A beautifully produced gift book that is a joy for book lovers who have grown up with Penguins as one of their literary foundations.
This was a present to myself this Christmas, and makes for nostalgic Proustian reveries about the enjoyment of past reading, as well as minor surprises, such as that:
• The edition of Ulysses that I read was the first “B” format PMC, which is now the standard size for paperbacks
• The Bloody Chamber by Angela Carter, which I first read in a King Penguin edition, is not published as a PMC, probably due to copyright (similar for Milan Kundera’s books, which I first read as King Penguin)
• Even more surprisingly, Olivia Manning’s The Levant Trilogy is published as a PMC, but the preceding The Balkan Trilogy isn’t, again probably due to copyright
• The surprising number of books that I read which have now been published in a PMC edition, some of which I was surprised had not been PMC editions when I read them, such as Sartre’s Road to Freedom trilogy
The book also makes me realise the provincialism of my reading, with many of the British authors read, a smattering of Europeans, (with only multiple books read by de Beauvoir, Mann, Kafka, Calvino), no Asian titles, in Africa only Alan Paton, no Australasia other than Katherine Mansfield.
When I reached the Americas, I found that I had read many titles now published as Penguin Modern Classics, but I had not necessarily read the Penguin edition.
Looking at my bookshelves now, I see a good number of Penguin Modern Classics, including books seminal to broadening my literary taste, de Beauvoir, Kafka, Steinbeck, Capote, McCullers and Borges.
A lovely “coffee table”book for older book lovers. ( )