In high school, when I would need to pick up books for my English classes, we'd usually do Dover Thrift editions. But, I'm partial to Signet Classics myself.
Good evening Sir Michael Good Evening Roger. Never mind the joy of mass market classics, the Universe is once more in balance, Mr Clock is once more in view, and once more he tells the right time twice daily, wonderful clock, time on his hands and all that. Cheers Al The Goldkeyfourcolorkidownunda
That cover of Dracula is fabulous! I don't care about fancy releases of books, in fact I seek out those mass market paperbacks from decades ago. I find them in charity and thrift shops for dirt cheap. It's economical and it has a nostalgic element for me. Currently I am reading a 1961 Penguin Classics mass market paperback of Wuthering Heights. I was delighted to find a scholarly introduction and letters by Currer Bell from 1850 about the writings of the Bronte sisters as forewords in the book. I've read Wuthering Heights before, but the addition of the intro and Currer Bell's letters added so much to my experience with this book. In my opinion, these old paperbacks are gems and will forever be my preference to read the classics.
We're about the same age, and I share your love of these old editions. I love and use ebooks as well, but nothing can replace the old classics in my affections. Many of them had covers that really helped to stimulate the imagination.
I started reading classics in high school around 1970, and most were as mass market paperbacks! This was pre computer/Internet, so Signets were the way to go, and I still have a lot. Thanks for the video!
We must be about the same age. Are you having the weird experience of seeing books you remember being published (like Midnight's Children or House of Spirits) now being acclaimed as classics? It's making me feel very old!
They're a blessing for those of us who don't have a lot of $ for books! I really don't pay attention to publishers, but I checked my shelf and yep, my copy of JANE EYRE is a little Bantam. I chose it on purpose because it was cheap. I didn't want to waste too much money in case I hated it. Good thing, too, since I got caught in an unexpected rainstorm and the poor thing got soaked. To my utter shock, I ended up LOVING that book. I've already re-read it and I hope to be doing so the rest of my life. That's definitely one I want to have in a decent hardcover. But I don't think I can get rid of that little paperback. It's got all my original little sticky tabs in it. And it has sentimental value. I was babysitting for a family at that time and it reminds me of how I ran into their kitchen, desperate to spread out my poor little book and dry it off.
The economics of publishing have changed a lot since those days, alas. I read a lot of them when younger, too, and have so many good memories wrapped up with them. Thanks for the chance to start the year with a good glow, Michael.
When I first started buying books in the 70s and 80s, they were all the "mass market" size. Which was then just the size a paperback was expected to be. The Isokon Donkey bookcase was designed specifically to hold Penguin paperbacks in the 1970s. Anything larger with a soft cover was usually a textbook. I still have old Pelicans which are that size, although Penguin seems to have abandoned that imprint altogether. As my eyesight gets worse, I actually quite appreciate the larger size! When I was a child, my exposure to classics came mostly from childrens' hardbacks such as Deans Classics.
Great video Mike, I love the classics and my favorite series was produced by Barnes & Nobles ~10-15 years ago with the grey square at the top of the spine that said Classics (they even had a Tarzan edition). Not only did they have great covers, but the back of the book was filled with footnotes to give life and context to a book that used archaic language or referred to a period in history unfamiliar to the reader. Even the intros by the professor emeritus' at some college I'd never heard of were great. Tragically, after Covid, B&N began to produce a new series of classics completely bereft of everything that made the prior editions so enjoyable and it appears they have discontinued that fantastic series.
Ooh, that edition of Oliver Twist was the one I had to read as a high school freshman. Speaking of mass market paperback editions of classics, I remember there being a lot of Magnum Easy-eye editions around the house when I was young. And a complete discussion of cheap paperback classics would have to mention Dover Thrift Editions.
I read a lot of those, some publishers I can't remember but had a similar appearance. There was a range of great folklore and fairie tale books, each paperback collected mythology of specific countries, I enjoyed those. Harper Collins still makes Collins Classics massmarket paperbacks for the astonishing price of £2.99, amazing value and as good as a Penguin or an Oxford. I bought a few last year, probably buy some more this year. The ones I keep I treasure, others served their purpose, entertained me and I release back into the wild for someone else to enjoy.
