Penguin Modern Classics 2–English Classics 2

I first discovered the writings of Mervyn Peake when Penguin published Titus Groan and Gormenghast in the Penguin Modern Classics series in the late 1960s. It was love at first read, and I went on to collect as many of his books that were available at the time and during the 1970s. Titus Alone was published slightly later in 1970 by Penguin.

1969 edition – cover “Fuschia by Mervyn Peake	1969 edition – cover “Steerpike & Banrquentine” by Mervyn Peake

1970 edition – cover “Irma Prunesquallor” by Peake

I have earlier displayed my diversely published collection of books by John Cowper Powys, and here’s another one – Wolf Solent, the book that put him on the literary map in the late 1920s.

The Green Child is the only completed novel by literature and art critic, Herbert Read, and is a  mysterious political fantasy.

1976 edition – cover “Entrance to a Lane” by Graham Sutherland	1969 edition – cover “The Eye of Silence” by Max Ernst

Stevie Smith was a friend of George Orwell and purportedly based two of the  male characters in her Novel on Yellow Paper on different aspects of his personality.

1972 edition – cover “Self Portrait” by the author

Lytton Strachey was of course one of the Bloomsbury Set and penned a number of biographies of famous historical figures. I have two of them…

1975 edition – cover “Queen Elizabeth 1 Portrait” c1593	1975 edition – cover “Florence Nightingale” by J Barrett

 

Evelyn Waugh is represented in my library by two books, both satires – The Loved One about the funeral business, and Scoop, a satire on sensationalist journalism.

1969 edition – cover “Balcony of Manet” by Magritte	1969 edition – cover by Quentin Blake

 

I am currently reading Helen MacDonald’s wonderful memoir
H is for Hawk which recently won the Samuel Johnson Prize for non fiction. Not only is the book about the training of her Goshawk, Mabel, she also muses on the sad life of T H White and his book on the same subject. T H White is famous for his collection of Arthurian novels assembled as The Once and Future King.

1970 edition – cover is an engraving by Broderick

Finally for the English authored Penguin Modern Classics, four novels by notable Bloomsbury Group member, Virginia Woolf.

1966 edition – cover “Red Skirt” by Ceri Richards	1974 edition – cover “Gwen John” by Augustus John
1964 edition – cover “Virginia Woolf” by Vanessa Bell	1968 edition – cover “Self Portrait” by Gwen John

Coming next – French modern classics

General Fiction – Lawrence Norfolk, Robert Nye, Robert C. O’Brien, Charles Palliser, Mervyn Peake, Juan Perucho , Jayne Anne Phillips, Popol Vuh & Amanda Prantera

Lemprière's Dictionary by Lawrence Norfolk is an unusual and complicated historical novel described in Wikipedia as “starting out as a detective story and mixing historical elements with steampunk-style fiction It imagines the writing of Lemprière's dictionary as tied to the founding of the British East India Company and the Siege of La Rochelle generations before”.

Robert Nye’s imaginative and clever The Memoirs of Lord Byron is quite a wonderful confection, written in a style that one imagines would be Byron’s had his memoirs not been destroyed on his death.

Robert C. O’Brien is the author of several award winning children’s books, his best known being Mrs Frisby and the Rats of NIMH.

The Quincunx by Charles Palliser is a Dickensian mystery set in Victorian times. A best seller in its day, it is a complex sprawling monster of a book.

Look what I found lurking in the general fiction shelves – Captain Slaughterboard Drops Anchor by Mervyn Peake. This is a 1973 edition published by Academy Editions.

An unusual magic realist vampire novel - Natural History by Catalan author Juan Perucho.

Jayne Anne Phillips book of short stories Black Tickets, won her the Sue Kaufman Prize for First Fiction, awarded by the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters, and has since become a classic. This King Pengiun edition has a rather classy cover by Russell Mills.

I seem to have this edition of Popol Vuh, the sacred book of the Ancient Maya, no doubt acquired during my New Age phase in the 1970s.

And finally for this post, the novels of Amanda Prantera. The first of her books that I read was Strange Loop, an elegant and haunting gothic tale of a werewolf . The Cabalist, a spooky metaphysical thriller is her second novel and well worth the effort to seek out and read. All Prantera’s early books are interesting and unusual novels, (and I dare say her later ones too) but my favourite still is Conversations with Lord Byron on Perversion 163 years after His Lordship’s Death.

Next - “R” to “S” writers

Science Fiction 3 - Collections & John Brunner

As well as the Science Fiction Hall of Fame collections, I do have others acquired over the years. The Penguin Science Fiction Omnibus is such a one.

Next is a rarity - The Inner Landscape which I bought because it had a Mervyn Peake story, Boy in Darkness, which I had never seen before. This book was published in 1969 and the Corgi paperback edition was issued 1970.

Black Mist is a collection of Japanese influenced stories and Strangeness is another collection of various strange stories by genre & non genre writers like Shirley Jackson, Virginia Woolf & Thomas Mann. It is edited by Thomas Disch & Charles Naylor.

John Brunner's Stand on Zanzibar and The Sheep Look Up were very popular back in the 1970s though you hardly hear of them these days. He also wrote The Traveller in Black stories which were collected into one volume in 1987.

Next - Michael Bishop & Ray Bradbury

Art Books - Mervyn Peake

As I go through the shelves of my book collection and realise how many books I haven't looked at for years, I keep thinking that I was fortunate to be in the position to buy them when I did. Some are quite rare these days, so the 1970s editions - of which there are quite a few - represent to me a golden age of book publishing. Publishers in those days seemed more adventurous in what they chose to publish, hence such gems as I am about to reveal, were at the time readily available even here in Australia.

Penguin books published Mervyn Peake's Gormenghast Trilogy in their Modern Classics series in 1969. All of a sudden Mervyn Peake was a discovery and a lot of his work was subsequently made available.

As I've said before I became Peake mad after reading the Gormenghast trilogy and I acquired every book on or by him as it came to my notice. This of course included books on his art.

He was an original in both his writing and his artwork. Below is one of his illustrations for Treasure Island. It is stunning and highly individual in style. It is unquestionably Mervyn Peake.

The drawing was scanned from the book The Drawings of Mervyn Peake, a handsome large format hard cover, published in 1974 by Davis-Poynter.

I have two other large format books on Peake's art and writing as below.

Writings & Drawings is a large paperback published in 1974 by St Martins Press and is a collection of various writings and lavishly illustrated with photos and drawings.

Rhymes Without Reason, also published in 1974 by Methuen, has board covers and is a collection of nonsense poems written for children.

Mervyn Peake

Revelation number one...

Mervyn Peake is one of my all time favourite writers. I discovered him in 1969 when Penguin Books published the Gormenghast Trilogy in paperback. After that I became Peake crazy and purchased anything Peake related that came my way. As well the books below, I have some of his art books which I'll get around to later.

A Book of Nonsense	Mr Pye	A World Away

Above are three hard cover books by or about Mervyn Peake. I acquired them in the early 1970s. The Book of Nonsense has wonderful illustrations as well as verses and Mr Pye is illustrated as well. A World Away is a memoir of Mervyn Peake written by his wife Maeve Gilmore

Here's a poem from The Book of Nonsense - Squat Ursula

Below is the Gormenghast Trilogy in hard cover. I bought these at Mary Martin Bookshop in1981. They are not, of course, first editions, but are lovely just the same. They have many illustrations with rare plates of various characters.

These books are only some on the small bookshelf.

More coming soon...