How 'Woolcraft' started

Woolcraft was 'the most influential knitting publication ever', said Richard Rutt, in A History of Hand Knitting.  It was 'a practical guide to knitting and crochet', with detailed instructions for beginners and a range of basic patterns - clothes for all the family and household items such as tea cosies.  With Woolcraft, you could make all the knitted and crocheted woolly clothes a family would need using just the patterns in a single booklet, costing not very much. 

Woolcraft was in print for most of the 20th century, going through more than 25 editions. Below is the cover of the 3rd edition.  J. & J. Baldwin & Partners, who first published Woolcraft, merged with Patons of Alloa in 1920, and later editions were published by Patons & Baldwins.  

Rutt claimed that 'Hardly a home in England was without the booklet Woolcraft between the wars'.  (I had never heard of it until I started volunteering at the Knitting & Crochet Guild collection, so I think my family got missed out, though both my grandmas and my mother knitted.) It was extremely successful - copies of various editions are still frequently offered to the KCG collection, and the 22nd edition (published for the bicentenary of Patons & Baldwins in 1985) said that millions of copies had been sold.  

In A History of Hand Knitting, Rutt described and dated all the editions up to 1987, when his book was published.  However, I believe he got the dates of the first two editions wrong, and the purpose of this post is to correct that.  He said: 'The first edition was made for J. and J. Baldwin of Halifax, just before the outbreak of war in 1914, by Marjory Tillotson. The cover showed a beautiful young woman in a spotted foulard tie, white blouse and black skirt, knitting a sock. The price was twopence. A revised edition was soon called for.'

In fact, the cover he describes is the 2nd edition.  Confusingly, the first edition of Woolcraft was not actually called Woolcraft, but the Penny Guide to Knitting & Crochet.  It was published in 1910.  We have it in the KCG collection, but judging by the ad below, our copy has lost its cover.  

1910 ad for The Penny Guide to Knitting and Crochet

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Title page of the Penny Guide

The Penny Guide was possibly published in imitation of a booklet published by John Paton & Sons, The Universal Knitting Book. That was first published in about 1900, and the 4th edition appeared in 1913.   Both booklets were printed on cheap paper; the Penny Guide's illustrations were based on photos and were rather murky.  It was shorter than the Universal Knitting Book (56 pages v. 72 pages, plus covers) but cheaper  - the 1913 edition of the Universal Knitting Book was twopence, though earlier editions had been a penny.  

The Penny Guide was evidently successful enough that the company wanted to keep it going and update it, but it needed a name change so that the price could be increased.

What's my evidence for claiming that the Penny Guide was the first edition of Woolcraft?  It is the ads below, which appeared in consecutive issues of Stitchery magazine, from July and October 1915.  

Ad in Stitchery, July 1915

Ad in Stitchery, October 1915

The two ads show some of the earliest Beehive Knitting Booklets.  Comparing the two is a spot-the-difference puzzle - the change is that Beehive Knitting Booklet no. 9 switches from the Penny Guide to Woolcraft, and its price changes from 1d. (a penny) to 2d. 

There is a copy of the 1915 edition of Woolcraft in the KCG collection, with the 'beautiful young woman in a spotted foulard tie', described by Richard Rutt.  It is in very poor condition, and much of the cover is missing - the image below has been patched up.  

Woolcraft, 1915 edition

At the top of the front cover is: 'New and enlarged edition', i.e. enlarged from the Penny Guide.  In fact, it is only slightly larger (64 pages v. 56 pages, plus covers).  But the paper is much better quality and the illustrations are much clearer. For comparison, below are corresponding pages from the two editions.  (Note that in reality, the paper of the Penny Guide is not as white as shown - it has yellowed with age.)

Kettle holder & tea cosy from Penny Guide

Kettleholder & tea cosy from Woolcraft, 1915 edition

Many of the other patterns from the Penny Guide are repeated in the 1915 Woolcraft, especially things like gloves, socks and baby clothes.  However, the patterns for women, in particular, are different - those in the Penny Guide have an Edwardian look to them, and by 1915 must have looked outdated.  Woolcraft never tried to be in the forefront of fashion, but it did change the patterns for garments in line with mainstream styles.  In 1915, it included patterns for women's coats with matching hats - knitted sports coats became popular in the 1910s.   

Richard Rutt said that the 3rd edition, shown above, appeared 'before the war ended', and that is true.  I found a short review of it in the People's Friend magazine from September 1917, giving the price as 3d. and mentioning the description of brushing garments knitted in Teazle Wool to give a furry effect, as something that readers would be interested in - the section on Teazle Wool appeared for the first time in the 3rd edition.  (Of course, I can call on all the resources of the internet, which weren't available in the 1980s, so it's not surprising that I can find information, like the publication date of the 3rd edition, which he did not.)   

3rd to 6th editions of Woolcraft

The cover design remained the same for the next 3 editions, with minor differences, the most obvious being the change of colour. The price increased, from 3d to 4½d to 6d, and the name of the publisher across the bottom of the front cover changed from 'J. & J. Baldwin & Partners, Halifax, Eng.' in the 3rd edition to 'J. & J. Baldwin, Halifax, Eng. Branch of Patons & Baldwins Limited' in the 4th and subsequent editions.  That shows that the 4th edition cannot have been published before 1920, as Richard Rutt thought - Patons & Baldwins only came into existence when the two companies merged.

In 1924, a new edition (the 6th) of the Universal Knitting Book was published, but it seems that there were no more - the merged company decided to go on with Woolcraft instead.  And it continued for the rest of the century, becoming 'the most influential knitting publication ever'. 

Members of the Knitting & Crochet Guild can download pdfs of the Penny Guide and the 3rd edition of Woolcraft from the website.  They are showing their age, but are at least legible - I wish we had better copies.