WENSLEYDALE

First edition, first printing. With a beautiful contemporary green morocco binding by Laurence Town with five raised bands and gilt titles to the spine and a gilt illustration depicting Wensleydale scenes to the upper board. Illustrated with a map and black and white wood engravings throughout by Marie Hartley and a number of black and white photographs. A very good copy, the binding square and firm, the spine faded, with some wear at the corners, spine tips and raised bands. The contents are clean throughout and without stamps or inscriptions.

The second title produced by Ella Pontefract (1896-1945) and Marie Hartley (1905-2006), a text on the valley of Wensleydale in the Yorkshire Dales. Both hailing from Morley in West Yorkshire, Pontefract and Hartley grew up as neighbours and formed an early, close friendship. In the 1930s when Hartley went to London to study at the Slade School of Art, Pontefract went with her and took classes in journalism. On their return to Yorkshire the two began publishing articles in local newspapers, Pontefract writing and Harltey illustrating, before they began writing their own books on the landscape, history and customs of Yorkshire, for which they would take trips together in the Dales in their caravan 'The Green Plover'. As their research into Yorkshire customs continued they began restoring a 17th century cottage in the village of Askrigg in Wensleydale and collecting artefacts related to local life which would later become the basis for the Dales Countryside Museum. Pontefract and Hartley published six books together before Pontefract's early death in 1945, after which Hartley wrote a memoir to Pontefract, 'A Yorkshire Heritage', published in 1950. Hartley continued the work that she and Pontefract had started, conducting research and writing for the rest of her life. In the 1950s she formed a partnership with the poet Joan Ingleby with whom she wrote and illustrated a further 22 books on Yorkshire. Hartley and Ingelgy both received MBEs in 1997 for their significant contribution to the preservation of Yorkshire cultural heritage. Laurence Town (1895-1969) was a bookbinder and designer from Warfedale in the Yorkshire Dales whose bindings are notable for their melding of traditional techniques with bold, modernist gilt stamped designs. He taught bookbinding at St. John's College, York, for over twenty years and wrote a book on the subject, 'Book Binding by Hand', which was published by Faber and Faber in 1951.