Secondhand Penguin Classics Bargain Book Box SP2961

Secondhand Penguin Classics Bargain Book Box SP2961

Twenty-one vintage Penguins: three orange-band 1950s editions (Orlando, Brave New World, The Boy Friend), Wyndham’s The Kraken Wakes, both Wells, Laurie Lee, Colette, Woolf, Ibsen, Trollope’s autobiography, Wilkie Collins and late Kingsley Amis. The look of a 1960s shelf, in one box.

1. The Boy in the Bush — D.H. Lawrence — Lawrence’s Western Australian novel, written with Mollie Skinner: a young Englishman goes feral in the bush. TV tie-in Penguin.
2. A Haunted House — Virginia Woolf — Her short stories, including Kew Gardens and The Mark on the Wall. Penguin with the Atkinson Grimshaw cover.
3. Orlando — Virginia Woolf — A nobleman lives four centuries and changes sex halfway. Woolf’s love letter to Vita Sackville-West. Orange-band Penguin.
4. The Kraken Wakes — John Wyndham — Something lands in the deep ocean and the sea begins to rise. Wyndham’s quietest apocalypse. Orange-band Penguin, 2/6.
5. Cider with Rosie — Laurie Lee — A Cotswold childhood just before the motor car reached the valley. The chapter with Rosie under the hay wagon is famous.
6. The Time Machine — H.G. Wells — Eloi, Morlocks and the beach at the end of the world. Pan edition.
7. The War of the Worlds — H.G. Wells — The Martians land at Woking and nothing stops them but a cold. Pan.
8. The Metaphysical Poets — ed. Helen Gardner — Donne, Herbert, Marvell, Vaughan. The anthology that put them back on the syllabus. Penguin Classics.
9. Lady Susan / The Watsons / Sanditon — Jane Austen — The epistolary novella about a predatory widow, and two unfinished novels. Lady Susan is Austen at her nastiest and most fun. Penguin Classics.
10. Chéri and The Last of Chéri — Colette — A courtesan of forty-nine and her lover of twenty-five, and what the war does to him. Orange-band Penguin.
11. Brave New World — Aldous Huxley — Soma, the Bokanovsky Process and the Savage. Orange-band Penguin, 4/-.
12. Roxana — Daniel Defoe — A courtesan’s rise through the courts of Europe and the daughter who tracks her down. Defoe’s last and darkest novel. Penguin English Library.
13. Peer Gynt — Henrik Ibsen — Trolls, the Boyg and the button-moulder. Ibsen’s verse epic. Penguin Classics.
14. An Autobiography — Anthony Trollope — He wrote 250 words every quarter-hour before breakfast and said so, and his reputation took forty years to recover. The most honest writer’s memoir there is. World’s Classics.
15. The Woman in White — Wilkie Collins — Count Fosco, the asylum and the woman on the Hampstead road at midnight. The first sensation novel. Penguin English Library.
16. The Human Factor — Graham Greene — A mole in MI6 who did it for love, not money. Greene’s last great spy novel. Penguin.
17. The Boy Friend — Sandy Wilson — The book and the songs from the 1920s pastiche musical. Orange Penguin, 2/6.
18. Blind Love and Other Stories — V.S. Pritchett — The master of the English short story at his peak. Penguin.
19. Les Liaisons Dangereuses — Choderlos de Laclos — Valmont, Merteuil and the seductions conducted by letter. Penguin Classics.
20. Jake’s Thing — Kingsley Amis — Jake Richardson, sixty, has lost interest in sex and is sent to a therapist. Booker shortlist and Amis at his most offensive. Penguin.
21. Sleep It Off Lady — Jean Rhys — Her last stories, written in old age in Devon. Penguin.