Talk:Penguin 60s

Latest comment: 6 years ago by Hoary in topic Proposal to rename

Untitled edit

The name of the series is Penguin 60s Classics, as it says on the boxes of the items listed. Cosprings (talk) 18:23, 19 December 2010 (UTC)Reply

See sections below. -- Hoary (talk) 23:04, 3 October 2017 (UTC)Reply

"Classics"? edit

I have a handful of these books. Each orange-spined one says on the front:

penguin 60s

and on the back:

penguin 60s are published on the occasion of Penguin's 60th anniversary

without any mention anywhere of "Classics"; and each black-spined one says on both the front and the back:

PENGUIN 60s CLASSICS

If the boxes of those with non-black spines said "Classics", then I think this is anomalous. -- Hoary (talk) 07:13, 26 June 2017 (UTC)Reply

Moved. -- Hoary (talk) 23:04, 3 October 2017 (UTC)Reply

Imitation/flattery edit

In (or around) 1996, Orion Books brought out a set of Phoenix paperbacks of the same format as the Penguins: gold spines, 60p each. Each is written by a woman.

Each that I possess was published in 1996, and one has a list of 25 "Other books in this series". The series doesn't seem to have a title, and the list includes the book within which the list appears; perhaps there were just 25 such books. -- Hoary (talk) 07:13, 26 June 2017 (UTC)Reply

Noteworthiness? edit

I'm having trouble coming up with a justification for this "article" (list). It doesn't cite any independent sources. Do we have reason to believe that anyone has cared, cares, might care or should care about this series? -- Hoary (talk) 23:18, 26 September 2017 (UTC)Reply

Proposal to rename edit

The majority of the books announce themselves as "penguin 60s" (see above). (That the "p" is lowercase is surely just a design quirk that we can safely ignore, just as we'd ignore the choice of typeface.) And "Penguin 60s" is how they've been referred to. Five mentions in the Guardian/Observer (each with my emboldening):

  • Steven Poole, "Small, imperfectly formed": "the PR success of the Penguin 60s (pocket-sized selections from the works of canonical writers from Montaigne to Saki)"
  • Ian Sansom, "Brief encounters": "For the price of a tortilla wrap and a decaf cappuccino you could purchase a Canongate Pocket Canon, one of the Penguin 60s' or a little bit of the LRB , courtesy of Profile Books, and keep it in your lunchbox."
  • Peter Mayer, "Peter Carson obituary": "...I proposed we publish pocket-sized Penguin 60s at 60p each to celebrate Penguin's 60th anniversary in 1995..."
  • Joel Rickett, "The bookseller": "The project echoes the Penguin 60s, the miniature series of the mid-1990s."
  • Will Self, "Modernism and me": "(Vindication came in the form of upwards of 100,000 sales in the Penguin 60s edition.)"

I propose to rename the article "Penguin 60s". Comments from Cosprings, or anyone? -- Hoary (talk) 23:20, 29 September 2017 (UTC)Reply

Moved. -- Hoary (talk) 23:04, 3 October 2017 (UTC)Reply