No.55 - Orlando the Marmalde Cat

It took me a long time to track down the book for this post. I was worried after a few internet searches that the only copies of this book available were first editions and original hardbacks. As beautiful as they were, I didn't have a spare £700 for the American First Edition, or £500 for the UK equivalent! Luckily I found a second hand copy, a Puffin reprint from 2014, on the World of Books website for just £6! I love used books, for the same reason I love the library. You can find a book, use it, and pass it on to someone else. It's a continuous cycle. This book will most likely be dontated to my local National Trust bookshop soon. 

The book I am talking about is of course Orlando the Maramlade Cat: A Camping Holiday, by Kathleen Hale. I had never heard of the Orlando books, but many people have told me they are classics. Hale wrote 19 Orlando stories, and this one was the first. 

 Kathleed started writing the Orlando stories to amuse her children, with Orlando being based on their own cat of the same name. They enjoyed them so much she decided to illustrate the stories and send them to a publisher. The first Orland story, A Camping Holiday was published by Country Life publishers in 1938. 

Initially I was a bit startled by the illustrations! They are bold, cartoon-like and the cats and humans often have very strange looks on their faces. Some seem to stare demonically out of the page at you! If I were small these illustrations would have scared me stiff! These cats sit on the uncanny border of cat and anthropomorphised animal, and I don't like it one bit! 

Published between 1938 and 1972 the Orlando books scream of a time gone by, when the patriarchy ruled and woman stayed in the kitchen. Grace, Orlando's wife is every bit the perfect housewife and mother, and their daughters Pansy and Blanche are also housewives in training. Again, that wierd uncanny borderline has been breached! Grace is depicted as wearing floral hats, head scarves and aprons, forever trailing behind Orlando, looking after the children or taking care of the housework. Orlando on the other hand clearly wears the trousers (or not!), keeping order with his watch on his tail. He is the head of the family, the patriarch and what he says goes! Orlando advises on where to put the tent, what activities the family will be doing, and he takes Tinkle, the boy kitten, out to show him how to fish. Quality father and son time, learning important providing skills! It's all a bit dated, but then it was written in the 1930s. 

The thing that intruiged me the most about these books was their age, and why the older editions were comanding such a price online? It turns out that the first Orlando story was the first book to be printed using the technique photolithography, which I don't totally understand, but it meant that the illustrations could be mass produced using the same printing plate. This was a massive pioneering step in the production of books, especially picturebooks. I also discovered that the second Orlando book, Orlando's Evening Out, published in 1941, was the first fictional picture book to be published by Puffin, the children's imprint of Penguin. This, for picturebook nerds like me, is very exciting indeed! Orlando oozes history! How had I not heard of him!? 

There were 19 Orlando books in total, and here are some of the more baffling titles: 

• Orlando the Marmalade Cat: Buys A Farm
• Orlando the Marmalade Cat: Becomes a Doctor
• Orlando's Invisible Pyjamas
• Orlando the Marmalade Cat: Keeps A Dog
• Orlando the Marmalade Cat: The Frisky Housewife
• Orlando Goes to the Moon

Some of these conjour up some interesting images don't you think!? 

Now lets turn out attention to Kathleen Hale, creator of Orlando. Kathleen was born in Scotland in 1898. When her father died, her mother took up his job as a travelling piano salesman! Kathleen spent most of childhood drawing pictures, whilst her mother was away selling pianos. She ended up studying art, doing illustrations for books jackets, picturebooks and posters. She lived in London and Paris, and mixed in artistic and bohemian circles, her friends included the Bloomsbury artists Vanessa Bell and Duncan Grant. After an exciting youth, she married a doctor and settled down in Hertfordshire, where she later had some children and a marmalade coloured cat called Orlando. Kathleen Hale OBE died in 2000 aged 101. 

Although I hadn't heard of Orlando the Marmalade Cat, I can see what an important part he played in the history of children's literature. Now these books of blissful feline domesticity seem a little outdated, but at the time Orlando was a literary trail blazer! 

Thanks for reading, L x

P.s - Next up is Malory Blackman's Pigheart Boy