Penguin English Library

Planned in all respects to take its place alongside the Penguin Classics, the Penguin English Library will, as it grows include a comprehensive range of the literary masterpieces which have appeared in the English language since the fifteenth century.


The following first published English Library books are in my collection. I come across too many of them at very cheap prices to not pick them up to preserve. I really enjoy the covers too




EL  8:  David Copperfield by Charles Dickens
EL  9:  Tom Jones by Henry Fielding

EL 14:  The Moonstone by Wilkie Collins

EL 18:  The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
EL 23:  Rural Rides by William Cobbett

EL 34:  The Egoist by George Meredith
EL 41:  The Eustace Diamonds by Anthony Trollope

Penguin New Writing 1940-1950

Penguin's New Writing Magazine was established in 1940. The original magazine was in the original series run of Penguins but then became its own magazine.  There are a periodical with several stories in their pages and developed by John Lehmann. They are a lovely little magazine and famous authors of the time contributed to them including George Orwell.

I have the following list in my collection but am always looking for more of them to complete the series. The last issue was published in 1950.

NW  1
NW  2
NW  5
NW  6

NW  17
NW  19
NW  20
NW  21

NW  22
NW  23
NW24
NW  25

NW  26
NW  27
NW  28
NW  29

NW  30
NW  31
NW  32
NW  33

NW  34
NW  35
NW  36
NW  37

NW  38

Penguin Film Review

Vintage Film Review in my Collection

FR 1   August 1946

FR 2   January 1947

FR 3   August 1947

FR 4   October 1947

FR 5   January 1948

FR 6   April 1948

Penguin Plays

There are many vintage Penguin plays around in op shops and I have decided to collect just the first editions. I quite like the covers.  The ones I have are listed below. 

PL 17 Eugene O'Neill:  Anna Christie; The Emperor Jones; Desire Under the Elms
PL 19 Arnold Wesker:  Roots

PL 20 Lorca:  Three Tragedies (Blood Wedding; Yerma; The House of Bernarda Alba)
PL 21 Tennessee Williams:  The Rose Tattoo; Camino Real

PL 26  Bernard Kops: The Dream of Peter Mann
PL 29  Arthur Miller:  A View from the Bridge; All My Sons

PL 30  Ligi Pirandello: Right You Are! (If You Think So); All for the Best; Henry IV
PL 31  Ronald Gow: Gallows Glorious; S.I. Hsiung: Lady Precious Stream; Gordon Daviot: Richard
           of Bordeaux

PL 34  Luigi Pirandello: The Rules of the Game; The Life I Gave You; Lazarus
PL 41  J. P. Donleavy: Fairy Tales of New York

PL 47  New English Dramatists.7 (Chips with Everything by Arnold Wesker; Afore Night Come by               David Rudkin and Everything in the Garden by Giles Cooper)

PL 48  Arnold Wesker: The Wesker Trilogy (Chicken Soup with Barley; Roots; I'm Talking About
           Jerusalem
PL 53  Bernard Shaw: Heartbreak House

PL 54  Classic Irish Drama:  W.B. Yeats: The Countess Cathleen; J.M. Synge: The Playboy of the
           Western World; Sean O'Casey: Cock-a-doodle-Dandy
PL 58  Absurd Drama:  Eugene Ionesco: Amedee or How to Get Rid of It; Arthur Adamov: Professor
           Taranne; Fernando Arrabal: The Two Executioners; Edward Albee: The Zoo Story

PL 64  Hemingway: The Fifth Column
PL 70  New English Dramatists 10:  Arnold Wesker: Their Very Own and Golden City; David Pinner:
           Dickon;  Cecil Taylor:  Bread and Butter

PL 87  Rolf Hochhuth:  The Representative

Penguin's Peregrine Books

Penguin's Peregrine Books were thick dense soft cover books. I come across them quite often. They were academic books published by Penguin and the series began in January 1962.

I collect these when I come across them and only pick up first published books.

Y11  Aubrey's Brief Lives
Y12  Milton by E. M. W. Tillyard
Y18  A Critical History of English Poetry
Y25  The Rise of the Novel by Ian Watt

Y30  The Growth and Structure of Elizabethan Comedy by M. C. Bradbrook
Y35  The Englishness of English Art by Nikolaus Pevsner
Y37  The Elizabethan House of Commons by J. E. Neale
Y39  D.H. Lawrence / Novelist by F. R. Leavis
Y44  Poetry and Experience by Archibald MacLeish
Y64  Opinions and Perspectives by The New York Times Book Review
Y68  Milton's Epic Poetry (Essays on Paradise Lost and Paradise Regained) Edited by C.A. Patrides

Y70  Beyond Culture by Lionel Trilling

Penguin Illustrated Classics

Penguin Illustrated Classics 

There are limited number in this series. I hope to collect all of them. The ones I currently have in my collection are listed below.  They are defined by their woodcutting illustrations.

