CHEAP EDITIONS

Southland Times, Issue 23182, 24 April 1937, Page 13

CHEAP EDITIONS

NEW PROJECT IN ENGLAND [A cable message from England published recently described the success which has followed the publication of sixpenny editions of established works of fiction. The following article, contributed to The New York Times by HERBERT W. HORWILL, indicates that the sixpenny publishing ventures are to be expanded.] In the summer of 1928 G. Bernard Shaw published “Trie Intelligent Woman’s Guide to Socialism and Capitalism.” Since then, things have been happening in various parts of the world, and its author considers that it is now high time to bring his book up to date. He has therefore rewritten it, and included about 11,000 words of entirely new matter. The title of the revised work indicates the enlargement of its scope, for it will now run “The Intelligent Woman’s Guide to Socialism, Capitalism, Fascism and Communism.” And the book is to be published in two volumes, sold at sixpence each! Its issue at this astonishingly low price has been made possible through the enterprise of Allen Lane, whose Penguin books have been one of the most remarkable of recent publishing ventures. About eighteen months ago he founded —with a capital, it is reported, of only £loo—the Penguin Company, for the purpose of producing a series of reprints of copyright contemporary literature, all of them so well printed and so tastefully got up that no one need be ashamed to place them on his shelves and at the same time so handy in size and form as not to distend an ordinary coat pocket. So far, as many as 4,750,000 copies have been sold. An incidental advantage of the sixpenny price is that, through selling at this figure, they have been available on the counters of the Woolworth stores throughout the country—a fact of no little publicity value. The success of his Penguins has encouraged Mr Lane to start a new series, of the same size, shape, format and price, but designed especially for that great mass of readers who wish to educate themselves. The Pelicans, as they will be called, will open with Mr Shaw’s book. Among later volumes will be “The Mysterious Universe,” by Sir James Jeans, and Julian Huxley’s “Essays of a Biologist.” Tire new series, however, will not be limited to reprints, for G. D. H. Cole has written specially for it a 70,000-word volume on “Practical Economics.”

And in April there will begin to be issued, by the same publisher, a series of sixpenny editions of the plays of Shakespeare, based on the First Folio and newly edited by Dr G. B. Harrison, the secretary of the Shakespeare Association and a leading authority on the Shakespearean text.