10
Crisis and Recovery

The New Naturalist series set out to present British natural history in a different way, emphasising the relationships of wildlife and their habitats. Both in terms of style and presentation, the library was a unique innovation: it set new standards and remained at the pinnacle of natural history literature for a generation. By the 1960s, however, its lead was narrowing. While the series maintained its distinctive quality, other natural history books, equally well illustrated, equally informative, were appearing, and advances in colour reproduction were starting to make the older New Naturalists look old-fashioned by comparison. The market, too, was changing. The New Naturalist titles were written for the relatively expert field naturalist, but he (or she) was a declining species, increasingly catered for by the specialist literature. While the faithful continued to buy New Naturalist books, the biggest market for them in the 1960s and early 1970s were schools and universities, especially those titles that had been recommended as set books. By the 1970s, the bird titles were consistently out-selling all the others. Possibly the series became a victim of its own success, encouraging other publishers to commission equally meaty books, sometimes more cheaply and with better illustrations.

The sales had fallen by a degree of magnitude since the heady days of the 1940s. Throughout the 1960s, the first edition of each title averaged between 5,000 and 7,000, compared with upwards of 20,000 each for those published 20 years earlier. And the flow of new titles receded to a mere trickle until, between 1967 and 1971, only one new book, Nature Conservation in Britain, appeared. There was clearly some loss of dynamism. It would have been surprising if the five original and now ageing editors had retained all their initial fire and energy; it was greatly to their credit that they stayed together for so long. Stamp died in 1966, and James Fisher in 1970. By then, Billy Collins was semi-retired, and though he continued to attend New Naturalist Board meetings, most of the production side of things was left to his junior editors. The decision to use laminated photographic jackets for The Broads (1965) and The Snowdonia National Park (1966) was a visible sign of waning confidence, and the monographs simply ceased production.

The series wandered into financial difficulties during the 1970s. Because of diminished sales it was no longer possible to fill the books with colour plates; indeed, some of the 1970s titles had no colour plates at all (in the case of Pedigree, no illustrations of any kind). In those inflationary times, the price of the books rose from around £2 each to between £6 and £10 by 1980. Titles which failed to sell quickly enough were allowed to go out of print, and only the most recent or the most popular titles stayed the course. Reprinting older titles was by then becoming too expensive, and so the backlist grew shorter and shorter. By the 1980s, the print-run of new titles had fallen to just a few thousand each except for those where a book club order made it possible to increase the number, as it did with British Tits and British Thrushes. The sales of Farming and Wildlife (1981) and Mammals in the British Isles (1982), both well-reviewed books by famous authors, had been particularly disappointing, indeed, bafflingly so for those who had been involved with the series in the past. ‘Professor Mellanby feels there is some mystery about the New Naturalist series,’ ran a note from the Fontana office. ‘There isn’t. It just stopped selling – so we stopped stocking it.’

Crispin Fisher, Natural History Editor at Collins during the 1980s, photographed in 1987.

If the New Naturalist library had been simply about making money, the curtain would have come down on the series some time in the late 1970s.⁸ Only two things kept it in play. The first was its high reputation, coupled perhaps with a natural reluctance to end a series that still added lustre to the name of Collins. The second was the ‘constitution’ of the series with a Board of eminent independent editors as well as the usual in-house staff. The editors were, in a way, electors of the scientific world which still held the series in the highest regard. They were a useful obstacle to purely commercial considerations.

