Dark blue-grey paper-covered boards quarter-bound in black cloth 185 x 265 mm with a yellow label printed Whatman Sketch Book,/CLOTH COVER,/(Containing 40 Leaves,)/Manufactured by/Geo. Rowney & Co.,/Artists' Colourmen and Pencil Makers,/LONDON, ENGLAND. fixed upper right to the inside front cover. The book originally contained 40 leaves of off-white heavyweight Whatman wove paper 178 x 258 mm. Moore began the sketchbook in 1936, drawing from the back and numbering the first few pages upper right on the recto; in about 1938 he began drawing from the front. Four years later, when asked to design covers for the literary review Poetry London, Moore made major changes to many of the drawings by adding the outlines of lyre birds, the subject for the review's cover. In 1972 he reworked two of the pages HMF 1284 and 1286 and cut out the top right-hand section of HMF 1284, which became HMF 1285, for the cover design of Festschrift for KFB. Many pages are missing and others are blank; twelve drawings HMF 1276, 1278, 1280-1282, 1284, 1289-1291, 1294-1296 remain in the sketchbook and eight HMF 1277, 1283, 1285-1288, 1292, 1293 have been ascribed to it.