All books are first published Penguins unless marked otherwise.

1-     Robinson Crusoe


C-2  A Sentimental Journey by Stern 1938

C-4  Walden by Thoreau 1938

C-5  Selected Poems by Robert Browning 1938

C-6  Robinson Crusoe Vol I by Defoe 1938

C-7  Robinson Crusoe Vol II by Defoe 1938

C-8  Typee by Melville 1938

C-9  The Story of My Heart by Richard Jeffries 1938

C-10  Gulliver's Travels by Jonathan Swift 1938

AMERICAN PENGUIN ILLUSTRATED CLASSIC

08 Walden by Thoreau 1st publ. 1942

Classic Penguins- Post 1970

Classic Penguins- Post 1970 

Sorted by Title (excluding A, An & The)

The Adventure of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
The American by Henry James

The Annals of Imperial Rome
The Art of Rhetoric by Aristotle

Autobiography by John Stuart Mill

Barchester Towes by Anthony Trollope

Bleak House by Charles Dickens

The Christmas Books Vol I: A Christmas Carol/The Chimes by Charles Dickens

The Cloud of Unknowing and Other Works (Editor- Betty Radice)
The Comedies by Terence
The Complete Plays by Christopher Marlowe

Coningsby by Benjamin Disraeli

Cranford/Cousin Phillis

David Copperfield by Charles Dickens
The Deerslayer by James Fenimore Cooper
A Doll's House and Other Plays by Henrik Ibsen

The Distracted Preacher and Other Tales by Thomas Hardy

Dombey and Son by Charles Dickens
Dr. Thorne by Anthony Trollope

Ecclesiastial History of the English People by Bede

Effi Briest by Theodore Fontane
English Romantic Verse 
Ethics by Aristotle

Eugene Onegin by Alexander Pushkin

The Eustace Diamonds by Anthony Trollope

Far From the Madding Crowd by Thomas Hardy

Father and Son by Edmund Gosse
Four Stories by American Woman: Rebecca Harding Davis, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Sarah 
Four English Comedies (Jonson/Volpone; Congreve/The Way of the World/; Goldsnith/She  
      Stoops to Conquer; Sheridan/The School for Scandal)
Four Tragedies and Octavia by Seneca

The Georgics by Virgil
Gottfried von Strassburg/Tristan with the 'Tristan' of Thomas
Germinal by Emile Zola
Ghosts and Other Playss by Henrik Ibsen
The Golden Ass by Lucius Apuleius

Great Expectations by Charles Dickens

Hard Times by Charles Dickens
How Much Land Does a Man Need? and Other Stories by Leo Tolstoy

Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë

Jude the Obscure by Thomas Hardy

The Knight's/ Oeace/ The Birds/The Assembly Women/Wealth by Aristophanes

L'Assommoir by Emile Zola
Lady with Lapdog and Other Stories by Anton Chekhov
Le Morte D'Arthur (Vol I) by Sir Thomas Malory
The Last of the Mohicans by James Fennimore Cooper
The Letters of Abelard and Heloise
The Letters of the Younger Pliny 
Little Dorrit by Charles Dickens

Little Women by Louisa May Alcott

Mansfield Park by Jane Austen
Martin Chuzzlewit by Charles Dickens
The Mayor of Casterbridge by Thomas Hardy

Medea and Other Plays by Euripedes

The Mill on then Floss by George Elio

The Newcomes by William Makepeace Thackeray

The Odes by Pindar
The Old Curiosity Shop by Charles Dickens
The Old Wives Tale by Arnold Bennett
Old Goriot by Honoré de Balzac
Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens
Oroonoko, The Rover and Other Works by Aphra Behn

Pamela by Samuel Richardson
Parzival by Wolfram von Eschenbach

Pickwick Papers by Charles Dickens
The Pot of Gold and Other Plays by Plautus

Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
Pudd'nhead Wilson by Mark Twain

The Red Badge of Courage by Stephen Crane
The Rise of Silas Lapham by William Dean Howells
Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe

Selected Journalism 1850-1870 by Charles Dickens
Selected Writings by Samuel Johnson

Tess of the D'Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy
Three Comedies by Ben Jonson

The Three Theban Plays (Antigone, Oedipus the King, Oedipus at Colonus) by Sophocles
A Treatise of Human Nature by David Hume
The Twelve Caesars by Suetonius

Twilight of the Idols/The Anti-Christ by Friedrich Nietzsche

Vanity Fair by William Makepeace Thackeray

Washington Square by Henry James
The Wasps/The Poet and the Women/The Frogs by Aristophanes

Where Angels Fear to Tread by E.M. Forster
The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins
A Woman's Life by Guy de Maupassant