Travellin' Penguin

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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:

1. Voices of Akenfield by Ronald Blythe
2. The Wood by John Stewart Collis
3. From Dover to Wen by William Cobbett
4. The Pleasures of English Food by Alan Davidson
5. Through England on a Side Saddle
6. Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard and other Poems
7. A Shropshire Lad by A.E. Housman
8. Cathedrals and Castles by Henry James
9. Walks in the Wheatfields by Richard Jeffries
10. The Beauties of a Cottage Garden by Gertrude Jekyll

11. Country Churches by Simon Jenkins
12. A Wiltshire Diary by Francis Kilvert
13. Some Country Houses and Their Owners by James Lees-Milne
14. The Clouded Mirror by L.T.C. Rolt
15. Let Us Now Praise Famous Gardens by Vita Sackville-West
16. One Green Field by Edward Thomas
17. English Folk Songs by Ralph Vaughan Williams and A. L. Lloyd
18. Country Lore and Legends by Jennifer Westwood and Jacqueline Simpson
19. Birds of Selborne by Gilbert White
20. Life at Grasmere by Dorothy and William Wordsworth

Hobart is presenting us with another drizzly, cloudy day but the rain on the color bond roof sounded nice during the night. One of the things I have noticed during these days of self isolation is the amount of people I’ve never seen walking past our house. People of all ages with dogs, without dogs, waving at Ollie and I in the yard. Who ARE these people? Evidently neighbours within our community who work during the day and are now at home. The foot traffic is quite remarkable while there is a definite decrease in the car traffic.  These times are presenting all kinds of changes now.

But…. on with the books.

Dd

*1.  The first book I am going to share from my shelf is one I found in a sad little Op shop that I couldn’t leave behind. I have quite a collection of dog books published from the late 1800s to no later than 1955. I collect them not so much for the stories but for the illustrations. Cecil Aldin is my favourite but I have also loved and owned several Albert Payson Terhune (Lad series) whose books I grew up with. Real Tales of Real Dogs comes to mind and I still have my mother’s childhood copy.

The book is Australian and called The Day of the Dingo (1955 published by Thomas Nelson  & Sons who published many children’s books) by John Kiddell.  I can find little information about Mr Kiddell anywhere. I am hoping that some older Australian born readers might shed some light on him for me. He has several books for sale on Abe books and though he seemed to cater for a young readers market the illustrations by Neave Parker drew my attention to this one. I am assuming Neave Parker is British but can’t swear to it. He spent most of his life working at the Natural History Museum in London reconstructing dinosaurs. Most of his art work is in that field as well but he did draw illustrations of other animals for books. He lived from 1910 to 1951.  Again there are art auctions online who represent his work but little biographical information about him. I will simply share the illustrations from this book and you can decide for yourself. I may spend more time doing online research to see if I can find out more about these two people.

Magpies

Willy Wagtail

**2. Next on the list is: Drawn From Memory by Ernest H. Shephard (Penguin books 1957, reprinted 1975). Ernest Howard Shepherd was born in 1879 in London. He was educated at St Paul’s School; and studied art at the Heatherleys and Royal Academy Schools. He had his first picture exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1901, and began drawing for Punch in 1907. During the war he served in the Royal Artillery and after the war he began illustrating books – especially children’s books. Among his more famous illustrations are those for Winnie the Pooh and Wind in the Willows. He was awarded the O.B.E. in 1972.

The book represents his childhood memories during the 1880s. In words and drawings he uncannily recalls a horse-drawn London where a penny was wealth and the fire at Whiteley’s the event of the year. A kindlier, less austere view of Victorian England emerges from these recollections of the Jubilee, of bathing at Eastbourne and hop picking in Kent, of the Drury Lane Pantomime and aunts and illnesses, of hansom cabs and pea soup fogs. It was a world where the spirit of Charles Dickens walked. He died March, 1976 in London. (Penguin)

***3.  After talking about a couple of books of interest to children I am going to walk down a different path here with one of my all time favourite books. I only need to say two words. George Orwell. No, not 1984 as that while his most famous book, is probably the least favourite book of his as I am not a big dystopian fan though I do appreciate the meaning behind it and how relevant his writing remains.

