William Heath Robinson

Kenneth Robert Gordon Browne

How to Be a Perfect Husband

A timely new edition featuring the brilliant work from among the most inventive minds in illustration and cartoon wizardry. Heath Robinson was one of Britain's most successful graphic artists. His work has had a huge influence on comic art in this country, but also on the image and self-image of the British. As the champion of pragmatic man, Heath Robinson presented a vision of the British as an unflappable, ingenious and slightly demented breed of inventors that persists to the present day. The British are still a nation of garage-haunting amateur engineers who will recognise the inhabitants of Heath Robinson's world, with their pot bellies and pots of tea, archaic faces and sturdily commonsensical approach to the problems of existence. How to hunt tigers by elephant, how to get an even tan, rise with the sun or put out a chimney fire, these and many more pressing questions are answered in the pages of Contraptions. With illustrations salvaged from the family archives and commentary by Heath Robinson expert, Geoffrey Beare, Contraptions is the best possible introduction to the work of one of Britain's great comic talents.

Contraptions

Geoffrey C. Beare

In the 1930s, William Heath Robinson (1872-1944) was known as "the gadget king" and he is still most widely remembered for his wonderfully humorous drawings and illustrations of highly ingenious contraptions. This book includes over a hundred of his original works. Robinson's ambition was to become a landscape painter but he was forced to follow his brothers into book illustration, where his reputation was rapidly established. The creator of inimitable illustrations for poetry by Poe and Kipling, Andersen's Fairy Tales, A Midsummer Night's Dream, de la Mare's Peacock Pie, The Water Babies, and Perrault's Fairy Tales, he is ranked alongside Rackham and Dulac, achieving classic status around the world. He is also loved for the children's books that he both wrote and illustrated, The Adventures of Uncle Lubin and Bill the Minder.

The Art of William Heath Robinson

The first full-scale treatment of Robinson's early output, this anthology features more than 100 images from fairy tales, children's literature, and works by Shakespeare, Kipling, and Poe, many in full glorious color.

Golden Age Illustrations of W. Heath Robinson

Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

The Life and Exploits of the Ingenious Gentleman Don Quixote de la Mancha

How to Make a Garden Grow

First published in 1937, 'How to be a Perfect Husband' is the second book in the 'How to...' series. From finding a wife to growing old together, Heath Robinson and K.R.G. Browne explore many aspects of married life with witty and insightful text and illustrations. Heath Robinson received much teasing from his family about this choice of subject. However, looking back over his cartoons one finds that romance and courtship had been among his most frequently chosen subjects, from early 'Cupid' cartoons to such pictures as 'The Coquette' and 'Stolen Kisses' which were reproduced in 'Absurdities' in 1934.'How to be a Perfect Husband' reflects the great changes that took place in the marital relationship between the wars. The authors' gentle humour pokes fun at the challenges faced by men due to the depression, a lack of servants and the newly confident 'modern' woman. Of course, housework without servants also made life very difficult for women, until the invention of the washing machine and vacuum cleaner in the 1930s meant that things became a little easier. This too is reflected in the illustrations as Heath Robinson demonstrates his considerable talent for devising imaginative solutions to every-day problems in the home. For example, he offers us his take on a super-de-luxe coffee maker (that looks a lot like a complex twenty-first century expresso machine), a method of frittering a banana using electricity and various gadgets to help with childcare. Ultimately, the authors conclude that tolerance, compromise and being helpful are key characteristics of a perfect husband, if only to ensure that he can 'earn a reputation for thoughtfulness that will stand him in good stead whenever he wishes to touch his mother-in-law for a fiver'!If, in addition to being a perfect spouse, you also love gardening (even though you live in a flat), you have a car and you play golf then you will find much to amuse and inform you in our other titles by Heath Robinson and K. R. G. Browne: How to Live in Flat How to Make a Garden Grow How to be a Motorist Humours of GolfAll our Heath Robinson titles include a Foreword by Geoffrey Beare, Trustee of the William Heath Robinson Trust, who is working to build a Heath Robinson museum in North London.

How to be a Perfect Husband

'I really have a secret satisfaction in being considered rather mad.' The name of William Heath Robinson has entered the national vocabulary as a by-word for eccentric inventions and makeshift solutions - and with good reason. His world of cogs, bits of string, magnets and precarious tipping points holds a universal appeal. The world of travel is lampooned and reinvented in this brilliantly funny collection of Heath Robinson cartoons. The railway system, cars, boats and planes are all given the unique Heath Robinson treatment, from cow-catching devices to homemade safety gliders, providing hilarious and impossible solutions to the travel problems we never even knew existed.

Heath Robinson: on Travel

William Crooke

William Henry Denham Rouse

The Talking Thrush, and Other Tales from India. Collected by W. Crooke and Retold by W.H.D. Rouse. Illustrated by W.H. Robinson.

The Talking Thrush, and Other Tales from India. Collected by W. Crooke and Retold by W.H.D. Rouse. Illustrated by W.H. Robinson

'How to Live in a Flat', if posed as a question, is worth asking today with so many articles on tiny flats with hugely inflated price tags in the newspapers. Flat-dwellers were faced with very similar problems in 1936. During 1932 and 1933 Heath Robinson had drawn a series of cartoons for 'The Sketch' entitled 'Flat Life', which depicted various gadgets designed to make the most of the limited space available in the contemporary flat. It was this series of drawings that provided K. R. G. Browne and W. Heath Robinson with the inspiration for their first full-length book together. It was called 'How to Live in a Flat' and, as well as greatly extending the original ideas showing many ingenious ways of overcoming the problems caused by lack of space in flats and bungalows, the book also provided much fun at the expense of the more extreme designs in thirties furniture and architecture. The book was published for Christmas 1936 and was well received. 'How to Live in a Flat' is surprisingly relevant to life in Britain in 2014. In fact, several of Heath Robinson's space-economising solutions have been used in practice to maximise the use of space in small flats. We have beds that fold down from wardrobes fully-made and ready to sleep in, communal rubbish shoots, central heating and multi-purpose furniture. So Heath Robinson was way ahead of his time and reading 'How to Live in a Flat' may spark other innovative solutions to making life bearable in a tiny twenty-first century home!If, in addition to being a flat-dweller (perhaps in a garden flat), you are also married with a car and you play golf then you will find much to amuse and inform you in our other titles by Heath Robinson and K. R. G. Browne: How to be a Perfect Husband How to Make a Garden Grow How to be a Motorist Humours of GolfAll our Heath Robinson titles include a Foreword by Geoffrey Beare, Trustee of the William Heath Robinson Trust, who is working to build a Heath Robinson museum in North London.

William Heath Robinson

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