1918 Your leading man has just come back from Mons and wants to buy his nephew a clockwork train set. How much would it cost? 22/6, from Gamages.
1944 before embarking for Normandy, your hero is arranging for his mother to move. Who should he contact? Why not Pitt & Scott Ltd, ‘phone City 6474.
It’s Victorian times, and your poor, impoverished poet is starving in a garret and desperate to get the roof asphalted. He’ll have to stump up a penny per square foot.
How do I know all these things? Because the adverts tell me so. I’m a great believer in getting the feel for and flavour of a time and so I collect old original and reproduction newspapers and, rather than looking at the headlines, I scour the adverts and personal columns, the radio or theatre listings – anything which gives me a clue to what ordinary life was like. Often this is the hardest thing for the historical novelist to research. We don’t necessarily want dates of battles, we want to know what the grocer’s boy brought in his basket!
In the pages of the papers I find the comfortably familiar, like Boots the Chemist, Cherry Blossom boot polish, as much a part of my life now as they were to the people of 1918. I also find the novel and the downright odd (I wonder what Doans backache kidney pills really contained or why Britannia in her chariot appears to be at Verdun handing out Cameron Safety self filler pens to the troops).
I love old adverts everywhere I find them. One of my prize possessions is a first edition Novel Notes by Jerome K Jerome and the endpapers are full of the things, not all of which are advertising books. Fancy a Hairless Author’s Paper-pad (not sure if the pad is hairless or the author)? Or some Stickphast paste? (Which, according to the blurb is the only thing which Ellen Terry would use for sticking paper, so there.)
I have to thank Erastes for pointing out this resource and pandering to my secret vice. Ah, the hours spent looking up old jelly babies adverts and the like.
The Macaronis 
February 8, 2010 at 1:43 pm
Which is why for early twentieth century US the mail-order catalogues of Sears-Roebuck and Mongomery-Ward can be so valuable. They have all of life, albeit in black and white, within their covers. Every American scenic designer is likely to have reprints of these in his library. Did the UK have equivalent catalogues?
February 8, 2010 at 1:55 pm
Ken
Do you know, I have no idea. I know things were bought by mail order and therefore there must have been a catalogue (especially for ex-pats). Oh, another way to feed my addiction.
*mwah*
Charlie
February 8, 2010 at 2:17 pm
I have this strange vision of 100, 200 years into the future, historians and writers pouring over editions of the Argos Catalogue as valuable historical source material. And writing treatise about the correct way to pronounce “Wii”.
February 8, 2010 at 2:23 pm
It’s not a strange vision – it seems eminently reasonable!
How does one pronounce Wii anyway?
Charlie
February 8, 2010 at 3:52 pm
I just want to say that writers have to be careful using the Sears and Wards catalogues. Those stores were mainly used by middle and lower classes. If you’re writing about the upper classes, you have to look at Macy’s, Saks Fifth Avenue, or Marshall Fields(a Chicago store that no longer exists).
February 8, 2010 at 4:40 pm
Oh yes. Like in the Uk where using a Littlewoods catalogue would imply a very diffeent social class to using one from Harrod’s!
Charlie
February 8, 2010 at 1:50 pm
I so agree – it’s my constant whine that I found Transgressions particularly hard to research because “every day life” is almost undocumented at that time – even the re-enactment groups admit it’s difficult to find out ordinary things.
When I was writing Junction X I found this too – looking up “clothes in 1960’s” gives you all the trendy fashions of the day – Quant etc – NOT what a 17 year old boy was wearing whose mother bought his clothes.
February 8, 2010 at 1:57 pm
Erastes
I remember that ‘whine’ and agreed with it entirely.
Noting Ken’s comment above, the place to have been looking for Junction X stuff was probably in an early Littlewood’s catalogue!
Charlie
February 8, 2010 at 1:59 pm
Look what I found!
http://www.thecatalogshop.co.uk/catalogue-history/littlewoods-1960.php
February 8, 2010 at 2:18 pm
Cor! Result!
