The Football's Revolt by Lewitt-Him first edition 1939
LEWITT-HIM (Jan Le Witt and George Him). The Football’s Revolt.
London: Country Life Ltd., 1939.
First edition. 4to (285 × 220 mm). 28 pp. Colour-illustrated throughout, with text and images by the design partnership Lewitt-Him. Original pictorial boards, yellow cloth spine.
Light soiling and mottling to cloth and boards, corners lightly rubbed, contents clean and fresh, colours bright. A small pencil price of 2/6 to the front cover and early ownership inscription to front free endpaper (dated 1941).
The Polish émigré artists Jan Le Witt (1907–1991) and George Him (1900–1982), who settled in Britain in 1937, quickly established themselves as leading figures in modernist graphic design. The Football’s Revolt is one of their first books produced in London, combining humorous text with vividly stylised illustrations. Its narrative — in which a football match descends into absurdist chaos as objects and crowds take on lives of their own and a football gets stuck in the air, provided an ideal showcase for them.
The book was popular enough to be reissued by Country Life in the 1940s, during the Second World War, though this original 1939 printing is the true first edition.