‍What do I do when I am not Orienteering? Â
Geoff Powell In the brief moments that orienteering is not the main reason to get up in the morning I spend my time collecting vintage Penguin paperbacks. I have always enjoyed the idea of collecting (8000m mountain base camps/photos, New Guinea tribal masks) and have over the last couple of years I have taken to collecting old Penguin paperbacks. Â
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‍ Penguin began in 1935 and was one of the earliest publishers of paperbacks (A Germany publisher, Albatross, began in 1933 but didn’t survive the war). Â
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‍Collecting Penguin books is not common in Australia however in Britain it has some popularity. In Britain there is a Penguin Collectors Society (conferences, publications) and dedicated vintage Penguin book sellers. The Penguin Collectors Society is mainly balding retired men who never took up golf or trainspotting. Â
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‍ I collect by visiting secondhand bookshops and charity shops. The shops away from the major cities tend to have more Penguins and less Fifty Shades of Grey. Trips to orienteering events around the country now have added interest to me. At last years Nationals in Armidale there was a wonderful secondhand bookshop in nearby Urala which had several hundred vintage Penguins (that’s a big find) and a wonderfully grumpy owner. Second hand bookshop owners seem to see the TV show “Black Books” as an instructional documentary rather than a comedy. Â
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‍Penguin initial began publishing their Main Series. This is a numbered series that began in 1935 and finished in 1970. From 1935 these books were a publishing phenomenon. They were sold in kiosks, supermarkets and drug stores for the price of a packet of cigarettes. Prior to this, the vast majority of books were expensive hardbacks sold in stuffy serious bookshops. Â
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‍There are just over 3000 books in this series. Collecting all 3000 in first printings is the holy grail of Penguin collecting. For the few people who have achieved this it has taken several decades or more to complete. Most of this series are relatively cheap however the crime books tend to be more expensive. Â
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‍There are some very rare titles. The war years saw paper and glue restriction in Britain. Penguin was allowed to keep publishing as they were producing war related books and publishing books for prisoners of war (including books on how to escape from POW camps!). The rare war Penguins (small print runs, pulp paper, stapled spines) can sell for over 500 pounds each and are too fragile to read. (While I remember just a reminder to my family that my birthday is fast approaching). Â
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‍ There are also some very rare Australian published Penguins from the Main Series during the war years. Some of these books have no known copies or even photos. Â
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‍ Apart from the Main Series, Penguin also published Penguin Classics from 1945. They are still published. They are those serious looking black paperbacks that people buy but seldom read and keep on the bookshelf hoping visitors might note their interest in Dostoevsky. There are over 3000 of these Classics to collect. To understand the cultural impact of Penguin Classics, consider the first one printed Homer’s Odyssey. Prior to 1945, the Odyssey, with various publishers, sold about 3000 copies per year mainly to people studying classics at university. Penguin Classic’s Odyssey first published in 1945 was the highest selling Penguin for more than a decade and sold more than 3 million copies. Â
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‍Penguin also in the early days published a series called Penguin Specials which were extended essays on the state of the world. Later they published Penguin Handbooks which told you how to live your life and are as condescending as they sound. “The Penguin Guide To Preserving” makes you wonder how they all didn’t die of botulism. Â
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‍ Researching the history of the books and then finding the books can be quite exciting. Â
I found the first ever Penguin (No. 1 Main Series “Ariel” by Andre Maurois, 1935, first printing with dust jacket) in a small shop in Ulverstone. The owner had bought it in England. It’s a biography of Percy Shelley for those who were thinking Disney Princess. Â
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‍ On a recent trip to Ballarat with my parents, my mother (86yo) found a first printing of No. 4 (Madame Clare by Susan Ertz) in the Main Series (90yo) with its dust jacket (yes, paperbacks with dust jackets was a big thing). Â
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‍So I will continue on with my planned decades long completist attempt to get the Main Series 3000. I will continue to “um and ah” when people ask me if I read them all. The quiet answer is “no” as some of them are pretty dire books that haven’t aged well by modern cultural standards (tsk tsk Agatha C) and others are just too fragile. Â
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