that they may have done originally.

And finally: 

The Minerva Knitting Annual
1950
This final book was published by Andrews and Warburg, London

This last book is of a lesser quality, using thick cardboard  rather than the fabric bound boards and embossed design on the front cover - and is in a poorer condition because of that.  Many of the designs are modelled by British 'screen stars', several from London Films, and none of whom I had previously heard of.  

The quality of the Odhams books remained remarkably consistent over the war years, with little decline in quality.  They were hardbacked books, with a high quality paper, and the earlier ones at least had attractive end papers.  Undoubtedly this quality has been a factor in the survival of so many of these books from more that 70 years ago.  The fact that many have survived suggest that many of them must have been printed in the first place.

 
The discussion I started on the Historic Knitting Forum on Ravelry raised several questions.  A number of respondents said that their mothers had never owned knitting books, but only pattern sheets.  Which raises the question of who might have owned such a book.  Comments on Ravelry suggest that they were probably not owned by working class knitters. As I said in my last blog post there are similar types of patterns in each book, but there would have been few people who might have needed to use more than a few of those patterns.   Were they owned/kept by some key person in the social group?  Were they shared by knitting groups?  Were they a wedding gift to the young bride?  

One Ravelry respondent says that she owns one that is still in mail order packaging, sent directly from Odhams, which gives part of the clue.  I believe it is possible that they were advertised in magazines for mail order, possibly by a series of payments.  I have yet to trace any of these advertisements, but I will be continuing with this search.