Pemberley (Lyme Park, Cheshire)

Pemberley (Lyme Park, Cheshire)
Oh, to be in England...

Sunday, June 19, 2011

Penguin English Journeys-a gorgeous boxed set of 20 books

Penguin English Journeys Box set of 20 books

I found these today while poking around on the internet (don't ask me how, I don't remember the sequence of clicks!) and thought I would share them. They are reprints of old books which wander through the countryside of England. Churches, food, gardens, houses...they are all celebrated in these books which can be purchased separately or as a boxed set of 20 books. I managed to find a seller on Amazon.co.uk who would ship them to me in Canada (you have to look for one that says International delivery rates) for about £30/49 USD. Not bad considering they sell for about $10 each over here! Plus, I didn't want to have to decide on just one or two.

However if you can only get a few, here are some suggestions.

Let Us Now Praise Famous Gardens by Vita Sackville-West
In this unique gardening chronicle Vita Sackville-West weaves together simple, honest accounts of her horticultural experiences throughout the year with exquisite writing and poetic description. Whether singing the praises of sweet-briar, cyclamen, Indian pinks and the Strawberry grape, or giving practical advice on pruning roses, planting bulbs, overcoming frosts and making the most of a small space, her writings on the art of good gardening are both instructive and delightful. Generations of inhabitants have helped shape the English countryside - but it has profoundly shaped us too. It has provoked a huge variety of responses from artists, writers, musicians and people who live and work on the land - as well as those who are travelling through it.English Journeys celebrates this long tradition with a series of twenty books on all aspects of the countryside, from stargazey pie and country churches, to man's relationship with nature and songs celebrating the patterns of the countryside (as well as ghosts and love-struck soldiers). -description taken from Amazon

Cathedrals and Castles by Henry James
Some Country Houses and Their Owners by James Lees-Milne
Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard and other poems
I'll bet you can't choose just one! And aren't these covers reason enough to purchase one or two? And they are all bite-sized at just about 125 pages each. Now I can't wait for our wretched postal strike to end so that I can receive them ASAP.

Let Us Now Praise Famous Gardens. Vita Sackville-West (English Journeys)Country Lore and Legends. Jacqueline Simpson (English Journeys)The Pleasures of English Food. Alan Davidson (English Journeys)Cathedrals and Castles. Henry James (English Journeys)Life at Grasmere. Dorothy Wordsworth and William Wordsworth (English Journeys)Through England on a Side-Saddle. Celia Fiennes (English Journeys)Some Country Houses and Their Owners. James Lees-Milne (English Journeys)Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard and Other Poems. Thomas Gray ... [Et Al.] (English Journeys)

4 comments:

  1. I found this blog just a few days ago (don't ask me how, I don't remember the sequence of clicks) and I like it already. I like how you write about everything a poor anglophile in exile might care for (not Canadian exile in my case, but Swedish).

    You seem to care for anything and everything - the guilty pleasures, the fantastic and the true necessities. These books I'd classify as the latter. They fall in the same category as bread, water and Austen. Thanks for the great tip!

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  2. Lol! Welcome to my blog. When I started this blog, I think I just really wanted to find others with similar interests. So I am REALLY glad that you and many others have found me.

    You sound like someone I'd love to have coffee with! If only the internet could get us all together over coffee! Maybe someday...

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  3. You're right--I can't choose just one! Love them all. Great find, Jenny!

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  4. Hi Julia-glad you like the look of these too. I was so glad I found the box set of 20 so I didn't have to choose!

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