AN original manuscript of one of the world’s most-read books is the centrepiece of a new exhibition of adventure books.

Books For Boys opens at Durham University’s Palace Green Library on Saturday and explores notions of boyhood in the run-up to the First World War.

Professor Simon James, head of the English Department at Durham University, is one of the exhibition’s curators.

He said: “What we wanted to look at was the period of time from the first truly mass-reading public when everybody’s taught how to read in the 1870s, onwards up to the First World War.

“It’s the period that my own work specialises in and I think it’s such an exciting time for the history of literature.”

One of the works on display is Robert Baden-Powell’s original manuscript for ‘Scouting for Boys: A Handbook for Instruction in Good Citizenship’ (1908).

Prof James said: “Scouting for Boys is a book that founded a movement; it’s fantastic to have the manuscript on display here.

“Over the course of the twentieth century, it’s the most read book in the whole world, apart from the Bible and Chairman Mao’s book and we have the very first version of it here in Durham.”

Fellow curator Jonathan Long said: “One of our interests was to take a comparative approach and see whether German boys were reading the same kind of material as English boys.

“Although you can perceive a slightly greater tendency towards militarism in German literature, the more dominant message is definitely that German and British children were reading more or less the same kind of material. There were a lot of translations from each language into the other.”

The exhibition has been timed to coincide with the centenary of the outbreak of the First World War and runs until January 11. It is open from 10am to 5pm from Tuesday to Sunday and from noon to 5pm on Mondays.