Inspiring Young Readers
Douglas Mays : illustrator of the Jennings novels by Anthony Buckeridge
The once very popular series of school-based stories concerning the japes, wheezes and misadventures of a public schoolboy known as Jennings was created by Anthony Buckeridge, himself a former prep-school master. The Jennings stories started life as potential radio plays for Children’s Hour but soon morphed into a series of books – the first of which appeared in 1950 with a new one appearing each year thereafter.
There’s no disguising the fact that, like a great many of these public or independent school series for both boys and girls, they now seem hopelessly old-fashioned – despite attempts in the case of Jennings to update them in the 1970s by cutting out some of the more obscure slang and upgrading the design and presentation of the books by bringing in Val Biro as the illustrator.
However, they remain interesting as social documents and they have had their part to play in the evolution of children’s literature – it has been noted before that Rowling’s Harry Potter series owes a considerable amount to this genre. They also have nostalgia value for a generation of adults and a good dollop of that fondness for a bygone time comes from the extraordinarily evocative book jacket art work.
Although the early jackets were designed by Salomon Van Abbe, an established book illustrator of the time, his jackets were considered even then to be rather old-fashioned and so he was dropped in favour of Douglas Mays. This turned out to be an inspired choice because in Mays hands the jackets took on a life and personality strong enough to carve out a niche in the market for Jennings and his adventures.
I have really struggled to find out much about Mays despite the fact that he illustrated a number of other children’s classics, including Noel Streatfeild’s Tennis Shoes. What I do know is that he was born in 1900 and died in 1991 having worked on Punch as a cartoonist – they published his first cartoon in 1932 – and then later on a number of weeklies and periodicals including The Beano and The Dandy. Mays was an accomplished draughtsman and he studied illustration at Goldsmith’s College before setting out to be a cartoonist and book illustrator. In later life he developed as a more established fine artist working in oils and watercolours and exhibited both at the Royal Academy and at the Royal Society of British Artists.
His book jackets for Jennings show a real eye for the dramatic – the use of colour is bold and his characters, whilst obviously having elements of the cartoonish about them, are recognisable as people rather than just stereotypes. He is never cruel in his depictions of the school or the pupils and masters – but this is a very white, male world and you suspect the concept of diversity would never have crossed his, or Anthony Buckeridge’s, mind.
These book jackets can be enjoyed as little stories all of their own and although Mays seems to have become largely a footnote in book illustration history, I think they make these books worth having for any student of children’s literature.
Terry Potter
July 2016