Wednesday 30 March 2011

More Lawrence (and Waugh)

And speaking of sexy ladies on Lawrence covers, here's another one. It's one of the two Penguin Essentials covers I didn't have (out of the set of 20) when I first posted about them here. (Click for huge version.)



It's rather lovely, and is by Lucy McLauchlan


The other missing cover was for Brideshead Revisited, this time by Jim Tierney (see his work on Jules Verne for Vintage here). Again, click for a huge version.




As much as I like these, it does raise the question of how necessary they are. In Australia there are currently five different editions of Brideshead available and in print, all from Penguin, who also have four different editions of Lady Chatterley's Lover in print (five if you count the Graphic Classics edition from the US). Yet there other great writers, who were once part of the Penguin Classics list, who are now completely out of print in English, or at least in the Commonwealth: Sean O'Faolain, Witold Gombrowicz, Jiří Weil, most of Colette, V S Pritchett, Martin Boyd, etc etc etc etc. This seems somewhat mad.

4 comments:

Chasch said...

Hear hear! I think penguin should start a "lost classics" or "revived classics" series, instead of continually repackaging stuff they already have. Granted, they make beautiful objects and have really developed a gorgeous, noticeable brand look, but there's just so much overlap... The most recent examples is these Mini Modern Classics (http://www.penguinclassics.co.uk/static/minisites/minimodernclassics/index.html) which are absolutely lovely and have a decent price point — I won't hide the fact that I'm tempted to buy the box set — but then, so many of those stories are available in other, longer collections with introductions and notes... And isn't the fact that they always seem to be celebrating some kind of milestone or anniversary a little bit annoying?

JRSM said...

That's just it--in quick succession we had Penguin's 75th, Penguin US's 70th, Penguin Classics' 50th, and something else I can't remember. The Mini Moderns are lovely, but in the end there were only 2 (which I bought) that weren't already in books I already had from the Classics range (Hans Fallada and Margaret Drabble)--and even then the collections they're drawn from are coming out in Modern Classics later this year.

To be fair, the main Modern Classics line is always adding new stuff, and if they did more of it I'm sure I'd go bankrupt.

Martin W said...

Coming very late to the party, but I loved Tom Gauld's Lawrence covers cartoon, and this post made me wonder - when was the last time a cover for "Lady Chatterley's Lover" used a picture of, y'know, Lady Chatterley's lover, without the Lady?

A quick Google Image search wasn't edifying...

JRSM said...

Martin, that's a good point. I've found a few that do show him, but always with her, never alone, and usualy with his back to the viewer. But I did turn up some great covers. I think there's a post in them. STay tuned!