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D. H. Lawrence

Season’s greetings in the Ransom Center’s collections

November 30, 2018 - Tracy Bonfitto

“Dear Miss Crawford,” writes D. H. Lawrence in a letter dated December 23, 1909, “I hope my verses won’t offend you. I know they are poor enough. But do you like my little card?” The “little card,” sent to Grace Crawford and today part of the D. H. Lawrence collection at the Ransom Center, is a small, handmade Christmas greeting card, its front and back covers decorated with watercolors by Lawrence. On the front, four bees surround a stock of delicately drooping bluebells; one bee has attached itself to a flower. On the back, Lawrence has finely rendered a mayfly, with elegantly arranged wings and legs. [Read more…] about Season’s greetings in the Ransom Center’s collections

Filed Under: Art Tagged With: Christmas, D. H. Lawrence, Edward Estlin Cummings, holidays, letters

Penguin and the Paperback Revolution

August 9, 2012 - Jean Cannon

Click on the four-way arrow in the bottom right-hand corner of the slideshow to convert into full-screen mode.

According to popular mythology, the publisher Allen Lane, founder of Penguin Books, formulated his idea for a press dedicated exclusively to paperbacks while visiting a railway station. Having spent the weekend visiting his friend Agatha Christie, the famed author of Murder on the Orient Express, Lane arrived at the Exeter railway station and realized he had forgotten his book. Frustrated and facing the boredom of a long train trip, Lane tried to buy a novel at the station but found that there was nothing available that he felt worth reading. Bookless for the next few hours, he sat on the train and planned a new line of cheap, pocket-sized, and travel-worthy books, which could be sold at railway stations, grocers, and department stores. Penguin Books—and the paperback revolution—were born.

While this version of Allen Lane’s epiphany may be slightly romanticized, there is no doubt that Penguin Books, launched in 1935, sparked a new phase of publishing that would change the printing industry irrevocably. Mass marketing of paperbacks not only brought classics to a wider audience but also brought pulp fiction—previously published in magazines—to the forefront of the book trade.

The Ransom Center’s book collection is known for first editions, many of them lush volumes with elaborate bindings. Perhaps lesser known is the fact that the Ransom Center also houses multiple volumes that illuminate the development of the paperback book trade in both America and Britain. Alongside important editions of Lane’s Penguins, the Center also houses Tauchnitz editions of paperbacks that pre-date Penguin, as well as the “penny dreadfuls” and dime novels that slowly developed into modern pulp fiction. This slideshow exhibits numerous items from the library’s collections that represent landmarks in the history of the paperback book trade.

"What Maisie Knew" by Henry James. Book cover design by Edward Gorey. 1954.
"What Maisie Knew" by Henry James. Book cover design by Edward Gorey. 1954.

Filed Under: Books + Manuscripts Tagged With: A Farewell to Arms, Agatha Christie, Albatross Verlag, Aldine Press, Aldus Manutius, Allen Ginsberg, Allen Lane, Anchor Books, Armed Services Editions Collection, Charles Dickens, City Lights Pocket Bookshop, D. H. Lawrence, Dante Alighieri, dime novels, E.O. Lorimer, Edith Sitwell, Edward Gorey, Erle Stanley Gardner, Ernest Hemingway, George Bernard Shaw, George Sala, Gold Medal Books, Golden Cockerell Press, Have Gat—Will Travel, Henry David Thoreau, Henry James, Howl and Other Poems, J. Dicks, Lady Chatterley’s Lover, Le terze rime di Dante, Malaeska the Indian Wife of the White Hunter, Mrs. Ann Stephens, Murder on the Orient Express, Oliver Twist, paperbacks, Penguin Books, Penguin Illustrated Classics, penny dreadfuls, Pocket Books, Publishing, pulp fiction, Richard S. Pranther, Robert Gibbings, Tauchnitz, Terrible Tales, The Case of the Velvet Claws, The Intelligent Woman’s Guide to Socialism Capitalism Sovietism & Fascism, The Pickwick Club, Walden, What Hitler Wants, What Maisie Knew

Research at the Ransom Center: “Modernism and Christianity”

July 17, 2012 - Io Paulo Montecillo

George Bernard Shaw's responses to a questionnaire about God. 1931. George Bernard Shaw collection.
George Bernard Shaw's responses to a questionnaire about God. 1931. George Bernard Shaw collection.

Dr. Erik Tonning is Research Director of the “Modernism and Christianity” project at the University of Bergen, Norway. He visited the Ransom Center in June 2011 to view a range of its modernism holdings and to gather information on behalf of his research team from several of the Ransom Center’s rich collections.

Tonning writes about his research and his findings, including manuscripts that highlight George Bernard Shaw and D. H. Lawrence’s approaches to a new theology, as well as a letter from T. S. Eliot, one of the most famous modernist converts to Christianity.

Filed Under: Research + Teaching Tagged With: Christianity, D. H. Lawrence, Erik Tonning, George Bernard Shaw, modernism, Research, T. S. Eliot, theology

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Ransom Center Magazine is an online and print publication sharing stories and news about the Harry Ransom Center, its collections, and the creative community surrounding it.

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