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

Penguin New Writing

Penguin Books began publishing a small magazine edited by John Lehmann in 1940 containing essays and short stories. Some of the titles in Volume I were "Shooting an Elephant" by George Orwell, "Sense of Humour" by V.S. Pritchett and "Conversation with a Lama" by Ralph Fox. The latter one has a location with the Mongols on a Steppe.  This must have seemed quite exotic at that time.

Every now and then I will come across one of these delightful little books and I always pick them up. Though I must say they don't show up very often.

Another lovely thing about them is they were published with covers of various covers. Pink, green, yellow, red and bray are the colours of the ones I have.

For interest I am including a bit from the Forward of Vol. II that gives some insight into the thinking of the day.

The first number of The Penguin New Writing was launched in the autumn of last year, and in a very few weeks more than justified the belief I had long held,and which Allen Lane had shared with me, that the magazine was capable of appealing to a far wider public than the original an dmore expensive volumes could ever reach.  This is only the second number; but the success of the first has already encouraged us to enlarge its scope and to turn it into something which, we think, is entirely new in journalism and meets an urgent demand of the times."  by John Lehmann, Penguin New Writing Magazine Vol 2, Jan 1941.

The magazines number in my inventory are listed below:

Penguin New Writing 

PNW   1:  Jan 1941 reprint  (dark orange)
PNW   2:  Jan 1941   (red)
PNW   5:  April 1941   (olive green)
PNW   9:  1941    (beige)

PNW   17: 1943   (gray)

PNW  19:  1944   (dark yellow)
PNW   20: 1944   (pink)
PNW  21:  1944   (gray)
PNW  22:  1944   (brown)

PNW  23:  1945   (gray)
PNW  24:  1945   (green)
PNW  25:  1945   (red)  Note on inside front cover stating price to go up 1 Jan 1946 to 1 shilling
PNW  26:  1945   (brown)

PNW  27:  1946   (light green w/ blue and green illustration)
PNW  28:  1946   (yellow with brown and yellow illustration)

PNW  29:  1947   (brown with brown and green illustration)
PNW  30:  1947   (gray with grey and brown illustration)
PNW  31:  1947   (dark green with dark green and light green illustration)
PNW  32:  1947   (dark pink with dark pink and gray illustration)

PNW  33:  1948   (Grey with purple illustration)
PNW  34:  1948   (green with red and green illustration)
PNW  35:  1948   (blue with blue and green illustration)

PNW  36:  1949   (brown with brown and yellow illustration)
PNW  37:  1949   (red with blue/grey and red illustration)
PNW  38:  1949   (orange with orange and yellow illustration)

PNW  39:  1950   (yellow w/ Penguin Logo in background)
PNW  40:  1950   (grey with Penguin Logo in background)

Penguin Series and Boxed Sets

For a long time I collected Penguin boxed sets.  Now it seems Penguin doesn't bother with a box anymore and sells the books within a series individually.  I like the illustrations and designs of the vintage boxed sets as well as the newer one but have slowed down finding any more.  I always enjoy hearing about the sets I don't have, if only to have a look at the design.

 The sets I currently have in my collection are listed below.

There were several small orange boxed sets with 10 books per set.  I often find the individual books for sale from the sets and some unknowning book sellers will sell the actual sets with the wrong books in them so if you want a correct set be sure to check them. (For example a travel book might be in the biography set).

• Penguin Classics - 10 orange spined books
• Penguin Classics - 10 black spined books
• Penguin Travel- set of 10 books
• Penguin Biography - set of 10 books
• Penguin Cookery - set of 10 books
• Pocket Penguins -A Collection of Stories - set of 10 books

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Other collectable boxed sets are the 60th anniversary boxed sets of classics. The two sets released each have 60 books of excerpts from the original books Penguin published. They are tasters so to speak.  There was a set of Penguin Classics with black spines in a black designed box and there was a set of Penguin 60's published in an orange box and the books, also excerpts from original published books have orange spines.

• Penguin Classics 60
• Penguin 60's

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Other series that were published are:

• Penguin Classics Millenium (in a box)
• Winston Churchill-The Second World War (in a box)
• The First 10 Penguins ever published (in a box)
• Great Ideas I (in a box)
• Great Ideas II (in a box)

After that the Great Ideas books were published in a series (numbered starting with number 41 and were not in a box of 20 books anymore).

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More sets on the shelves include:

• Boys Own Adventures (boxed)
• Sherlock Holmes (boxed)
• Penguin Banned Books (boxed)
• Penguin Epics (boxed)
• Charles Dickens Christmas Books (boxed)
• Life & Times of Horatio Hornblower (boxed)
• Mervyb Peake (boxed)
• War and Peace (boxed)
• Best of John Wyndham (boxed)
• Discover the World of Thomas Hardy (boxed)
• Penguin Miss Read Companion (boxed)
• Come Hither by Walter de la Maré (boxed)
• Sword of Honor Trilogy by Evelyn Waugh (boxed)
• The Penguin Upmanship by Stephen Potter (boxed)
• Thor Heyerdahl: Kon Tiki, R.A., Aku-Aku (boxed)
• The Essential Collection of Poetry-First Editions (boxed)
• English Journeys (boxed)
• Great Food Series (unboxed)
• Penguin Underground Lines (boxed)
• A Puffin Box of Magic