Treasures from car boot sale

Treasures from car boot sale.

I went to a car boot sale held on the grounds of the Meridian Club near Greenwich on Saturday, 30th July 2005.  This weekly event is not in any book market diary (if one exists).  I found so many books, and me, a person who has a soft spot for books, I bought them all.  I spent £2.10 on books on that day.  Here are all of them:

Anarchism by George Woodcock (1962).  I got a 1979 Pelican reprint.  If the title, the ideology or the author does not ring a bell, do click here for an introduction into libertarian socialism. 

Thérèse Raquin by Émile Zola.  This is an English version translated by Andrew Rothwell, published in the Oxford World's Classics series in 1998.  If this entry rekindles an interest to reread this work, or if you are curious, the text is available to download, provided by Project Gutenberg.  This online version is edited by Edward Vizetelly.

In a Glass Darkly by Sheridan Le Fanu.   The one I bought was published as part of the Oxford World's Classics in 1999.  This one has been edited by Robert Tracy who also provided an introduction and notes.  I managed to find a link here, but this link leads to a Wordsworth Classics series.

Whilst on the Wordsworth Classics, I managed to get a Wordsworth Children's Classics, The Railway Children by Edith Nesbit.  This is a complete and unabridged edition published in 1993.  As I type, I'm already looking forward to rekindling memories of reading this as a child. 

I also found Hamlet, it looks like someone had studied it in class, with notes here and there in very neat schoolroom handwriting.  This is part of the joy I find in getting second hand books, the thought that someone had read it, annotated it, perhaps appreciated it; all part of the character of a book. 

Mrs Dalloway by Virginia Woolf (1925), a Penguin Popular Classics published in 1996.  Blue Stockings and the Bloomsbury Group are almost synonymous to Virginia Woolf. Click here for an introduction to the Bloomsbury Group.  Bloomsbury is an area in central London.  To readers who are unfamiliar with London, various "landmarks" dot Bloomsbury, amongst others University College London, the Senate House of the University of London, the British Musuem and the British Library. 

The Origin of Species by Charles Darwin, the bible of evolutionists.  This copy was published as part of the Pelican Press in 1975.

Gazetteer of Scottish Ghosts by Peter Underwood who was the President of the Ghost Club. This copy was published by Fontana/Collins in 1973. 

The Famous Five, containing a trilogy of Five go to Smuggler's Top, Five go off in a caravan,  and Five on Kirkin Island again by none other than Enid Blyton.  I look forward to rereading these, on a Sunday afternoon perhaps? ...back to the days of primary school, where we would hide story books such as these underneath our ancient wooden desk with a shelf.  We would rest the book on the  shelf, pulling it out to read when the teacher is reading some boring passage; always keeping an alert eye when she takes her eyes off her book.  Then everyone would push the book into the deep recess of the shelf.  The teacher was usually none the wiser about our little misdemeanour.  If she knew, she never let it be known.  I doubt any teacher would tacitly admit that their lessons were so boring that students weren't following them.  Our Malay language teachers, who year after year read from passages in the text book were usually the recipient of such lack of attention.  Our English language teachers took the cue better.  With an entire class preparing for Cambridge O Levels English, it was pointless to have lessons from textbooks designed for the national English exam.  Without further comments on the Malaysian English exam that we had to take, a candidate could achieve an A for the latter yet only managed a C in the former.  So we had many story telling sessions when we were younger and lessons in English literature when we were slightly older.

Spring's Awakening, tragedy of childhood by Frank Wedekind (1891).  This English version is by Eric Bentley.  Spring's Awakening is a drama, originally published in Zurich at the author's expense.  In 1958, Erich Bentley consulted Wedekind's daugher, Kadidja, then prepared a translation for production by the University of Chicago Theatre.  This copy was published by Applause Theatre Books in 1995. 

Ironmonger's Daughter by Harry Bowling.  This novel is of particular interest to me because the author was born in Bermondsey, London and the fictional characters in his book lived off Tower Bridge Road.  I enjoy connecting to the places, the people and most of all the social history woven into the book. 

The Crying of Lot 49 by Thomas Pynchon (1965).  This copy was published by Vintage in 2000. 

The New York Trilogy  by Paul Auster.  This trilogy is made up of City of Glass, Ghosts and The Locked Room. 

I am not acquainted with Pynchon's and Auster's works, therefore I have nothing to say at the moment about the last two requisition.