Monday, 2 January 2012

21 Penguins to Start the Year Off Properly

Let's kick of 2012 with an elegant set of Penguins, shall we? These are the resuscitation of the 'Penguin English Library' series, which will presumably run alongside the Penguin Classics, penguin Popular Classics, Penguin Red Classics, Penguin Pocket Classics and various other ranges, meaning that the one publisher releases 17,235 different versions of some books. (I kid, though only slightly--Penguin Australia has at least 7 different version of Pride and Prejudice in print, for example.)

Anyway, here are the 21 covers from the series which I have found so far, coming out from April this year. They follow the lovely designs Coralie Bickford-Smith made for the Penguin Hardback Classics (see here, for example), and I would not be surprised if they were her work as well. Redundant though the books themselves may be, they've been given a charming and thoughtful series look which allows for a lot of individual variation for each title.





















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10 comments:

  1. matthew.2 January 2012 at 19:07

    Lovely but superfluous. Hopefully Penguin will have some awesome "new" classics to add to the catalog. Maybe some more Patrick White novels back in print (I'm not just saying that because your Aussie background)

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  2. JRSM2 January 2012 at 19:51

    More White would be great (as long as they don't have covers quite as stomach-churning as this one: http://bit.ly/tm0Xy1 )

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  3. matthew.3 January 2012 at 22:13

    With Eye of the Storm coming into theatres, do you think Penguin will release a paperback? I already have an old Penguin (with lightning on the cover) but I wonder for the rest of the world

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  4. JRSM3 January 2012 at 23:32

    Sadly not--as far as I can see, the rights belong to Vintage in the UK/Commonwealth, and Picador in the US: both are offering covers with images from the movie, unfortunately.

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  5. Tulkinghorn4 January 2012 at 12:07

    Lovely, but I assume that this is a stunt -- unlike the first Penguin English Library in the 60s-70s with the iconic orange spine.

    Or am I wrong? And, of course, are these for the UK and Commonwealth only or for the US as well?

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  6. JRSM4 January 2012 at 13:31

    It certainly could be defined as a stunt, since the books themselves hardly needed another edition from a publisher who already has them all in print in other editions. But it seems a definite resurrection of the PEL--there are dozens more in the series coming during the year.

    So far they're only listing as UK/Commonwealth titles, but since they're all in the public domain I would expect them to come to the US a little later, as the Hardback Classics series did.

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  7. Anonymous7 January 2012 at 14:21

    Oh Penguin and your covers. I still love them, even with their various iterations of classics.

    Have you seen the postcard set they released? I may have gotten it as a present. =)

    http://www.amazon.com/Postcards-Penguin-Hundred-Book-Covers/dp/0141044667/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1325974875&sr=1-1

    Love.

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  8. JRSM8 January 2012 at 21:21

    Those postcards are nice! I'm looking at them with lust in my heart. If only I had some wall space not covered in books that I could display them on. Or friends to post them to.

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  9. Alan Trotter11 January 2012 at 13:55

    It's a slightly pointless comment as I've no way of showing you them, but the spines of these are lovely, by the way.

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  10. JRSM11 January 2012 at 14:41

    I look forward to seeing them. Online thumbnails never quite provide the full experience...

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