Ee
When I was in the midst of collecting as many vintage Penguin books as I could I also included collecting their older and anniversary series Boxed Sets. At one time I had 37 of the boxed sets. Ā As most of my Penguin Library went to auction a few years ago I did keep most of the Boxed sets and all of the cerise Penguins that are Travel and Adventure. They are very hard to find these days and I still really love them.
The set I am featuring today for the letter E is the English Penguin Journeys. Ā The English Journeys come in a set of 20 numbered shorter books of around 100 pages each. Ā They are excerpts from the original book that would have been published in the past.
The set was published in a box in 2009 and I noticed now there are quite a few second hand sets on eBay and Abe books for sale for reasonable prices if anyone is interested. They are nice little books to pop into a bag to read when out and about or sitting for a time in a waiting room somewhere.
I particularly love the covers on these books. Today I will share those covers and give you a list of the 20 titles. I continue to come across these books in op and second hand shops but they seem to have been separated from their set and are sold cheaply individually. Ā I imagine I will be hanging on to these for some time to come.
Here is the list:
- Voices of Akenfield by Ronald Blythe
- The Wood by John Stewart Collis
- From Dover to Wen by William Cobbett
- The Pleasures of English Food by Alan Davidson
- Through England on a Side Saddle
- Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard and other Poems
- A Shropshire Lad by A.E. Housman
- Cathedrals and Castles by Henry James
- Walks in the Wheatfields by Richard Jeffries
- The Beauties of a Cottage Garden by Gertrude Jekyll
- Country Churches by Simon Jenkins
- A Wiltshire Diary by Francis Kilvert
- Some Country Houses and Their Owners by James Lees-Milne
- The Clouded Mirror by L.T.C. Rolt
- Let Us Now Praise Famous Gardens by Vita Sackville-West
- One Green Field by Edward Thomas
- English Folk Songs by Ralph Vaughan Williams and A. L. Lloyd
- Country Lore and Legends by Jennifer Westwood and Jacqueline Simpson
- Birds of Selborne by Gilbert White
- Life at Grasmere by Dorothy and William Wordsworth
Travellin' Penguin 
What a wonderful journey, the books look great. I would like to touch them. Discover what is inside and what the story is all about.
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Those are beautiful! I have a couple of Penguin box sets and the fact that the Vita book looks familiar makes me think this must be one of them. I shall have to have a dig! š
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I think the set was fairly popular at the time but I think many of Penguin boxed sets don’t get ordered by book sellers as maybe people won’t spend the money on them. Not sure.
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Luckily I have checked and I have it! š
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What lovely little books. I’ve never seen them before.
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Penguin has published quite a few series of 10 or 20 or 50 books. It is hard to keep up with them.
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I second Bill, those covers are just lovely.
My choice for letter E is one that Bill should have thought of, ha-ha, because he and I were at the launch in Melbourne: Elizabeth Macarthur, a Life on the Edge of the World by Michelle Scott Tucker!
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I’ll be in trouble!
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i’ve got the Celia Fiennes, on a recommendation by you, i think… they are indeed charming little books
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Yes they are. I hope you’re well and still enjoying everything around you.
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Those are lovely covers. E and Penguin would take me to Evelyn Waugh of which I have quite a few. Otherwise the best I can think of Josephine Wilson’s Extinctions which I didn’t like much.
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Iāve not read Evelyn Waugh. One of those āshouldā books. I did read Extinctions and when you mentioned it I had to look up what it was about as I had forgotten. It didnāt stick in my mind either. I didnāt care that much for it either. Getting picky in my old age.
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