The below is copied from the Bear Alley blog:
http://bearalley.blogspot.com/2008/08/c-h-b-marjorie-quennell.html
It is posted here as a backup/archive in case it disappears since it is 
the only info about the Quennell's freely on the net . This backup 
provided by stephen@balbach.net (please inform me if you see it on the 
wayback machine at Internet Archive (archive.org) and I will remove this 
as redundant.)

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 (Another fine piece from the pen of Tony Woolrich, to whom I offer my 
  thanks. Contributions to Bear Alley are always welcome.)

Charles Henry Bourne Quennell (1872–1935) and his wife Marjorie (née 
Courtney) (1883–1972) were the authors of a series of well-known 
illustrated history books for children which they wrote after the end of 
the First World War and which were still being re-issued into the 1980s.

Charles trained as an architect and set up in practice in Westminster in 
1896. He designed numbers of houses, mostly in London and the Home 
Counties, as well as some churches. He was typical of his time; much 
into the Arts and Crafts movement. He drew together some like minded 
friends and formed the Lambeth Guild of Handicraft, making joinery, 
metalwork etc by hand. According to Charles’s brother, writing after his 
death, some of their work was for a church at Brith-dir in North Wales. 
This is probably Brithdir, Dolgelly, Gwynedd, Grade 1 listed, and a fine 
example of an Arts and Crafts design building. He wrote for Bells a 
guide to Norwich Cathedral and for Batsfords a book about modern 
suburban houses. He had the reputation of being a particularly skilful 
pen and ink draughtsman. He was specially interested in recording 
craftsmanship, particularly for buildings and farm vehicles.

The First World War virtually killed his architectural practice, and he 
was employed in 1918 as an architect by the Messrs Crittall Co., makers 
of metal windows, to design a housing scheme for their employees at 
Braintree, Essex. He died in 1935.

Marjorie was a painter in oils and watercolour, mostly of architectural 
subjects and also an illustrator. They had three children, one of whom, 
Peter, (1905-1993) became a well-known writer and was editor of History 
Today. After her husband’s death in 1935 she was appointed curator of 
the Geffreye Museum, London, until 1941, then lived in America for some 
years working as an illustrator. She died in London in 1972, aged 88.

At the end of the First World War the Quennells conceived the idea of 
writing a series of illustrated children’s books, A History of Everyday 
Things in England, 4 vol (1918-1934). It was concluded by The Good New 
Days (1935), where modern industrial and agricultural processes, 
together with the problems of the future, were considered. A second 
series was produced, Everyday Life in… (1921-26) describing living in 
Prehistoric to Norman times. A third series of Everyday Things (1929-32) 
covered Greece in antiquity. After the Second World War Marjorie 
illustrated two more books in the Everyday Life series on Biblical 
times, the texts being written by others.

All were books about ‘material culture’ and dealt with history from the 
ground up. They were specially strong on housing, agriculture and the 
way people earned their livings. They were described by Hector Bolitho 
as “transforming teaching”. They sold in thousands and were reputed to 
have been used by more than eight hundred schools in Britain alone and 
more were in use in overseas in English-speaking schools. Translations 
of a number of titles have been made into Russian, French, German, 
Italian, Dutch, Swedish and Danish.

The books were illustrated with some coloured drawings of mostly 
costume, half tones and a profusion of line drawings made by the 
authors. All the books went into numerous revisions, with the 
information upgraded to take account of modern knowledge.

While the work of Charles Quennell has attracted the interest of 
historians of architecture, the work the Quennells did as writers of 
children’s books is not discussed in modern academic studies of 
children’s books. Nor has anything be found about the artistic work of 
Marjorie Quennell.

The following list of the Quennells has been compiled from the online 
British Library Catalogue, COPAC and WorldCat augmented by titles noted 
by book dealers in ABE. Many of the books went into several editions, 
but the earliest ones traced are the ones noted. More references might 
be added for Marjorie Quennell’s book illustrations.

PUBLICATIONS

C. H. B. Quennell, The new cathedral church of Norwich: a description of 
its fabric and a brief history of the episcopal see, London, G. Bell and 
Sons, 1898. [available online in various formats at the Internet 
Archive]
C. H. B. Quennell, Modern Suburban Houses. A series of examples erected 
at Hampstead & elsewhere from designs, London, B. T. Batsford Ltd, 1906.
Marjorie & C. H. B. Quennell, A History of Everyday Things in England, 
London, B. T. Batsford Ltd, 1918-1934.
__vol 1, 1066-1449 [available online in various formats at the Internet 
Archive]
__vol 2, 1500-1799 [available online in various formats at the Internet 
Archive]
__vol 3, 1733-1851 [available online in various formats at the Internet 
Archive]
__vol 4, 1852-1914 [available online in various formats at the Internet 
Archive]
Marjorie & C. H. B. Quennell, A History of Everyday life in…, London, B. 
T. Batsford Ltd, 1921-1926.
__The Old Stone Age [available online in various formats at the Internet 
Archive]
__The New Stone Age, Bronze and Early Iron Age [available online in 
various formats at the Internet Archive]
__Roman Britain
__Saxon, Viking and Norman Times
Marjorie & C. H. B. Quennell, Everyday things in Greece, London, B. T. 
Batsford Ltd, 1929-1932.
__Vol 1, Homeric Greece
__Vol 2, Archaic Greece
__Vol 3, Classical Greece
Marjorie & C. H. B. Quennell, The Good New Days, London, B. T. Batsford 
Ltd., 1935.
Marjorie Quennell, London craftsman: a guide to museums having relics of 
old trades, London, London Transport, 1939.

Books illustrated by Marjorie Quennell
E. Lucia Turnbull and H. Dalway Turnbull, Through the gates of 
remembrance: first series: a trilogy of plays centred round Glastonbury, 
London, T. Nelson & Sons, 1933.
Elisabeth Kyle, Disappearing Island, Boston, Houghton Mifflin Co., 1944.
Gertrude Hartman and Lucy S. Saunders, Builders of the Old World, 
Boston, D. C. Heath & Co., 1949. [Vol 4 of the History on the March 
series]
A. C. Bouquet, Everyday Life in New Testament Times, London, B. T. 
Batsford Ltd, 1953.
Wallace Walter Atwood and Helen Goss Thomas, Visits in other lands, 
Toronto, Ginn, [1955?].
E. W. Heaton, Everyday Life in Old Testament Times, London, Batsford 
Ltd, 1957.


REFERENCES

Prefatory material to the A History of Everyday Things in England.
Hector Bolitho, A Batsford Century: The Record of a Hundred Years of 
Publishing and Bookselling, 1843–1943, London, B. T. Batsford Ltd, 1943, 
pp, 54-55, 85, 127-28.

C. H. B. Quennell
The Times (Obituary) 7 December 1935, with a correction by his brother, 
W. D. Quennell, 14 December 1935.
Tony Crosby, “The Silver End Model Village for Crittall Manufacturing 
Co. Ltd”, Industrial Archaeology Review, XX, (1998), pp 69-82, ISSN 
0309-02728.
Nick Collins, “In search of C. H. B. Quennell”, Context 89, May 2005, pp 
14-18.
Elizabeth McKellar, “C.H.B. Quennell (1872-1935): architecture, history 
and the quest for the modern.” Architectural History, 49 .(2006) pp. 
211-246. ISSN 0066-622X .

Marjorie Quennell
The Times (Obituary) 4 August, 1972.
Sir Peter Quennell, (1905-1993). Article by James B. Denigan, Oxford 
Dictionary of National Biography. [accessed 12 August 2008].