Secondhand Literature & Reference Bargain Book Box SP4192

Secondhand Literature & Reference Bargain Book Box SP4192

Fowler’s, the Oxford Companion to Classical Literature, Keats’s letters, Leavis’s The Great Tradition and two Penguin verse anthologies, with Australian literary criticism, Miles Franklin’s Childhood at Brindabella and two volumes of the Writers on Writers series. Twenty books for the literary reader’s reference shelf.

1. Mainly Modern — ed. John & Dorothy Colmer — An anthology of twentieth-century verse chosen for Australian schools, with a striking Jacaranda cover.
2. The Writer in the Modern World: 20th Century Prose — ed. H.P. Heseltine & S. Tick — Forster, Orwell, White, Thurber, Faulkner and more in one teaching anthology.
3. Sir William Gell in Italy: Letters to the Society of Dilettanti 1831–1835 — ed. Edith Clay — The antiquarian’s letters from Naples and Rome. Hamish Hamilton hardback.
4. Fowler’s Modern English Usage, Second Edition — H.W. Fowler, revised Sir Ernest Gowers — The 1965 Gowers revision, which most writers still prefer to the later editions. Hardback.
5. Four Unposted Letters to Catherine — Laura Riding — Riding’s 1930 letters to an eight-year-old on how to live, reissued. Slim, odd, wise.
6. The Oxford Companion to Classical Literature — Paul Harvey — Every author, work and myth of Greece and Rome in one volume. The original Harvey edition.
7. Letters of John Keats — ed. Robert Gittings — The letters are as good as the poems: negative capability, the vale of soul-making, the last letter to Brown. Oxford Letters & Memoirs.
8. Writers on Writers: Ceridwen Dovey on J.M. Coetzee — Ceridwen Dovey — A short, personal essay on reading Coetzee. Black Inc. hardback.
9. Writers on Writers: Nam Le on David Malouf — Nam Le — The Boat author on Malouf, identity and what it means to be an Australian writer. Black Inc. hardback.
10. The Penguin Dictionary of Quotations — J.M. & M.J. Cohen — The classic Penguin Reference edition.
11. Mozart’s Letters — ed. Eric Blom — Mozart writing to his father, his cousin and his wife, filthy and brilliant by turns. Pelican.
12. The Great Tradition — F.R. Leavis — Austen, Eliot, James, Conrad: the book that decided what English novels were worth reading, and started every argument since. Pelican.
13. Pirandello: Short Stories — Luigi Pirandello, trans. Frederick May — The Sicilian stories behind the plays. Quartet edition with a new introduction.
14. Childhood at Brindabella — Miles Franklin — Franklin’s memoir of her first ten years on a station in the Brindabella Ranges. Published after her death, and lovely.
15. The Literature of Australia — ed. Geoffrey Dutton — The 1964 Pelican survey of Australian writing, still a landmark.
16. The Penguin Book of Modern Australian Verse — ed. John Thompson, Kenneth Slessor & R.G. Howarth — The 1958 anthology that put Australian poetry in a Penguin.
17. The Penguin Book of English Verse — ed. John Hayward — Chaucer to Dylan Thomas in one paperback.