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Penguin Essentials
''Penguin Essentials'' (also called ''Essential Penguins'') refers to two series of books published by Penguin Books in the UK. The first series began in 1998, and the second in 2011. For both series, the classic books were released in smaller A-format size; the covers were redesigned by contemporary artists to appeal to a new generation of readers. Many titles appeared in both series. 2011 series See also * ''Penguin Red Classics'' * '' Pocket Penguins'' * ''Great Books of the 20th Century'' * '' Ten of the Best'' * ''Penguin European Writers ''Penguin European Writers'' is a series of books published by Penguin Books in the UK. The series began in 2018, and contains forgotten classics by European writers with introductions by acclaimed contemporary authors. Books See also * ...'' * '' Green Ideas'' References External links Official web site* {{webarchive , url=https://web.archive.org/web/20131214095628/http://www.penguinessentials.co.uk/ , date=14 December ...
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Penguin Books
Penguin Books is a British publishing, publishing house. It was co-founded in 1935 by Allen Lane with his brothers Richard and John, as a line of the publishers The Bodley Head, only becoming a separate company the following year."About Penguin – company history"
, Penguin Books.
Penguin revolutionised publishing in the 1930s through its inexpensive paperbacks, sold through Woolworths Group (United Kingdom), Woolworths and other stores for Sixpence (British coin), sixpence, bringing high-quality fiction and non-fiction to the mass market. Its success showed that large audiences existed for serious books. It also affected modern British popular culture significantly through its books concerning politics, the arts, and science. Penguin Books is now an imprint (trade name), imprint of the ...
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Cat's Cradle
Cat's cradle is a game involving the creation of various string figures between the fingers, either individually or by passing a loop of string back and forth between two or more players. The true origin of the name is debated, though the first known reference is in ''The light of nature pursued'' by Abraham Tucker in 1768. The type of string, the specific figures, their order, and the names of the figures vary. Independent versions of this game have been found in indigenous cultures throughout the world, including in Africa, Eastern Asia, the Pacific Islands, Australia, the Americas, and the Arctic. Play The simplest version of the game involves a player using a long string loop to make a complex figure using their fingers and hands. Another version of the game consists of two or more players making a sequence of string figures, each altering the figure made by the previous player. The game begins with one player making the eponymous figure ''Cat's Cradle'' (above). ...
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The Diary Of A Nobody
''The Diary of a Nobody'' is an English comic novel written by the brothers George and Weedon Grossmith, with illustrations by the latter. It originated as an intermittent serial in ''Punch'' magazine in 1888–89 and first appeared in book form, with extended text and added illustrations, in 1892. The ''Diary'' records the daily events in the lives of a London clerk, Charles Pooter, his wife Carrie, his son William Lupin, and numerous friends and acquaintances over a period of 15 months. Before their collaboration on the ''Diary'', the brothers each pursued successful careers on the stage. George originated nine of the principal comedian roles in the Gilbert and Sullivan operas over 12 years from 1877 to 1889. He also established a national reputation as a piano sketch entertainer and wrote a large number of songs and comic pieces. Before embarking on his stage career, Weedon had worked as an artist and illustrator. The ''Diary'' was the brothers' only mature collaboration. Mo ...
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Dubliners
''Dubliners'' is a collection of fifteen short stories by James Joyce, first published in 1914. It presents a naturalistic depiction of Irish middle class life in and around Dublin in the early years of the 20th century. The stories were written when Irish nationalism was at its peak, and a search for a national identity and purpose was raging; at a crossroads of history and culture, Ireland was jolted by various converging ideas and influences. They centre on Joyce's idea of an epiphany (a moment where a character experiences a life-changing self-understanding or illumination) and the theme of paralysis (Joyce felt Irish nationalism stagnated cultural progression, placing Dublin at the heart of a regressive movement). The first three stories in the collection are narrated by child protagonists, while the subsequent stories are written in the third person and deal with the lives and concerns of progressively older people, in line with Joyce's division of the collection into ch ...
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Lucky Jim
''Lucky Jim'' is a novel by Kingsley Amis, first published in 1954 by Victor Gollancz. It was Amis's first novel and won the 1955 Somerset Maugham Award for fiction. The novel follows the exploits of the eponymous James (Jim) Dixon, a reluctant lecturer at an unnamed provincial English university. Amis arrived at Dixon's surname from 12 Dixon Drive, Leicester, the address of Philip Larkin from 1948 to 1950, while he was a librarian at the university there. ''Lucky Jim'' is dedicated to Larkin, who helped to inspire the main character and contributed significantly to the structure of the novel. ''Time'' magazine included ''Lucky Jim'' in its ''TIME 100 Best English-language Novels from 1923 to 2005''. Plot Jim Dixon is a lecturer in medieval history at a red brick university in the English Midlands. He has made an unsure start and, towards the end of the academic year, is concerned about losing his probationary position in the department. In his attempt to be awarded a permane ...
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In Cold Blood
''In Cold Blood'' is a non-fiction novel by American author Truman Capote, first published in 1966. It details the 1959 murders of four members of the Clutter family in the small farming community of Holcomb, Kansas. Capote learned of the quadruple murder before the killers were captured, and he traveled to Kansas to write about the crime. He was accompanied by his childhood friend and fellow author Harper Lee, and they interviewed residents and investigators assigned to the case and took thousands of pages of notes. Killers Richard Hickock and Perry Smith were arrested six weeks after the murders and later executed by the state of Kansas. Capote ultimately spent six years working on the book. ''In Cold Blood'' was an instant success and is the second-best-selling true crime book in history, behind Vincent Bugliosi's ''Helter Skelter'' (1974) about the Charles Manson murders. Some critics consider Capote's work the original non-fiction novel, although other writers had alr ...