I've got a bunch of Signet Classics, Bantam New Age, Penguin, etc... basically I have a ton of books most of them read and in boxes because I don't have enough shelf space for them. As an aside my wife got me a complete set of the Hardy Boys which I had as a kid but which were lost when my parents divorced. I now have all of them, all of Nancy Drew, all of Brains Benton and all of Alfred Hitchcock and the Three Investigators again I also have a lot of MMP nonfiction science, math, history, philosophy by Asimov, Irving, Coppleston, etc... i even have a bunch of old Scholastic books I got in grade school almost 60 years ago 😊
I envy you your complete Alfred Hitchcock and The Three Investigators collection. I recently acquired the first book, The Secret of Terror Castle. One of my happy memories from elementary school
@@user-om3oc8xi2s those books are great I occasionally reread books from my childhood but I most read classics and nonfiction (science, history, etc..) now
I remember in grade school buying a lot of paperbacks from Scholastic. After that, I picked up Bantam and Signet classics on my own. (Never Penguins -- were they more expensive?) And I still have the same War & Peace copy you have.
Great video, Michael! One of my early mass-market PBs was the Dell Laurel Leaf edition of Dracula, with the awesome cover portrait of Drac, with the yellow eye that follows you around as you move! Scary stuff. I miss those mass-market books, though most have teeny-tiny print. But mostly, I miss the days when you could buy an awesome copy of Dracula for 60 cents!
I still possess my Signet Classics book of Romantic Poetry (Byron, Keats, Wordsworth, etc.) from my Gothic Literature elective class from over 23 years ago. I credit that class with my love of poetry and Gothic literature. My friend in class hated it, though, and spent his time reading DUNE. LOL.
I am older than you, and when I was a kid mass market paperbacks were everywhere, grocery stores, drug stores, dime stores (the precursors of dollars stores, but not so tacky), bus stations, etc. There wasn’t so many entertainment options back in the 50s and early 60s, and mass market paperbacks were a cheap form of entertainment. Folks read them then like folks stare at iPhone screens now.
I'm right there with you. We would read paperbacks on lunch breaks. On train commutes. On a nice day outside. Everywhere really. I read Vonnegut, Sturgeon, Harlan Ellison, Bradbury, to pick a few, all in paperbacks. My favorite book of all time, To Kill a Mockingbird, was read in paperback. The Lord of The Rings trilogy was a set of 3 paperbacks wrapped in a wonderful slipcase. It wasn't till I was older that I would even consider the luxury of purchasing hardcover books. Do you remember the, I believe, Ace double books? On one side was one book/novella, flip it over and there was a completely different cover with another book. I would make a case for paperbacks being responsible for a more informed and better educated society.
Mass market form factor has become so difficult for me because of the print size and how they want to close on their own. Trade paperback size is where I'm at these days.
I do love the MM bantams and signets, but don't forget Mentor who usually had some of the best unique introductions. And even better than Pelican and Signet Shakespeares were the ones from Washington Square Press with the annotations and obscure word definitions on the facing pages that was sometimes published by Folger library, sometimes New American Library but most commonly as an imprint under Pocket Books. I have a little bit of a love/hate with Signet Shakespeare: a lot of the word definitions they offered were , well, wrong. They would often include introductory essays by amazing historical figures. . . Because they were in public domain; like what Samuel Johnson or various romantic poets have to say about Shakespeare. Interesting, yes but not always helpful to a high school student trying to figure out the damn play!
Wonderful topic, Michael. I also grew up on the various Signet/Bantam Classics in every public or school library (my first read of 1984 was a Signet). 😛 Even now, a lot of the library copies I see are still Signets. I adore mass market paperbacks for a multitude of reasons, which other commenters have gone into in much more detail than me. 🤣 I agree, it sucks that the mass market seems to have mostly fallen out of favor (other than those awful tall paperbacks 🤢), although I know Penguin in the UK still publish mass market classics. At least they did the last time I was there. Great stuff! 😊
How did you keep your Signet War and Peace intact? Mine fell apart. The binding couldn't hold on to all those pages. I agree that the translation is one of the best. I've read three versions and that's the one I have the best memories of.
