Scouting for Boys- A Handbook for Instruction in Good Citizenship 1908 All Issues

Scouting for Boys: A Handbook for Instruction in Good Citizenship is the first book on the Scout Movement, published in 1908. It was written and illustrated by Robert Baden-Powell, its founder. It is based on his boyhood experiences, his experience with the Mafeking Cadet Corps during the Second Boer War at the Siege of Mafeking, and on his experimental camp on Brownsea Island, England.


Scouting for Boys (1908) is Baden-Powell's rewrite of his earlier book Aids to Scouting (1899)[2] with many youth training ideas openly taken from The Birch Bark Roll of the Woodcraft Indians (1906)[3] written by Ernest Thompson Seton, who later became the Chief Scout of the Boy Scouts of America[4][5] Aids to Scouting was mostly a written explanation of the military scouting and self-reliance skills lessons Baden-Powell had learned from Frederick Russell Burnham, the British Army Chief of Scouts, but following the siege of Mafeking this military handbook unexpectedly became popular with many youth groups and teachers in Britain.[4] At Mafeking, Baden-Powell had recruited and trained boys aged 12–15 as postmen, messengers, and later to carry the wounded, to free men for fighting. Upon his return to England, following the Second Boer War, Baden-Powell learned some British schools had been using Aids to Scouting to teach observation and deduction. In 1906, Seton discussed youth training ideas with Baden-Powell and shared with him a copy of The Birch Bark Roll of the Woodcraft Indians.[5] Soon after, Baden-Powell decided to revise Aids to Scouting into a book for boys.[4] Several friends supported Baden-Powell, including Sir William Alexander Smith, founder of the Boys' Brigade, and Cyril Arthur Pearson, who owned newspapers and printing presses.[6] Baden-Powell wrote a draft, then called Boy Patrols, which he used and tested with 22 boys for one week at camp on Brownsea Island in the summer of 1907, where Pearson's literary editor Percy Everett assisted.[4]