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Posted by Dave on 3/8/2001, 3:50:36
In 1934, an English publisher by the name of Allen Lane visited
Agatha Christie and her husband in Devon. Afterwards, while
waiting for his train back to London, Lane searched in vain for a
decent affordable paperback work of literature amongst the
magazines and pulp fiction being sold in the station bookstalls.
This event inspired him to create a series of paperback reprints of
the best authors. After the names "Dolphin" and "Porpoise" were
rejected, he finally settled on the name Penguin, and on July 30,
1935, the first ten Penguins were published, and sold for sixpence
My quiz for the readers of literature out there is this: Can you
name one or more of these original Penguins? Perhaps you
yourself have one or two in a dustier corner of an old bookshelf
downstairs? I will list the ten here at Talk Literature only after a
few brave bibliosleuths venture their guesses! (A major hint for
one of the ten was dropped in my first paragraph above)!
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Posted by Lale on 5/8/2001, 16:53:51, in reply to "QUIZ: Name the Penguins!"
Obviously (according to the hint) one of them was an Agatha
Christie book. I did a quick search on the net and found out that
Death on the Nile and Murder in the Orient Express both came out
after 1934 so I will choose The Murder of Roger Ackroyd. For the
other nine, I will guess these (in no particular order):
. There has to be one Jane Austen, I will pick one at random:
This is my list. Dave, maybe you can tell me what I scored, without
telling which ones? And also, maybe you can tell how many
authors I got correct i.e. if the author is right but the book is
incorrect, again without telling which author.
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Posted by Dave on 7/8/2001, 3:38:14, in reply to "Re: QUIZ: Name the Penguins!"
Lale: Valiant guesses and research! I am sad to say though that none of the guesses are correct, and yes,
there is one Agatha Christie in the ten, but it is neither of the ones you mentioned. I feel terrible because your
guesses were so good, and I agree with you that there should unquestionably be a Jane Austen among
them... but alas, none of even your authors are in the ten, except A. Christie. Maybe this quiz is way too
dificult? I will give another hint for one of the other nine. He was a VERY famous American author
(Nobel-Prizer) who spent a great many prolific years in Paris, originally moving there as a foreign
correspondent for the Toronto Star. This book that was a First-Ten-Penguin was written from Paris and
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Posted by Lale on 19/8/2001, 15:59:50, in reply to "Re: QUIZ: Name the Penguins!"
Obviously that's Hemingway. So, one book from Hemingway and one book from Agatha Christie...
My husband found the answer to this question, but I don't let him tell me because he foundit the easy way, he
went to the Penguin Books web site and read their history.
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