I mostly read classics electronically because they're free electronically, but if I buy them in physical format I usually try to buy them in mass market. Especially when it comes to the ones that are true tomes, hardcover just gets too heavy and cumbersome to read comfortably. Not to mention expensive.
Happy (gregorian) new year Michael... Quick fact- In India, new year happens in April called 'sakranti' which is celebrated from antiquity in Hinduism.
That _War and Peace_ you have there is a brick. _War and Peace_ doesn't need any supplementary scholarship; Tolstoy provides that himself. I gotta say that _War and Peace_ is a lot more convenient to read as an ebook, which is how I read it.
As much as I adore physical books, I do have to admit that ebooks make it more convenient to read giant tomes. That's especially true if you are the type of reader that reads on the go. Much of my reading time used to be standing on a packed train, on the way to and from work. I'm generally an expert train rider who can balance holding an open book, a purse/bag, and sometimes a travel mug, all without holding on. (I hate touching those nasty train poles.) It is SO much easier with an ereader!
I was a bookseller for forty years. Respectfully I can say Penguin Books WERE NOT mass market books. Some were the same trim size as mass market paperbacks. Penguins were/are trade paperbacks sold mostly in bookstores and were returned to publishers whole. Mass markets were stripped of their covers, covers returned for credit, the books discarded. Big box stores for years have pressured publishers to provide higher priced product for their square footage devoted to books. So fewer mass markets were published, more trade paperbacks and hardcovers. Now mass markets are an endangered species. I hate it.
@@michaelk.vaughan8617 MM books use cheaper grades of paper for the covers and pages, but the main difference is one you can't see: trade paperbacks must be returned to their publisher whole copy. MM books must have only the covers returned for credit.
Oh, I want to read that Arthur book! (I can't pronounce it for anything.) I didn't know it came in a small edition like that. Is that the full text? When I looked online it was huge.
I’ve been picking up Signets at the charity warehouse. Yesterday I finished _Tom Sawyer._ Somebody at an Amazon review I read said that the edition I used is abridged, but nowhere does the Signet volume say so. So I’m worried. With Penguin or Oxford you expect a certain textual credibility. Can you with Signet? (My Bantam _Woman in White_ looks shorter than it should be.) Maybe Steve Donoghue could speak definitively on the topic, I know of no one else who could. And no one else would care.
Love the mass market paperback. I prefer those because of the size and portability. Michael, I was thinking, if you do read Pride and Prejudice and other books that belong to the Lady of the Manor, do they count towards your 500 book challenge, since they are not technically yours? Or do they count because they are part of the Manor’s Estate? 🤔
If LotR hadn't been split into 3 books by the publisher and was only available as a doorstop-sized tome like War & Peace - would it still be as popular?
Classic become classic by English professors and teachers deciding to make their students read them and sit through long boring lectures about the books.
I love Signet! Signet Forever! Hail Signet!..and, so forth, and so on…
In high school, when I would need to pick up books for my English classes, we'd usually do Dover Thrift editions. But, I'm partial to Signet Classics myself.
MMP FOREVER.
I DESPISE THE TRADE PAPERBACK. 😊
Good evening Sir Michael Good Evening Roger.
Never mind the joy of mass market classics, the Universe is once more in balance, Mr Clock is once more in view, and once more he tells the right time twice daily, wonderful clock, time on his hands and all that.
Cheers Al The Goldkeyfourcolorkidownunda
That cover of Dracula is fabulous! I don't care about fancy releases of books, in fact I seek out those mass market paperbacks from decades ago. I find them in charity and thrift shops for dirt cheap. It's economical and it has a nostalgic element for me. Currently I am reading a 1961 Penguin Classics mass market paperback of Wuthering Heights. I was delighted to find a scholarly introduction and letters by Currer Bell from 1850 about the writings of the Bronte sisters as forewords in the book. I've read Wuthering Heights before, but the addition of the intro and Currer Bell's letters added so much to my experience with this book. In my opinion, these old paperbacks are gems and will forever be my preference to read the classics.
