Secondhand Vintage Fiction Bargain Book Box SP4145

Secondhand Vintage Fiction Bargain Book Box SP4145

Twenty-four paperbacks, nearly all vintage Penguins and Sun Books from the 1960s and 70s: Greene’s Travels with My Aunt, Updike’s Rabbit, Run, Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men, Patrick White’s The Twyborn Affair, Henry Handel Richardson’s Maurice Guest, two J.P. Donleavys, Saul Bellow, Angus Wilson, Auberon Waugh, Household’s A Time to Kill, Wodehouse, Malraux, Theroux, and Gone with the Wind in the 1950s Macmillan edition. The shelf of a reader who bought in the orange-cover years and never threw anything out.

1. Travels with My Aunt — Graham Greene — Henry Pulling, a retired bank manager with a dahlia collection, meets his Aunt Augusta at his mother’s funeral and is swept off to Brighton, Paris, Istanbul and Paraguay with a woman who has smuggled currency, loved a war criminal, and never once been bored. Greene’s one comic novel, and the funniest thing he wrote. Penguin.
2. The Victim — Saul Bellow — Asa Leventhal is accosted on a New York street by a man he barely remembers, who says Leventhal ruined his life. The man moves in. Bellow’s second novel, 1947, and the one Philip Roth says he reads every year. Signet.
3. The Latter Days at Colditz — P.R. Reid — The second half of the Colditz story: the glider in the attic, the French tunnel, the escape attempts that failed and the one that didn’t. Reid was there and got out; this is the sequel to The Colditz Story. Coronet.
4. Twist — Jack Bickham — A killer tornado, a town in its path, and the people who see it coming. A blend of fact and fiction that will chill, says Publishers Weekly. Pan.
5. A Time to Kill — Geoffrey Household — A retired army officer in Dorset is drawn into an espionage plot and has to decide how far he’ll go. From the author of Rogue Male; Household is in a class with Ambler, le Carré and Buchan, says the cover, and that’s fair. Penguin.
6. Pigs Have Wings — P.G. Wodehouse — The Empress of Blandings, Lord Emsworth’s prize pig, is kidnapped before the Shropshire show, and Galahad Threepwood takes charge. Blandings at its finest. Orange Penguin, 4/6.
7. Man’s Estate — André Malraux — Shanghai, 1927: the Communist uprising and Chiang Kai-shek’s betrayal of it, through a terrorist, a revolutionary, a baron and a dying idealist. Won the Prix Goncourt; the best novel about revolution in French. Penguin.
8. The Consul’s File — Paul Theroux — Twenty stories told by the American consul in a Malaysian backwater, as he watches the expats go to pieces in the heat. Theroux’s Maugham book, and his best stories. Penguin.
9. The Unexpurgated Code — J.P. Donleavy — A complete manual of survival and manners: how to be rude, how to be rich, how to behave at a funeral. Donleavy’s etiquette book, and his funniest. Penguin.
10. The Destinies of Darcy Dancer, Gentleman — J.P. Donleavy — An Anglo-Irish orphan grows up in a crumbling big house with a drunken father, a hunting pack and a procession of unsuitable women. Donleavy at his most comic. Penguin.
11. West Block — Sara Dowse — The hidden world of Canberra’s mandarins: six public servants in the old West Block of Parliament House in the Whitlam years. Dowse was head of the women’s affairs section; Blanche d’Alpuget called it an advance in the evolving maturity of Australian literature. Penguin.
12. The Permit — Donald Horne — A satire of the Australian bureaucratic mind: a man needs a permit and can’t get one. From the author of The Lucky Country. Sun Books, 6/6.
13. Last Things — C.P. Snow — The eleventh and final Strangers and Brothers novel: Lewis Eliot’s heart stops on an operating table, his son is arrested at a demonstration, and the 1960s arrive. Penguin.
14. Of Mice and Men / Cannery Row — John Steinbeck — George and Lennie, and the rabbits; then Doc, Mack and the boys on the Monterey waterfront. Two short Steinbecks in one orange Penguin, 5/6.
15. The Eureka Stockade — Raffaello Carboni — The only eyewitness account of the 1854 rebellion, by an Italian digger who was there and was tried for treason afterwards. Introduction by H.V. Evatt. Currey O’Neil Australian Classics.
16. Barrington’s Women — Stephen Cade — An action-pack of a novel, says the cover: commandos, a mission, and the women who wait. Pulp from the 1970s, in the painted-cover edition.
17. The Twyborn Affair — Patrick White — Eudoxia in the south of France, Eddie in the Monaro, and Eadith running a brothel in London: one person, three lives, and White’s late masterpiece on gender and disguise. King Penguin.
18. The Spotted Deer — J.H. Williams — The author of Elephant Bill on the jungle animals of Burma. Orange Penguin, 5/6.
19. Such Darling Dodos — Angus Wilson — Twelve stories about the English middle class refusing to notice the world has changed. Wilson’s second collection, 1950, and his sharpest. Orange Penguin, 4/6.
20. Path of Dalliance — Auberon Waugh — Two undergraduates at Oxford, one idle and one ambitious, and the year that sorts them. Evelyn’s son’s second novel. Penguin.
21. Rabbit, Run — John Updike — Harry Angstrom, twenty-six, once a basketball star, walks out on his pregnant wife and drives south. The first Rabbit book, 1960, and the one that announced Updike. Orange Penguin, 6/-.
22. Attack Alarm — Hammond Innes — A gunner on an RAF airfield in the Battle of Britain uncovers a plot. Innes was there; written in 1941 between raids. Fontana.
23. Gone with the Wind — Margaret Mitchell — Scarlett, Rhett, Tara and Atlanta burning. The best seller of the century, says the cover, and it was. 1950s Macmillan St Martin’s Library edition, 7/6.
24. Maurice Guest — Henry Handel Richardson — An English music student in Leipzig falls for an Australian woman who loves someone else, and destroys himself. Richardson’s first novel, 1908, and the darkest Australian novel of its era. Sun Books, 16/6.