Purnell's History of the First World War.

[MikeMeech]

Hi All

When i was young a childhood friend was getting Purnell's History when it originally came out (I thought it started in the late 1960s but that may be my memory playing up) so I could read his at the time. I do have three hardback volumes of 'Tanks & Weapons', 'Warships' and 'Warplanes' which contain extracts from the series, these were published in 1973 and 1974. However, those of you with the volumes, can you tell me if much of, what was then newly releases material, from the PRO (National Archives) was used in the work? None are referenced in the hardbacks I have. When I work on the archives at Kew the release dates for the files apear to be the late 1960s or early 1970s, so maybe they were not available to the writers. So maybe an update is needed for the 100th anniversary? (I know no chance of that!).

Mike

[Bernard_Lewis]

Another set gone for £70 on E-Bay but you had to collect. One bid.

Bernard

[Guest NTS]

I love what Lancashire Fusilier says about Purnell's History of the First World War and appreciate the information.

I happen to have a complete bound set in perfect condition, with covers and all that belongs to it, a real jewl, and I wish to sell it. Would anyone have some advice about where and how to sell it? Perhaps someone on the Forum would care to make an offer. Posting a picture.

[Lancashire Fusilier]

I love what Lancashire Fusilier says about Purnell's History of the First World War and appreciate the information.

I happen to have a complete bound set in perfect condition, with covers and all that belongs to it, a real jewl, and I wish to sell it. Would anyone have some advice about where and how to sell it? Perhaps someone on the Forum would care to make an offer. Posting a picture.

NTS,

Your wishing to sell to sell your Purnell set, is a great opportunity for someone with an interest in WW1 to obtain one of the best references on the subject.

Regards,

LF

[auchonvillerssomme]

Put on ebay, starting price around the £140 mark, it should easily go for far more.

[David Filsell]

In a flush of enthusiasm I had my set, and the WW2 Purnell set professionally bound. Foolishly I discarded the covers. But I am delighted to have them on my shelves.

[auchonvillerssomme]

The WW2 sets will see an increase I'm sure, there was a set for 35 quid at the antiques Centre last week which is a bargain.

[Guest exuser1]

2 issues of the WW2 set and the first 1960s set should be the one to go for as it has the letters from various readers of their WW2 experiences and replies from authors ,in fact the publishers had a best letter prize .

[Bernard_Lewis]

Got the Great War set for about £80 on eBay a couple of years back...collected the entire Second World War set when it came out. Still got it...

Bernard

[auchonvillerssomme]

It is a strange market, the full set of WW2 were going for 35 quid but the individual magazines next to them were £2.50 each.

There are certainly fewer for sale on book sites, Abe has a full set of WW1 for £160 but that appears to be the only UK seller.

[EastSurrey]

The FWW part work started coming out at the end of 1969,as I recall. I was pretty hard up at the time and didn't buy it every week. Later I bought the binders and a number of back numbers from the magazine itself and boot fairs. I eventually completed my set only last year, thanks to a friend who found the last three or so issues I needed. Peter Young took over from Barry Pitt as editor at issue 40. A notable and interesting feature of the series was its coverage of events way beyond the Western Front and also following the Armistice.

Michael

[Fattyowls]

As a boy I was fascinated by WW1 naval history and only bought the issues which were naval related; I loved the artwork of the warships. For a long time my knowledge of the land war was confined to those actions which took place at the same time as naval battles or milestones. With hindsight it would have been nice if I had kept what I had or completed the set but it's only 9,452nd on the list of my youthful mistakes........

Pete.

[Knotty]

Just picked this thread up,never given much thought about this publications full set rareity what a revalation.

I collected my original set weekly from WH Smiths, they used to put it by in a folder. Remained the same price throughout the publication and as Michael said it did start in 1969 (shortly after the finish of his WW2 history which was first published in 1966 and ran for 96 weeks).

Sent off regularly for the binders which came with metal fixing strips and were pre-printed except for the last folder where they sent a stick on volume label.

