Scouting for Boys: A Handbook for Instruction in Good Citizenship (Oxford World's Classics Hardback Collection) - Hardcover

very good fun (Max Hastings, Sunday Telegraph)

the value of Elleke Boehmer's well-annotated text of the original edition is to show us the anxieties, contradictions and excitements of the Boy Scout movement at its inception (Alan Hollinghurst, Guardian)

Elleke Boehmer's erudite introduction makes you wish she would get around to writing a full-length biogaphy of the first Chief Scout (William Cook, New Statesman)

this fascinating volume tells us a lot about Baden-Powell, his movement and even to some extent the particular point in time when scouting was born' (Washington Times)

a gripping read (The Oldie)

'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.