'A scout must always be prepared at any moment to do his duty, and to face danger in order to help his fellow-men.' A startling amalgam of Zulu war-cry and imperial and urban myth, of borrowed tips on health and hygiene, and object lessons in woodcraft, Robert Baden-Powell's Scouting for Boys (1908) is the original blueprint and 'self-instructor' of the Boy Scout Movement. One of the all-time bestsellers in the English-speaking world, this primer of 'yarns and pictures' constitutes probably the most influential manual for youth ever published. Yet the book is at the same time a roughly composed hodge-podge of jingoist lore and tracker legend, padded with lengthy quotations from adventure fiction and Baden-Powell's own autobiography, and seamed through with the multiple anxieties of its time: fears of degeneration, concerns about masculinity and self-restraint, invasion paranoia. Elleke Boehmer's edition of Scouting for Boys reprints the original text and illustrations, and her fine introduction investigates a book that has been cited as an authority by militarists and pacifists, capitalists and environmentalists alike.
| ISBN: | 9780198799993 |
| Publication date: | 27th September 2018 |
| Author: | Robert Stephenson Smyth BadenPowell BadenPowell of Gilwell |
| Publisher: | Oxford University Press an imprint of OUP OXFORD |
| Format: | Hardback |
| Pagination: | 448 pages |
| Series: | Oxford World's Classics Hardback Collection |
| Genres: |
Literary studies: c 1900 to c 2000 Social and cultural history Camping Biographies & Autobiographies |