February 8, 2010 at 2:12 pm
I remember when I was a kid we had this part-work I think they’re called, “The War Papers”, reproductions of newspapers with the events of WW2. I remember finding the adverts just as fascinating as the actual stories and articles. It was a like a glimpse of the past in a different way then the big historical events were.
February 8, 2010 at 2:27 pm
We had something similar a few years back – that’s when I started looking out for the things. I love looking at the TV and radio listings as well. That’s where the really big changes have come.
Charlie
February 8, 2010 at 3:08 pm
I’ve found a lot of great information in old adverts!
February 8, 2010 at 3:11 pm
I’m so glad I posted this – proved to me I’m not the only person with an interest in these things!
Charlie
February 8, 2010 at 3:13 pm
Other fine sources for the first half of the twentieth century are the illustrated weekly magazines like Colliers, Life, or the Saturday Evening Post. They are loaded with adverts for the every day. Trouble is of course that nothing’s catalogued, other than the date on the spine. I use the university library and brouse for hours. Sphere, Illustrated London News, Country life? I also have in my home collection The National Geographic Magazine from 1940 through 1980. There the articles and their pictures give good accounts of every day life and fashion in many countries. The ads are equally valuable.
As a theatre designer I’ve used such sources for years. Now they are helpful to the writer.
February 8, 2010 at 3:42 pm
Ken
Oh yes. And looking at this the other way around, if I see a magazine/newspaper/other piece of contemporary publishing it often speaks to me much more clearly about when it comes from than seeing a piece of fashion or whatever from that same era.
Charlie
February 8, 2010 at 10:21 pm
I have one of those old Sears catalog reproductions. Too bad they had to shrink it–but at least I do have a magnifying glass.
In the US, a great source for those old newspapers and magazines is the antique warehouse circuit. I found a copy of Life magazine in one that featured the Dalai Lama’s escape from Tibet. The ads, though… startling. I didn’t realize how much cigarette advertising there was when I was a kid. And the brand new cars for $1500… waaaah.
National Geographic is a gem, and always has been–but I had to abandon mine when we moved to Canada. The movers charged by the hundredweight.
Shouldn’t we put these resources in a links file somewhere?
February 9, 2010 at 10:35 am
I like the old newspapers you fins lining draws sometimes – when we cleared out my mum’s house there were a load. The sports pages were particularly amusing, with people sounding off about how great they were going to be and me knowing, with that glorious thing hindsight, what the more mundane reality had been.
We do have a links file at the macs group – perhaps we need a call to update it. (And we should cross post at speak Its Name, perhaps?)
Charlie
February 13, 2010 at 7:48 pm
I love reading old adverts too – at work recently we had about 5 years’ worth of magazines from the 1950s and my boss and I giggled over the cheesiness of some of the ads. It’s funny how even a time as recent as the 50s can seem so alien from a consumer viewpoint – my boss remembers hiring a lounge suite, for example, and I can’t imagine that at all!
February 13, 2010 at 8:17 pm
Even the seventies are remote, too. My kids think it’s hilarious when I tell them that shops had early closing – often Wednesday, sometimes Thursday – that butchers were rarely open on a Monday, etc. Like it was another world…
Charlie
February 14, 2010 at 11:57 pm
Brilliant, Charlie – I, too, love old adverts! There is so much information in them! Websites that cater to us vintage-advert-lovers are wonderful, and I’ve now and then made a foray into the university library here, to look at old newspapers on microfilm – not, as you say, for the stories, but for the adverts. 🙂
February 15, 2010 at 7:56 am
JoAnne
You know, I’ve been thinking about this some more. It;s almost as if there’s an ‘honesty’ in the adverts – you know exactly what their agenda is – which you don’t always have with the news stories.
If you come across some good ads, do share them, please.
Charlie
February 22, 2012 at 3:27 pm
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