LONDON.- A wartime poster, largely unseen at the time but its iconic design now known around the world, is to be sold in the Gentleman’s Library Sale on the 27th and 28th of January at Bonhams Knightsbridge.

An original 1939 print of “Keep Calm and Carry On”, one of three motivational posters produced by the British government in preparation for the Second World War, is estimated to sell for £6,000-8,000.

Designed by the Ministry of Information during the summer of 1939, it was part of a series of three "Home Publicity" posters (the others read "Your Courage, Your Cheerfulness, Your Resolution Will Bring Us Victory" and "Freedom Is in Peril. Defend It With All Your Might"). Each poster showed the slogan under a representation of a "Tudor Crown" (a symbol of the state).

The posters were intended to raise the morale of the British public, threatened with widely predicted mass air attacks on major cities.

Printing began on 23 August 1939, the day that Nazi Germany and the USSR signed the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact, a treaty of non- aggression between the two countries. The posters were ready to be placed up within 24 hours of the outbreak of war.

Almost 2.5 million copies of “Keep Calm and Carry On” were printed but the poster was not sanctioned for immediate public display. It was instead decided that copies of the poster should remain in storage for use after serious air raids.

Although there were indeed serious air raids during the Blitz, the poster was hardly ever publicly displayed. Copies of “Keep Calm and Carry On” were retained until April 1940, but stocks were then pulped as part of the wider Paper Salvage campaign, which encouraged the recycling of materials to aid the war effort.

The remainder of the Ministry of Information publicity campaign was cancelled in October 1939 following criticism of its cost and impact. Many people claimed never to have seen the posters at all, and the memory of the campaign gradually faded into obscurity.

However in 2000, a bookstore owner in the north of England found one of the original "Keep Calm and Carry On" posters. Framing it and hanging it up in the shop, it attracted so much interest the owner began to produce and sell copies. Other companies followed suit, and the design rapidly began to be used as the theme for a wide range of products.

As the popularity of the poster in various media has grown, innumerable parodies and imitations have also appeared.