My favourite books of his are his memoir/auto-biographical books. Burmese Days, Homage to Catalonia, The Road to Wigan Pier and this one, my favourite, Down and Out in Paris and London. I’ve read Animal Farm a couple of times and seen the play years ago but it broke my heart and I can’t read it again.

Orwell was born as Eric Arthur Blair in June 1903 in Motihari, India. He died in January 1950 at the too young age of 46 in London of tuberculosis.  He was such a prolific novelist, essayist, journalist and critic.  I can’t help but think of how much more he would have blessed us with had he not died so young.

Today has started off as one of those chilly, cloudy days. Our Japanese maple tree has turned a very bright red and is beautiful.  The leaves have started to fall and drift to the ground much to Ollie’s delight and soon enough will be bare. Then I will be able to see the small memorial bells hanging from its branches designating the lives of our past pets. I often hear their gentle tinkling when outside with Ollie and it makes me think of happy times with our previous generations of animals we loved.

Today I am featuring three quite different books from my shelf beginning with the letter C.  Off we go…

Cc

*1.  The Chosen (1966)  by Chaim Potok (17.2.1929 – 23.7.2002). I read this book and its two sequels The Promise and My Name is Asher Lev back in the 1970s and have never forgotten them. Growing up a Hasidic Jewish boy to man in New York City I loved this trilogy.

Chaim Potok was an American author and rabbi. His first book The Chosen, was listed on The New York Times’ best seller list for 39 weeks and sold more than 3,400,000 copies. Potok received a rigorous religious and secular education at Yeshiva University, a school very similar to the fictional Hirsch Seminary and College in The Chosen. … As an author, he is best known for exploring the interplay between religious Judaism and the broader secular world, a fundamental tension in his own life. (Wikipedia)

The book itself is about two Jewish boys who become friends. Danny comes from the strict Hasidic sect that keeps him bound in centuries of orthodoxy. Reuben is brought up by a father patiently aware of the 20th century. As six million Jews go to their deaths in Europe and the state of Israel first draws breath, their friendship is battered by conflicting loyalties and beliefs. This is a book I will always keep on my shelf as I enjoyed it so much.

**2.  Cane by Jean Toomer (Lived 6.12.1894 to 30.3.1967 – A Penguin Classic Originally published 1923, reprinted 2019).  Jean Toomer’s Cane is a masterpiece in American modernist literature because of its distinctive structure and style, and one of the most significant works identified with the Harlem Renaissance. It is a story told through a series of vignettes. It uses poetry, prose and play like dialogue to create a window into the varied lives of African Americans living in the rural South and urban North during a time when Jim Crow laws pervaded and racism reigned. Flouting the stereotypes associated with African Americans during the period, Toomer’s novel portrayed its characters in an accurate and entirely human way breaking the mould and laying the groundwork for how they are represented in literature. (Penguin)

***3. Now going from New York and Washington DC to Sydney I came across this book somewhere or other. Its title appealed to me as I have had a couple of interesting experiences in taxis when I was working on the National Speech & Hearing Association Council in Melbourne. This book is a compilation of various experiences written by the late Sydney Morning Herald columnist James McClelland. James McClelland was born in Melbourne in 1915 and studied at both Melbourne and Sydney Universities. He survived a brief political career as a minister in the Whitlam government to become the first chief judge of the Land and Environment Court of NSW in 1980 and 1984. He described himself as a ‘child of the Great Depression and a fugitive from religion and Marxism…a former lawyer without illusions about lawyers; a former judge without illusions about the judiciary and a present journalist without illusions about the media.”  He was writing for the Sydney Morning Herald as a columnist at the time of this writing before his death in January 1999.

He described this book as “A collection of my weekly columns in the Herald that contains only a couple of pieces that deal with conversations with cabbies. Nevertheless the title is justified by the contributions that these purveyors of truth, falsehood and scuttlebutt have made over the years to my nodding acquaintance with what is going on in the world.

The title of the book may be regarded as a metaphor for keeping one’s feet on the ground.”

I found this to be an interesting read as I read it in my earlier days of life in Australia.  I have not revisited it and have no idea if it still holds up to this interest.

There we have it. Now to fill in the rest of the day with something interesting during these days of self isolation.  I can hear Mr. Penguin saying “Ollie, NO!” so it may be time to get him out for a walk. Ollie, Not Mr. Penguin.