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. 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. The English Journeys come in a set of 20 numbered shorter books of around 100 pages each. 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. 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
Enjoy life with the Penguin and me..books, travels, photography from Tasmania 
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! 😀
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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! 😀
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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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I’ve not read Evelyn Waugh. One of those “should” books. I did read Extinctions and when you mentioned it I had to look up what it was about as I had forgotten. It didn’t stick in my mind either. I didn’t care that much for it either. Getting picky in my old age.
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