It was at this stage of spiralling prices and diminishing sales that Collins appointed a new natural history editor: Crispin Fisher. It is said that at his interview Crispin warned the panel that, ‘If you don’t give me this job, the ghost of my father will come back to haunt you!’ But he was well-qualified in other respects, too, having spent much of his adult life in book production as a designer and illustrator. As the son of James Fisher, he had, of course, grown up with the New Naturalists. One of his artistic mentors had been Wilfred Blunt, his art teacher at Eton, who taught Crispin to write in an exquisite italic hand and nurtured his graphic skills. Crispin Fisher was by all accounts talented, energetic and likeable. When discussing, as we must, the crisis year of the library, in which the key decisions were Crispin’s, we should constantly bear in mind the commercial background and ask ourselves what we would have done in the circumstances. If the 1970s had been a difficult time for the New Naturalist library, the 1980s were worse, and change became inevitable. The latest books looked tired. In design terms, the old division of text and plates was becoming outmoded, and in some books had been replaced by an integrated mix of text and illustration. As a designer, Crispin was at the forefront of the changes in book production. He had strong reasons of sentiment for prolonging the New Naturalist series, but things could plainly not go on as they were. His father would certainly not have allowed the traditional design of these books to stand in the way of sales. He would have wanted a vital, popular series that catered for the broadest possible market compatible with its maintenance of high scientific standards. Crispin was not only the heritor of the Fisher philosophy: he also had the commercial experience to put it into practice.

Crispin decided that the series needed, in his words, ‘a kick in the pants’. Or rather, two kicks, both of them designed to reduce costs and increase sales. The first was to reduce the price of the books by switching from hardback to paperback production. The second kick was to adopt ‘a new, more contemporary approach towards design and production’. Once they had been assured there would be no concomitant loss of quality, the Editorial Board reluctantly agreed to the changes proposed. But as Crispin went on to explain to them the technique of ‘perfect binding’, a cheap substitute for traditional book binding, you can sense from the editors’ questions the sinking of their hearts. They did at least all agree that the jacket design was sacrosanct: ‘they are as contemporary now as they were in the 1940s’.

The first batch of new paperbacks was a set of eight old titles, reprinted as straight facsimile copies of the most recent edition, retaining the traditional Ellis cover-design but with rather muddy halftones in place of the original colour plates. As a token gesture of revision, they were given a new introduction by the author or his reviser. The choice of titles had been left to the editors, though only books that were already out-of-print were eligible. The eight, published in 1984 and 1985, were: London’s Natural History, Mountain Flowers, Dragonflies, Britain’s Structure and Scenery, Wild Flowers, Wild Orchids of Britain, Finches and The Fulmar. Only 1,500 of each were printed, and despite some glossy advertising the sales ‘were not all they might be’. Crispin therefore decided against printing any more titles in this format. What had surprised everyone was that the fastest seller among the eight was Dragonflies. Since the original book had gone out of print there had been a surge in interest in the Odonata, as a sort of birdwatcher’s insect, but few dragonfly-watchers had been able to afford the second-hand price of the original.

In November 1984, Crispin outlined his further plans. All future titles would appear in the new format with the photographs integrated with the text. Indeed, the most recent title, Reptiles and Amphibians in Britain, had been pasted up in this way as a pilot run, though in the end it was published with the text and plates traditionally separated. In future, the paperbacks would have a photographic jacket which, Crispin thought, would help to attract a wider readership. A much smaller number of hardback books would be printed – he suggested 500 – to satisfy the demand from New Naturalist collectors and libraries, and these would be given an artwork jacket. They would cost twice as much as the paperbacks, and any profit used to subsidise the paperback price. Finally, Crispin proposed a new category of ‘star’ titles with a larger print-run and a commensurate degree of promotion. These would be confined to topics of wide appeal like ‘British Birds’ and ‘Ecology’, and listed separately from the main series. Other subjects, like ‘Caves’ and ‘Estuaries’ might fall within the star category, he thought, if they were treated in such a way as to ensure international sales. In the event nothing fell into this category.

There was more than enough impetus here to deliver the desired kick. The doubt lay in where the series might land afterwards. A great deal depended on the reception of the first titles to be issued in the new format, The Natural History of Orkney and British Warblers. As Crispin wrote shortly before their publication,

‘The importance of these first two new-style NN titles cannot be over-estimated. If these fail, so will all the others; and that will be the failure of the last available boot up the pants for this series as a whole. This will signal the end of Collins natural history as we know it! Fingers out, chaps!’

