Monday, August 31, 2009

Feminism & Anarchy

Do the two above social philosophies go together? For me they do, as I recall that when I first discovered feminism, I also was a member of TREASON, the Anarchist Club at Melbourne University in the late 1960s and early 1970s.

Consequently I collected books on these subjects as below.

Germaine Greer’s The Female Eunuch was for me probably the most influential of the various feminist texts published in the 1970s. It was a book that everyone read at the time, both men and women. I also remember being impressed by Ingrid Bengis’ Combat in the Erogenous Zone.

Femaleeunuch bengis_combat
Then there is The Dialectic of Sex by the wonderfully named Shulamith Firestone.

dialectic of sex

Emma Goldman actually provides the link between Feminism and Anarchism. I did have both volumes of her biography, but Volume One has gone astray.

emma_goldman_life

A couple of other books on Anarchism…

anarchism social_anarchism

Next – more New Age type stuff.

Sunday, August 23, 2009

Penguin Books – Pelicans – Politics, Sociology & Psychiatry

Pelicans are of course the non fiction imprint of Penguin. They encompass a wide variety of topics, from politics, to art, to sociology, to history and literature.

I have a smallish collection of Pelicans quite probably mostly acquired through the auspices of my friend who worked for Penguin.

Politics and Revolutionaries

anarchism_woodcock debray_revolution marx_selectedwritings

che_cuban_revolution che_guerilla_warfare
gomulka superman_commonman
tawney_radical ullmann_political_thought_middle_ages

wollstonecraft

Sociology & Psychiatry

elites freud

pschiatrytoday

beyondwordsworminthebud

judaism

Next - more Pelicans

Pelicans – History, Literature & Art

augustine_city bonilla_servants_of God
early_medieval druids

clark_nude

european_expansion flaubert
graves_greek_myths1 musical_instruments
history_france romanreadings

history_england

englishprose guide_englit usesofliteracy

Finally – three Australian Pelicans

boyd_aust_home boyd_aust_ugliness conservation

Next – general non fiction

Thursday, August 20, 2009

Black Classics – A Miscellany

This will be the final entry on the Penguin “Black Classics”. There may be a few more floating around in my book collection, but the bulk of them have now been displayed.

First – Chinese & Japanese Literature

poems_late_tang six_yuan_plays
1963 Edition
A detail of a Chinese silk painting of 8th to 10th C with the young Buddha practising archery
1972 Edition
Detail from Ch’ing Ming Shang Ho Tu the famous scroll depicting a city of Cathay. Attributed to Chiang Tse-tuan

as_i_crossed
1973 Edition – detail of the Shotoku Taishi E-den by Munezane (Heian period)

Spanish & Portuguese Literature

diaz_newspain rojas_spanishbawd
1963 Edition
A Zapotec figure from Monte Alban
1964 Edition
A detail of a Spanish manuscript

camoens_lusiads
1973 Edition
A Portuguese Caravelle rounding the Cape of Good Hope from the Atlas of Guillaume le Testu 1556.

Pirates

exquemelin_buccaneers
1969 Edition
Detail from “Battle at Sea” by Jan Peeters

Nietzche & Machiavelli

nietzsche_zarathustra machiavelli_prince
1971 Edition
Detail from an etching of Nietzche by Hans Old
1964 Edition
A bust of Machiavelli

I will be moving on to Pelicans in the next entry.

Wednesday, August 19, 2009

Black Classics – Old English, Old Norse and Mediaeval Literature

When I attended the University of Melbourne in the 1960s I enrolled in a course of Middle English. The lecturer for this course was a delightful old scholar called Professor Ian Maxwell who also ran a course in Old Icelandic and hosted a discussion group for enthusiasts of Old Norse. In the Middle English course we had to read books like The Canterbury Tales and Sir Gawain and the Green Knight in the original. Although I only studied Middle English for one year, I did develop an interest in early English literature, hence these books in my Black Classics collection. Needless to say, they have been gathering dust for many years.

sir_gawaine earliest_english_poems
1964 Edition
Detail from Medieval Illuminated Manuscript
1966 Edition
Detail of the Franks Casket
quest_holygrail monmouth_history
1969 Edition
Detail from L’Apparition du St Graal in a 15thC manuscript
1973 Edition
King Arthur – a detail from a French manuscript

Two editions of Beowulf…

beowulf beowulf_70s
1963 Edition
A prose translation by David Wright
Cover – a helmet from Sutton Hoo treasure
1973 Edition
A verse translation by Michael Alexander
Cover – detail of enlarged escutcheon on the rim of the large hanging bowl from Sutton Hoo

crusades
1963 Edition
Detail from a 14thC manuscript of the Conquest of Constantinople

lives_of_saints celtic_misc
1981 Edition
The Voyage of St Brendan, Bede’s Life of St Cuthbert & Eddius’s Life of Wilfrid
Cover – Athelstan presenting the Book to St Cuthbert from Bede
1971 Edition
Detail of an illumination from the Book of Durrow

Norse Sagas

king_harald vinland_sagas
1966 Edition
Detail from Baldishot Tapestry
1965 Edition
Axehead from the grave of a Viking chief

Medieval German Literature

nibelungenlied strassburg_tristan
1965 Edition
Detail from the Hundeshagen Codex, the only surviving Nibelung manuscript with illustrations
1965 Edition
Also contains The Tristan of Thomas
Detail of a woodcut in an early edition of Tristan

Next – the last of the Black Classics – a miscellany