Henry Eliot

A beautiful book which is devoted to Penguin, the publishing house, and the many covers from works they have distributed throughout the years. Penguin is famous for putting out very inexpensive editions (i.e., paperback) of popular and classical works in the English language primarily. Penguin publishes many editions for the same book by the same author. Some variants are shown inside this book for contrast. I happen to have many Penguins in my personal collection. Hard cover editions were rare with Penguin but have become more numerous of late as book collecting became more profitable for all publishers. There are many YouTube channels which have people discussing different publishers and which have advantages and which have disadvantages regarding price points, paper quality, bindings, illustrations, and font type, and line space usage. This book, The Penguin Classics Book, is actually a hardcover cloth edition. Apparently Penguin would print books for library use in hardcover but rarely for other other reasons. I have a History of South America in hardcover but that was printed in the 1960s. The first recent book in hardcover from Putnam, an imprint/subdivision of Penguin, was Morrissey's Autobiography. Almost every country is represented with a writer in Penguin's catalogue. So, from a comparative literature standpoint Penguin is indispensable. The subject of comparative literature is where I am most comfortable besides philosophy. Any reader with an interest in classical books would like this book of illustrations and commentary. I don't want to actually own every book cover pictured inside this book or even read them all but I am interested in seeing what people have read in the past. Penguins are very popular in America for school texts and they become sentimental possessions after classes have finished. I like them because they are very durable and will last for twenty years if treated decently. They usually have excellent scholarly introductions or introductions by famous authors who would be known to the readers. Just because an author has their work published by Penguin doesn't mean that they have all their work published with Penguin also. Except for maybe Bernard Shaw or Charles Dickens every author will have some work published by another publishing house. Penguins are an option for readers but not an exclusive option.… (altro)

A beautifully produced gift book that is a joy for book lovers who have grown up with Penguins as one of their literary foundations.
This was a present to myself this Christmas, and makes for nostalgic Proustian reveries about the enjoyment of past reading, as well as minor surprises, such as that:
• The edition of Ulysses that I read was the first “B” format PMC, which is now the standard size for paperbacks
• The Bloody Chamber by Angela Carter, which I first read in a King Penguin edition, is not published as a PMC, probably due to copyright (similar for Milan Kundera’s books, which I first read as King Penguin)
• Even more surprisingly, Olivia Manning’s The Levant Trilogy is published as a PMC, but the preceding The Balkan Trilogy isn’t, again probably due to copyright
• The surprising number of books that I read which have now been published in a PMC edition, some of which I was surprised had not been PMC editions when I read them, such as Sartre’s Road to Freedom trilogy
The book also makes me realise the provincialism of my reading, with many of the British authors read, a smattering of Europeans, (with only multiple books read by de Beauvoir, Mann, Kafka, Calvino), no Asian titles, in Africa only Alan Paton, no Australasia other than Katherine Mansfield.
When I reached the Americas, I found that I had read many titles now published as Penguin Modern Classics, but I had not necessarily read the Penguin edition.
Looking at my bookshelves now, I see a good number of Penguin Modern Classics, including books seminal to broadening my literary taste, de Beauvoir, Kafka, Steinbeck, Capote, McCullers and Borges.
A lovely “coffee table”book for older book lovers.… (altro)