Book of Postcards: Posters from the Frist World War

In a time before television and radio were mainstays in people’s homes, the poster was the most effective means of mass communication. In Britain during the First World War, in order to maintain enlistment into its first mass army, the Parliamentary Recruiting Committee in 1914 called upon the print and advertising industries to create arresting poster designs. These ranged from images cheerily promising adventure and fulfilment to others that pricked the conscience. They were easy and quick to produce and appeared everywhere—on buses, billboards, and public buildings—to keep the essential messages fresh in people’s minds.
The war savings poster was by far the most widespread during the First World War. Armed forces and their populations at home needed to be sustained, and the mounting cost of war meant that every nation had to turn to its public to help finance the war effort through bond and loan schemes. In promoting these, some of the war’s most iconic images arose from around the world. The posters also encouraged food economy, urged greater production, promoted substitute material and foodstuffs, made charitable appeals, and advertised war-themed cultural events, all further underlining the importance of the poster in the context of total war.
Founded in 1917 as the Imperial War Museum, IWM (now the Imperial War Museums) immediately began collecting from battlefields, factories, and homes in an effort to record the civilian and military war experience. The images presented on these postcards are from a selection of international First World War posters acquired largely between 1917 and 1920.
Pomegranate’s books of postcards contain up to thirty top-quality reproductions bound together in a handy, artful collection. Easy to remove and produced on heavy card stock, these stunning postcards are a delight to the sender and receiver. Postcards are oversized and may require additional postage.