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

"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, and 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.

• Boy Scouts Handbook: The First Edition, 1911 (Dover Books on Americana)
• Boy Scouts of America: The Official Handbook for Boys
• The Mabinogion (Oxford World's Classics Hardback Collection)
• Baden-Powell : The Two Lives of a Hero
• A Christmas Carol: and Other Stories (Oxford World's Classics Hardback Collection)
• Collected Ghost Stories: (OWC Hardback) (Oxford World's Classics Hardback Collection)
• The Pit and the Pendulum and Other Tales (Oxford World's Classics Hardback Collection)
• The Complete Fairy Tales (Oxford World's Classics Hardback Collection)
• Victorian Fairy Tales (Oxford World's Classics Hardback Collection)
• Gothic Tales (Oxford World's Classics Hardback Collection)