Checked on ebay and found a set of professionally bound volumes price £450 and only 23hours left to bid!!

John

[Guest]

Hi all, similar to one of the above posters, I have a "nearly complete" set of Purnell's WW1. (Think three are missing but can confirm). I listed them on ebay a couple of years back and got no interest. So, if anyone on the forum is interested in making me an offer, please feel free. They are fantastic but I just haven't got the room for them (also have complete -1 set of History of the 20th Century available). Mitch

[David Filsell]

LF

I'm probably being dim, but how do I get into your work to see the contents list on tablet please, incidentally I have both the WW1 and 2 Purnell sets and had them professionally hardback bound. It proved to be a good move, they are both great 'first stop' reference.

best regards

David

Edited 9 September , 2016 by David Filsell

[Guest]

Hi folks, i'm about to put a full set (minus four issues) of Purnell's WW1 history on ebay. Tried and failed to flag them on the site here. 

[Heh]

Hi,

I just joined this forum. I own a copy of the History of the First World War (complete, all 8 volumes) and I think it’s excellent to this day. Now I am looking for a digitized copy, does anyone know whether this exists? Ofcourse, it would consist of several hundreds of PDFs, but it certainly would be a great source of information for schools and libraries.

I even might consider digitizing it myself, but such would be a massive job to do...

Hans Erik Hazelhorst

[Knotty]

Hi Hans

And Welcome to the Forum.

 Unless anyone else knows anything different, I do not believe that there has ever been a digital version available. Good luck with creating a personal digital version, but be wary of possible copyright infringements if you think of distributing.

 

John

[Heh]

Who would i have to contact? I believe copyright is limited to 50 years, which is now (the series was published in 1970 onwards). I ‘m not thinking of any illegal distribution, but some funding would be welcome. 

[Knotty]

39 minutes ago, Heh said:

Who would i have to contact?

I would not have a clue😁Purnells was part of the British Publishing Corporation, that is unfortunately now defunct, but there has been a lot of mergers and acquisitions going on so that’s some research required to ascertain who you would need to speak to.

You might also find that many of the articles were written by authors who lived on till the turn of the century, Richard Holmes the military historian for one, he had some of his first articles published in the series, he passed away in 2011,  and if I remember correctly the copyright last 70 years from their passing……some copyright expert required to clarify 😁 

46 minutes ago, Heh said:

the series was published in 1970 onwards

I collected it weekly, it started its run in late 1969 and was 126 parts, it’s still part of my collection👍

[MaureenE]

I am sure these volumes would still be within copyright. As far as I am aware only British Government publications have copyright limited to 50 years.

Google Books has some editions which are "Snippet view" which generally  indicates there is a digitised file within their system, but whether a copy can be accessed in any way such as by purchase, I do not know.

https://books.google.com.au/books?id=uQQMAQAAIAAJ

Maureen

[Heh]

Well, I am glad that this is an active forum in the first place, it is really good that people are paying attention!

I have followed the link above, this leads me to Google Books, where they merely provide a link to a reseller. I guess the 'digitized pages' they show are obtained from people who offer their copy for sale, because all the samples are different. So a complete digitized copy doesn't exist, apparently.

As for the copyright problem: there are numerous parties involved: BPC Publishing Ltd, which doesn't exist anymore, but rights are passed on to the current owner (who?). Then there's the Imperial War Museum, who provided much of the material (photos, archives) and the contributors. I believe Barrie Pitt and Peter Young have both passed away, and so have most of the individual copywriters.

This leaves me with a kind of labyrinth of possibilities. I'd willing to give it a try in the public interest, and see if a digitisation in the form of PDF's is possible under some sort of auspicien of the Imperial War Museum? For instance, one PDF for each article, resulting in 900+ PDFs. Maybe through some sort of cloud funding. But I don't want to end up with some sort of lawyer coming after me. For starters, is the index file that @Lancashire Fusilier published still available?

[Chasemuseum]

Regards the current copyright status

All of the articles are attributed to an author. So duration of the copyright varies by article, based on when the author has died. If before 1995 then life of author + 50 years, if after 1995 then life of author +70 years.