The books duly made their appearance in November 1985. Surprisingly few reviewers mentioned the break in tradition, but P.J.B. Slater, writing in The Biologist, must have spoken for many when he complained that ‘It is a pity the production is not better: the new paperback ‘Orkney’ is dearer than was the hardback “Shetland” and is not nearly so well put together, with minute print yet needlessly wide margins.’ Similarly ill-advised had been the choice of paper, poorly suited for printing halftones and, in the case of British Warblers, responsible for the woefully blotchy reproduction of the ‘sonagrams’ so carefully prepared by the author Eric Simms. It seems that the picture proofs had been satisfactory but while the proofing had been done on coated paper, the pages were printed on inferior paper, presumably to save money. The worst mistake of all had been the ludicrously small hardback print-run of 725 copies each. This seriously underestimated the demand. In consequence, both hardbacks sold out almost immediately (aided by some trade speculation), and Crispin Fisher was reduced to stripping some 500 paperback copies and rebinding them as ersatz hardbacks. The difference between the ‘first state’ and ‘second state’ hardbacks was all too obvious, unfortunately, and everyone wanted first state. The print-run had been based on the advance subscriptions obtained from the customary tour of bookshops by Collins’ sales representatives. But some shops did not even receive the copies they had ordered in advance, and had to pass this bad news on to their customers. No one seems to have had much idea of the special nature of the New Naturalist market, with its large quota of book-collecting die-hards who wanted hardback copies in traditional livery, and nothing but that, and were willing to pay for them. Crispin did manage to scrape together a few hardbacks of Orkney to send to those complainants ‘who will commit suicide if they don’t get a copy’. But on this issue there was a great deal of ill-feeling, and many collectors and booksellers felt badly let down. Typical of the letters received at Collins at this time was one from a natural history bookshop in Cornwall, remarking that ‘This is the second time this has happened to a subscription order, and frankly my confidence in Collins is at a very low ebb.’ In the meantime, the much larger number of paperbacks sat stubbornly on the shelves and in the warehouses, despite a large order for British Warblers from a book club. The latter title was eventually remaindered, so that while the second-hand price of the hardback quickly soared above the £100 mark, one could pick-up the otherwise identical paperback from a pile in a remainder shop for less than a fiver.

The Orkney/Warblers fiasco would have been unfortunate at any time, but in the circumstances of 1985 it presaged disaster for the whole series. Fortunately, production standards did improve, though slowly at first. The next title, Heathlands, was a more mainstream New Naturalist subject than its immediate predecessors. With the choice of glossier paper and somewhat improved halftones, it was a distinct advance on Warblers, though it retained the irritatingly wide margins and microscopic print. Almost unbelievably, the mistake of under-printing the hardback was repeated, though in this case a proper reprint was ordered (‘I have no intention of rebinding any paperbacks in view of the criticism I received from the “public” the last time,’ noted Crispin), and first edition hardbacks continued to be available from the Natural History Book Service until the end of the decade. The paperback Heathlands was the first to be issued in a photographic cover, and without a series number or New Naturalist colophon. The marketing person explained the reason behind the decision: ‘The series once sold amazingly – in Crispin’s dad’s day – but now struggles along…Unfortunately the hoi polloi don’t give a fig for the New Naturalist concept, so we have decided to give the paperback a brightzappy [sic] cover which will appeal to the millions who visit heathlands each year.’

