Wednesday, 19 November 2014

Penguin Australian Classics

As my country stumbles dickheadedly into the shitbin, a population of bigots and morons led by a government of mendacious and vindictive arseholes, it's nice to have one small positive to note: the design of the Penguin Australian Classics series. This (supposedly ongoing) series of smallish hardbacks have their cover designs printed directly onto the boards.

Designed by Adam Laszczuk, with illustration by Josh Durham, they make use of fields of flat (yet lightly weathered or textured) colour and sharp-edged illustrative elements. Click on each image for much, much bigger versions.













Note that all of these books were already in print from Penguin Australia, some as Penguin Modern Classics: I hope future entries in the series will rescue out-of-print titles from oblivion, as does the sterling Text Classics series.
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7 comments:

  1. Brian Busby20 November 2014 at 11:35

    A country stumbling into the shitbin under the leadership of a government of mendacious and vindictive arseholes?

    Could be worse.

    We in Canada have experienced the very same thing - without the consolation of a Penguin Canadian Classics.

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  2. JRSM20 November 2014 at 13:21

    Did your news cover our PM's mutual admiration society meet-up with Harper earlier this year. It was quite a sickening spectacle. Our Treasurer apparently delights in the ice hockey jersey he was given as a celebration of their mutual climate change denial international obstructionism.

    The Canadian wing of Penguin Modern Classics does seem to have died off, doesn't it, after a last flurry of Munros a couple of years ago. Their Australian equivalent did the same thing. A shame.

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  3. Emma21 November 2014 at 18:11

    Hi! I'm a big fan of yours, and I quoted this post on my Tumblr (with attribution, of course) (http://wasthursday.tumblr.com/post/103246132828). If you hate that, I'll take it down immediately. Of course!

    Beautiful books, also.

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  4. JRSM22 November 2014 at 00:51

    Emma, thank you, and please quote away!

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  5. Touch-and-go Bullethead23 November 2014 at 04:31

    The cover for THE GETTING OF WISDOM seems to be based on the poster for the film version (though that lacked the rain).

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  6. Anonymous7 December 2014 at 07:34

    The thing I love about your website, which is also the thing I hate about your website, is how often you get me thinking how great it would be to collect this series just for the covers.

    This would be a great series to own. What I really need is one of the bookcases where the books stand facing cover out like the library has. Then I could see all my great covers.

    Sorry to hear about Australia. I think two years from know we'll be back on that same path here in the U.S. once again.

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  7. JRSM7 December 2014 at 16:26

    Thanks, James. That's a great idea, though I suspect the sheer mass of books in this house would result in the books quickly being turned spine-out again in order to fit them all into the shelves.

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