 

Who currently owns the copyright? A horrible question. It all depends on the contracts between the authors and Purnell's. If any author is employed by a person or company, then copyright typically passes to the employer as a commodity as part of the contract of employment. If the author has a specific contract with the editor & publisher, the copyright may have passed wholly to the editor/publisher, however this may have been limited to the right to publish a single edition, or to publish the article in a single printed format (ie within one or more print runs of the 128 magazine format publication but not as a book). In the early 1970s an electronic edition was not a concept, so they contract may be broad enough to capture this or copyright may default back to the author.

As the editors are no longer alive and the publishers went into receivership in the 1970s, access to the contracts is likely to be impossible. Did every author sign the same contract or where they tailored to accommodate demands from individual authors - absolutely no idea, and I expect that this is impossible to determine. I would expect that there was a general contract signing over absolute copyright to Purnells but that for the better recognised authors that they were able to negotiate limiting contracts where they retained most copyright.(*1) 

Copyright regards photos supplied by IWM and other sources. Again, these were supplied under contract giving specific rights of publication. Probably the copyright of all of the photos has now expired, so what remains as an issue is the contract of supply of the owner of a physical copy of the image (not the copyright) to the editor/publishers. Again, these contracts from over 50 years ago are probably impossible to locate. As IWM and the others were probably copyright owners at the time, their contracts to supply may not have been very detailed and may not have addressed obligations once their copyright expired.

Making the very dangerous assumption, that all copyright passed to Purnells and that the rights to publish unlimited reprints in any format also passed to Purnells, the who owns this copyright now ?  We have to start into a bit of history. Purnells published their WW2 series in the mid-late 1960s (about 1966-67-68) and was distributed through the British Commonwealth (as magazines the international agreements on the publication and distribution of books did not apply. These agreements within the publishing industry have since largely been eliminated as contrary to international free trade laws). It was a commercial success and was republished in the early 70s and led to competitors publishing a number of magazine books on numerous topics. Purnells/Barrie Pitt brought out the WW1 version in the early 70s 72/73/74. The Yom Kippur War of Oct 73 brought on the OPEC oil crisis of 1974, a global economic recession in the western nations and a collapse in the British magazine publishing industry. For the Purnells WW1 History, they had great difficulty finishing the publication of the last couple of volumes and this led to problems with editing (page numbering becomes inconsistent) and the international distribution of the magazines stopped so subscribers in Australia/Canada/USA who could not complete their sets. A friend in Canada completed his by buying the missing issues directly from the UK.

With all of the crisis, there were numerous business mergers and takeovers. This leads into the "BPC Group" and later the Robert Maxwell publishing empire. With Maxwell's death in 1991 the business collapsed with massive debt including theft of pension funds. The business assets were sold off to liquidate some of the debt and the Purnell copyrights would have been sold with parts of the business asset sales at this time. It is now very unclear who the Purnell copyright assets were sold to as these probably only represented a trivial asset in the grand scheme of the Maxwell collapse. 

Where does this leave someone wanting to republish Purnell's History of WW1 ? Basically in an awful quandary. To the publishers who probably own the copyright today, the legal cost of proving that they have the right to republish or sell the copyright, is probably much greater than the value of the right. So they are unlikely to be co-operative. If an individual does publish without permission of the most likely owners, - you are likely to start getting letters from aggressive USA lawyers. Its like the scorpion and the frog - its in their nature. As Barrie Pitt the editor of the series only died in 2006, his works only come out of copyright on 1st January 2077. 

To confound matters further, as the series was published simultaneously in several countries, each of those countries is deem a place of first publication for litigation making the jurisdiction for litigation unclear. ie if someone in the UK were to republish an article, a publisher who currently believes they hold the copyright could commence litigation in the USA, or even Australia if the current copyright laws in that country suited their purposes better.

[Karl Murphy]

I have the whole set upstairs 

Its  years since I opened any of the volumes though.

I won't be selling them either!