Table 10. Annual production of new titles (including the monographs) 1945-1994

1945	2
1946	2
1947	2
1948	2
1949	2
1950	5
1951	7
1952	6
1953	6
1954	7
1955	2
1956	4
1957	3
1958	3
1959	3
1960	4
1961	1
1962	1
1963	2
1964	0
1965	2
1966	2
1967	2
1968	0
1969	1
1970	0
1971	3
1972	1
1973	3
1974	2
1975	0
1976	1
1977	2
1978	1
1979	1
1980	2
1981	2
1982	1
1983	1
1984	0
1985	2
1986	2
1987	0
1988	1
1989	0
1990	1
1991	0
1992	3
1993	2
1994	1
1995	1
1996	1
1997	0
1998	0
1999	2
2000	2
2001	2
2002	3
2003	1
2004	2

The new policy settled down over the next few issues so that the printings of softback and hardback bore some relationship to the market – that is fewer of the former and rather more of the latter. The main task now was to maintain a regular flow of new titles – an old problem as one can see from Table 9, though never more so than during the past decade. The publishers managed to achieve their aim of two titles per year in 1985 and 1986, but since then new titles have appeared so erratically that even the faithful began to wonder whether the series had finally run out of steam. Freshwater Fishes, advertised and eagerly awaited in 1989, did not surface until 1992, a delay that probably affected sales. Failing to maintain publishing schedules is not always the publisher’s fault, and the tendency for deadlines to slip runs through the whole history of the series. What has improved beyond question since 1985 is the illustrations, with more of them in better reproduction, and, above all, more colour. Arguably, the titles, too, have served the series better. Freshwater Fishes and Caves had long been gaps in the series, and were listed as desirable titles 50 years ago. The New Forest and The Hebrides are firmly within the New Naturalist tradition in their synthesis of natural history, human history and land-use. Ferns and Wild and Garden Plants were welcomed as the first botanical titles for many years, the latter with a hopeful eye on the nation’s 10 million gardeners. Ladybirds recalls the very first book of the series in its blend of traditional natural history and contemporary science. If The Soil renews doubts about the advisability of multiple authors and the replacement of old titles, that is not to diminish the scientific quality of a very good book which has sold relatively well. From 1992 onwards, Collins got rid of the broad, wasteful margins introduced seven years earlier. And, as if to mark a turning of the tide, the New Naturalist banner crept back into the paperbacks in 1991. There seems more confidence in the series now, and the sense of despair, almost panic, of ten years ago has receded. I hope the present book will do nothing to harm that trend.

The New Naturalist Board, now consisting of five editors as it did half a century ago, continues to meet about twice a year, usually in Cambridge where, as it happens, four out of the five editors live. As in the past, the editors divide their time between reviewing progress on commissioned titles and holding what Derek Ratcliffe calls ‘headscratching sessions’ over new ones. The Library is, after 82 main series titles and 22 monographs, still an open-ended one, and the future possibilities are almost limitless. The greater problem nowadays is in finding experts who write well, or good writers who are also experts. A common complaint of recent manuscripts and synopses is that either they are too dry and technical, or (less often) that they lack the necessary weight expected of this series. The most recent Board meeting at the time of writing went through a list of seven titles in progress, ten more for which authors have been found, and no fewer than 33 subjects which Board Members had suggested themselves, or which someone had suggested to them. They include topics which have eluded the New Naturalist Board since the 1940s: mosses and liverworts, wildfowl, slugs and snails, bogs and fens. Others promise to bring old subjects up to date: pollination, the ecology of weeds and fossils. Among yet others under active consideration are several that might not have been high on the list in the past but which are certainly of interest to naturalists today, such as bats, churchyards, garden natural history and meadows. By the nature of things, not all of these subjects will turn into books; indeed, probably only a minority ever will, and which ones they will be is known only to the god of literature. The point is that the series seems full of life still, if good ideas and good authors are anything to go by. The New Naturalists series will surely chart the changeable waters of natural history for at least the near future as it did in the past. Perhaps it will become for a new generation of naturalists what it was for those of us who remember the 1950s and 1960s, an idea whose time has come – again. But whatever the future may be, a series which has been a natural history standard-setter for half a century, influencing so many to follow in the footsteps of the old masters, deserves our congratulations and our thanks.

Colin Tubbs, author of The New Forest, at Denny Wood, New Forest, 1986. (Photo: Colin Tubbs)

Christopher Page, author of Ferns, in his element. (Photo: Chris Page)