334 - Isotype.- Neurath (Marie) Railways Under London, first edition, colour illustrations, some light foxing, bookseller's sticker to front pastedown, original cloth-backed pictorial boards, extremities a little rubbed, dust-jacket, chipping and few short tears to spine ends and extremities, a little foxed and browned, rubbing, 4to, Max Parrish, 1948.

Isotype.- Neurath (Marie) Railways Under London, first edition, colour illustrations, some light foxing, bookseller's sticker to front pastedown, original cloth-backed pictorial boards, extremities a little rubbed, dust-jacket, chipping and few short tears to spine ends and extremities, a little foxed and browned, rubbing, 4to, Max Parrish, 1948. *** Scarce Isotype work, we can trace only one other example of this rare true first edition at auction, but none in the original dust-jacket. The upper flap of dust-jacket includes insightful questions to engage its young readers: "How does the ticket-machine give the right change? How do the train-doors open when nobody touches them? How do the trains work the signals themselves? Try to answer these questions alone: the mystery remains. Try to explain by showing photographs: it is a little easier." With these charming questions engage its audience and encourages a new perception of London transport. Marie Neurath and her husband Otto pioneered the technique that came to be termed the International System of Typographic Picture Education (Isotype) as a means of widely communicating social-scientific data and instructions. After the pair fled to the UK from the Netherlands following the 1940 invasion of the Nazis, the Neuraths founded the Isotype Institute in Oxford, continuing the work they had begun on the continent. The war proved to be an opportunity to diffuse the ideas the couple had established and they received numerous commissions from the Ministry of Information. Following the end of the war and Otto's death in 1945, Marie continued to apply Isotype principles and designs to representing complex information, principally in popular science books for young persons. This book is an important example of Neurath's pioneering approach to explain complex technical subjects through visual communication. University of Reading published research confirming that Marie Neurath and the Isotype Institute worked closely with London Transport in preparation for this book; London Transport had supplied technical information and engineering drawings, and even had experts check the accuracy of the illustrations.