Dopey me, dopey book

I must be getting old. Not only did I buy this book recently believing it to be a Penguin Handbook - which it isn't, even a superficial examination would have told me that, but I had been reading it for a little while before I realised that the plant on the cover was cannabis.

Since the book dates from the 1970s presumably the idea was the make it attractive to hippy pot heads. It does seem rather incongruous though on a book by someone who'd been writing gardening books since the early 1930s though.

Guest Blogger Goes Bookaging

A while ago I went to the Hay Festival to see Dan Pearson's talk called Inspiration - the title of his forthcoming book in September - and to devour all the gardening books in this fantastic secondhand bookshop town. It even has one devoted to natural history and gardening titles and so - I thought - would easily supply me with enough reading matter for the rest of the year at least. How wrong I was. All I came home with was a history of the Chelsea Flower Show - a meagre haul from such a promised land.

Fast forward a couple of weeks to Norfolk. I was desperate for a view, any view after being surrounded by so much flatness and so pitched up one day in the slightly decaying seaside town of Cromer. A sharp shower sent me scurrying for cover and I was surprised to find myself in a secondhand bookshop sheltering from the rain. I was even more surprised to find the anticipated riches of Hay on Wye transported to this quiet little backwater. It wasn't a one-off phenomenon either. A quick search of the three other secondhand shops in the town all had rich seams of gardening books to plunder. However, the first one was the best by far, staffed by an enthusiastic lady who was delighted 'her' books would be going to a good home. Here's my haul:

• Not one but two Vita Sackville-West first editions - In Your Garden and In Your Garden Again
  


• Ground Cover Plants by Margery Fish. A pristine Garden Book Club edition
  


• Gardening on Chalk & Limestone by E. Bertram Anderson. Another pristine Garden Book Club edition
  


• PH19 The Flower Garden by E.R. Janes
  

All are in good nick complete with their dustcovers. How much did I pay? Just under 50 quid with a book on needlepoint cats thrown in for free. Apparently a couple of weeks earlier a woman interested in garden history had hoovered up a number of titles in that genre, so I dread to think what the damage to my purse would have been if she hadn't been there before me.

VP

(thanks VP - bookaging is like foraging, but for books - GMx)

Love is blind.

I say that because I have yet to come across a Penguin Handbook on horticulture who’s cover I didn’t adore - even this one which is ‘orrible.

It is PH 50 - The New Vegetable Grower’s Handbook [1962], was written by Arthur J Simmons who wrote the earlier Penguin Handbooks, The Vegetable Growers' Handbook Vol I & II and was published 4 years after his death.

Mmmmmm!

Mmmmmm!

(in the manner of a M & S advert)

This isn’t just a Penguin handbook

This is a King Penguin book,

This is Flowers of Marsh and Streams

by Iolo A. Williams, with drawings by Noel Rooke.

And it‘s completely marvellous.

Oooh!

Showtime

Another of my recent purchases was one of the Penguin Handbook series.
As is the way with collecting anything, one starts to gets one’s eye in, with prices, what‘s common, etc.
It seems to me that this is one of the rarer gardening titles among the PH’s, and for my money it has, so far, the best cover.

It is PH 42 - Flower Growing For Shows - E R Janes [1959]

P..P..P..Pick up a Penguin

Do you recall my post about Penguin Handbooks, following some photos that Flange member VP supplied?

Well, I have been putting together a list of PH's of interest to the gardener. It is currently quite ropey, and can only improve, but for what it's worth here it is:

S145 - Trees and Shrubs (and how to grow them) - W H Rowe[1944]
S146 - The Vegetable Growers' Handbook Vol I
S147 - The Vegetable Growers' Handbook Vols II.
PH1 - Soft Fruit Growing - Raymond Bush
PH2 - Tree Fruit Growing Part I (Apples) - Raymond Bush
PH3 - Tree Fruit Growing Part II (Pears, Quinces and Stone Fruits). - Raymond Bush
PH19 - The Flower Garden. Penguin Handbook - E R Janes [1953]
PH 23 - The Vegetable Garden - E R Janes
PH 37 - Roses - Fred Fairbrother [1958]
PH 44 - Rock gardens - E B Anderson [1959]
PH 51 - Hardy Herbaceous Plants - Lanning Roper. [1960]
PH59 - Dahlias - Stuart Ogg [1961]
PH73 - House Plants - Margaret E. Jones [1962]
PH82 - Water Gardens - Francis Perry [1962]
PH127 - Garden Design - Kenneth Midgley [1966]
PH?? - Annual and Biennial Flowers - A P Balfour
PH?? - Chrysanthemums - E T Thistletwaite
PH?? - The Cool Greenhouse - G W Robinson [1959]
PH?? - Lawns - R B Dawson
PH?? Delphiniums - Ronald Parrett [1961]
PH?? - Cacti & Other Succulents - R Ginns
PH?? - Gardening The Modern Way - Roy Hay

I have also as you may have guessed been putting together my own collection of them, which includes most, but not all of the above.

Penguin Handbooks

VP has sent some more pictures for posting, of some more vintage books, saying:

“It's actually a set of 3, all by the marvellously named Raymond Bush. 'Soft Fruit Growing' + 'Tree Fruit Growing Part I (Apples)' and II (Pears, Quinces and Stone Fruits). They all bear the classic Penguin cover that's now gracing many a literary mug. I think these must have been the first 3 books in the Penguin Handbook series as they have the serial numbers PH1, PH2 and PH3 on their spines.”

She adds that she has Penguin Handbooks S146 and S147 - The Vegetable Growers' Handbook Vols I & II.

Now this fired my inner trainspotter. Why did some Penguin Handbooks have the serial number PH and others S?

So I dug out three Penguin Handbooks of my own.

I have Tree and Shrubs (and how to grow them) - which is definitely a Penguin Handbook, but is S145 [pub October 1944]

And 2 others
PH9 - The Penguin Handyman
PH13 - Your Smallholding.

They are published 1945 & 1947 respectively, and so the PH numbering must have started in late 1944/1945.

This still raised a number of questions, such as when exactly did the S pre-fix change to PH and why?

And also what is the full list of the PH series?

If you haven’t yet fallen asleep, I can report that I spent an hour and a half searching the net for answers to these questions. I did discover a wealth of fascinating information about Penguin Books, but drew a total blank on the answers that I was after. maybe someone will read this and enlighten us.

I should have known better really, I had a similar fruitless quest for the definitive list of Wisley Handbooks a while back.