Penguin Classics

by Russell Edwards (Editor), Steve Hare (Editor), Jim Robinson (Editor)

As Russell Edwards explains in his ‘Introduction’ Penguin Classics ‘are among the most remarkable of Allen Lane's many remarkable achievements’. Lane's doggedness combined with the ‘energy and scholarship’ of E V Rieu have together created this distinguished series.

In addition to the ‘Introduction’ the contents include:
‘Founding Father: E V Rieu’ by Bryan Platt
‘Nursing Mother: Betty Radice’ bu Bryan Platt
‘Classic Design’ by Bryan Platt and others
‘Classics Checklist’
‘The Faith of a Translator’ by E V Rieu
‘On Some Dead Penguins’ by Andrew Dalby
‘Circular Letters’ by Steve Hare
‘The Art of Translation’ by Andrew Dalby
‘The Penguin Classics’ Blurb
‘Envoi: Folly Speaks’ by Betty Radice

144 pages, Paperback

Published January 1, 2008

Reviews

[John Isles · Rating 5 out of 5]

Issued by the Penguin Collectors Club, which is completely independent from the publishers of Penguin Books, this volume (which is a paperback, not hardcover as listed by Goodreads) contains essays on aspects of the early history of Penguin Classics, and a checklist of the books that were issued in the series down to about the year 1970. The dust jacket resembles the design used for a 1965 reprint of E.V. Rieu's translation of Homer's Odyssey (the first Penguin Classic), showing a bronze relief of Odysseus in the Department of Antiquities, Berlin; remove the jacket and you will find within an even older piece of nostalgia, a cover in the style of Penguin Classics of the 1950s translated from Greek, with a brown border and a central roundel displaying four singing penguins. Great fun for those with memories long enough to recall those bygone days or with an interest in seeking the books in used-bookstores, but there's not much information here about what happened in the series during the last half-century. For that see "The Penguin Classics Book" by Henry Eliot.