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Three Men In A Boat
''Three Men in a Boat (To Say Nothing of the Dog)'',The Penguin edition punctuates the title differently: ''Three Men in a Boat: To Say Nothing of the Dog!'' published in 1889, is a humorous account by English writer Jerome K. Jerome of a two-week boating holiday on the Thames from Kingston upon Thames to Oxford and back to Kingston. The book was initially intended to be a serious travel guide,Jeremy Lewis' introduction to the Penguin edition. with accounts of local history along the route, but the humorous elements took over to the point where the serious and somewhat sentimental passages seem a distraction to the comic novel. One of the most praised things about ''Three Men in a Boat'' is how undated it appears to modern readers – the jokes have been praised as fresh and witty. The three men are based on Jerome himself (the narrator Jerome K. Jerome) and two real-life friends, George Wingrave (who would become a senior manager at Barclays Bank) and Carl Hentschel (the fou ...
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The Periodic Table (short Story Collection)
''The Periodic Table'' ( it, Il sistema periodico) is a 1975 short story collection by Primo Levi, named after the periodic table in chemistry. In 2006, the Royal Institution of Great Britain named it the best science book ever. Content The stories are autobiographical episodes based on the author's experiences as a Jewish-Italian doctoral-level chemist under the Fascist regime in Italy and afterwards. They include various themes that follow a chronological sequence: his ancestry, his study of chemistry and practising the profession in wartime Italy, a pair of imaginative tales he wrote at that time, and his subsequent experiences as an anti-Fascist partisan, his arrest and imprisonment, interrogation, and internment in the Fossoli di Carpi and Auschwitz camps, and postwar life as an industrial chemist. Each of the twenty-one stories in the book bears the name of a chemical element as its title and has a connection to the element in some way. Chapters #"Argon" – The aut ...
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Heart Of Darkness
''Heart of Darkness'' (1899) is a novella by Polish-English novelist Joseph Conrad in which the sailor Charles Marlow tells his listeners the story of his assignment as steamer captain for a Belgian company in the African interior. The novel is widely regarded as a critique of European colonial rule in Africa, whilst also examining the themes of power dynamics and morality. Although Conrad does not name the river on which most of the narrative takes place, at the time of writing the Congo Free State, the location of the large and economically important Congo River, was a private colony of Belgium's King Leopold II. Marlow is given a text by Kurtz, an ivory trader working on a trading station far up the river, who has "gone native" and is the object of Marlow's expedition. Central to Conrad's work is the idea that there is little difference between "civilised people" and "savages." ''Heart of Darkness'' implicitly comments on imperialism and racism. The novella's setting pr ...
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Mrs Dalloway
''Mrs. Dalloway'' is a novel by Virginia Woolf, published on 14 May 1925, that details a day in the life of Clarissa Dalloway, a fictional upper-class woman in post-First World War England. It is one of Woolf's best-known novels. The working title of ''Mrs. Dalloway'' was ''The Hours''. The novel began as two short stories, "Mrs. Dalloway in Bond Street" and the unfinished "The Prime Minister". The book describes Clarissa's preparations for a party she will host in the evening, and the ensuing party. With an interior perspective, the story travels forwards and backwards in time, to construct an image of Clarissa's life and of the inter-war social structure. The novel addresses the nature of time in personal experience through multiple interwoven stories. In October 2005, ''Mrs. Dalloway'' was included on ''TIME Magazine''s list of the 100 best English-language novels written since its first issue in 1923. Plot Summary Clarissa Dalloway goes around London in the morning, get ...
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Junkie (novel)
''Junkie: Confessions of an Unredeemed Drug Addict'' (originally titled ''Junk'', later released as ''Junky'') is a novel by American beat generation writer William S. Burroughs, initially published under the pseudonym William Lee in 1953. His first published work, it is semi-autobiographical and focuses on Burroughs' life as a drug user and dealer. It has come to be considered a seminal text on the lifestyle of heroin addicts in the early 1950s. Inspiration The novel was considered unpublishable more than it was controversial. Burroughs began it largely at the request and insistence of Allen Ginsberg, who was impressed by Burroughs's letter-writing skill. Burroughs took up the task with little enthusiasm. However, partly because he saw that becoming a publishable writer was possible (his friend Jack Kerouac had published his first novel ''The Town and the City'' in 1950), he began to compile his experiences as an addict, ‘lush roller’ who stole from inebriated homeless pe ...
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The Prime Of Miss Jean Brodie (novel)
The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie can refer to: * ''The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie'' (novel), a 1961 novel by Muriel Spark * ''The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie'', a 1966 stage play based on the novel, starring Vanessa Redgrave and Olivia Hussey, which later transferred to Broadway starring Zoe Caldwell Zoe Ada Caldwell, (14 September 1933 – 16 February 2020) was an Australian actress. She was a four-time Tony Award winner, winning Best Featured Actress in a Play for '' Slapstick Tragedy'' (1966), and Best Actress in a Play for '' The Pri ... * ''The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie'' (film), a 1969 film based on the novel, starring Maggie Smith * ''The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie'' (TV series), a 1978 TV series based on the novel, starring Geraldine McEwan {{DEFAULTSORT:Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, The ...
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