In the original dustsheet. Green cloth binding with gilt title on the spine.

• F.B.A. provides an in-depth photographic presentation of this item to stimulate your feeling and touch. More traditional book descriptions are immediately available.

This book comprises the history and impressions from colleagues, and family of John Spedan Lewis, known as the “Founder” of the John Lewis Partnership. Living from 1885 to 1963, John Spedan Lewis changed the face of commerce in a large business enterprise. This was achieved by inviting worker participation, developing worker benefits, establishing worker holiday schemes and generally extending former patriarchal and parochial benefits known for workers in some estates of some landed gentry, into planned and statutory programs within the John Lewis Partnership enterprise.

Continuing strongly as an enterprise benefitting permanent employees, the John Lewis Partnership has a wide range of businesses throughout the United Kingdom, with some overseas extensions of these. The impressions and history of the “Founder” is valuable in information the material adds to the wider discussions of the roles of workers in co-operatives, their contribution to management and their rewards from profits.

John Spedan Lewis (22 September 1885 – 21 February 1963) was an English businessman and the founder of the John Lewis Partnership. Elder son of John Lewis, who owned the John Lewis department store, London, Spedan joined the business at 19 and in 1914 assumed control of Peter Jones in Sloane Square, London. On his father’s death he formed the John Lewis Partnership and began distributing profits among its employees in 1929. He transferred control of the company to the employees in 1950 and resigned as chairman in 1955.