Disbanded sketchbook of cream-medium weight paper 210 X 165mm. The pages are numbered upper right on the recto and upper left on the verso; some are missing. The first part of the sketchbook contains studies for textile designs and family groups which may date to 1943. The remainder consists of preliminary sketches for The Rescue, a melodrama by Edward Sackville-West based on Homer's Odyssey, first broadcast by the BBC in November 1943 and published in standard and deluxe editions by secker and Warburg, London 1945. On page 30 Moore lists five subjects for The Rescue, a listing which probably continues on the missing page 32 and corresponds to the numbering on the versos of the remaining pages. After completing the sketchbook Moore made a number of further studies and some full-scale drawings, six of which HMF 2300-2305 were reproduced in the publication. The sketchbook must have been disbanded at an early date, since the Leicester Galleries, London, exhibited ten pages of studies for The Rescue (in addition to the larger drawings) in 1946.