We're about the same age, and I share your love of these old editions. I love and use ebooks as well, but nothing can replace the old classics in my affections. Many of them had covers that really helped to stimulate the imagination.
I started reading classics in high school around 1970, and most were as mass market paperbacks! This was pre computer/Internet, so Signets were the way to go, and I still have a lot. Thanks for the video!
We must be about the same age. Are you having the weird experience of seeing books you remember being published (like Midnight's Children or House of Spirits) now being acclaimed as classics? It's making me feel very old!
My first grown up book was a William Johnstone Western. I read a ton of those things lol .
Tomes from the tombs. Great stuff.😊
They're a blessing for those of us who don't have a lot of $ for books! I really don't pay attention to publishers, but I checked my shelf and yep, my copy of JANE EYRE is a little Bantam. I chose it on purpose because it was cheap. I didn't want to waste too much money in case I hated it. Good thing, too, since I got caught in an unexpected rainstorm and the poor thing got soaked.
To my utter shock, I ended up LOVING that book. I've already re-read it and I hope to be doing so the rest of my life. That's definitely one I want to have in a decent hardcover. But I don't think I can get rid of that little paperback. It's got all my original little sticky tabs in it. And it has sentimental value. I was babysitting for a family at that time and it reminds me of how I ran into their kitchen, desperate to spread out my poor little book and dry it off.
The economics of publishing have changed a lot since those days, alas. I read a lot of them when younger, too, and have so many good memories wrapped up with them. Thanks for the chance to start the year with a good glow, Michael.
When I first started buying books in the 70s and 80s, they were all the "mass market" size. Which was then just the size a paperback was expected to be. The Isokon Donkey bookcase was designed specifically to hold Penguin paperbacks in the 1970s. Anything larger with a soft cover was usually a textbook. I still have old Pelicans which are that size, although Penguin seems to have abandoned that imprint altogether. As my eyesight gets worse, I actually quite appreciate the larger size! When I was a child, my exposure to classics came mostly from childrens' hardbacks such as Deans Classics.
Great video Mike, I love the classics and my favorite series was produced by Barnes & Nobles ~10-15 years ago with the grey square at the top of the spine that said Classics (they even had a Tarzan edition). Not only did they have great covers, but the back of the book was filled with footnotes to give life and context to a book that used archaic language or referred to a period in history unfamiliar to the reader. Even the intros by the professor emeritus' at some college I'd never heard of were great. Tragically, after Covid, B&N began to produce a new series of classics completely bereft of everything that made the prior editions so enjoyable and it appears they have discontinued that fantastic series.
Yeah, I have a few of those B&N editions. They were good. That’s how I first read Herodotus.
Ooh, that edition of Oliver Twist was the one I had to read as a high school freshman.
Speaking of mass market paperback editions of classics, I remember there being a lot of Magnum Easy-eye editions around the house when I was young.
And a complete discussion of cheap paperback classics would have to mention Dover Thrift Editions.
I read a lot of those, some publishers I can't remember but had a similar appearance. There was a range of great folklore and fairie tale books, each paperback collected mythology of specific countries, I enjoyed those. Harper Collins still makes Collins Classics massmarket paperbacks for the astonishing price of £2.99, amazing value and as good as a Penguin or an Oxford. I bought a few last year, probably buy some more this year. The ones I keep I treasure, others served their purpose, entertained me and I release back into the wild for someone else to enjoy.
Thank you for the good memories. I read these as a kid and loved them! Have a terrific New Year, and Roger too!
I’m impressed with how on top of it you are with taking down the Christmas decorations. Well done.
He's early Little Christmas isn't for a few days yet.
I agree about KIDNAPPED. It's a wonderful book, as is TREASURE ISLAND.
I've got a bunch of Signet Classics, Bantam New Age, Penguin, etc... basically I have a ton of books most of them read and in boxes because I don't have enough shelf space for them. As an aside my wife got me a complete set of the Hardy Boys which I had as a kid but which were lost when my parents divorced. I now have all of them, all of Nancy Drew, all of Brains Benton and all of Alfred Hitchcock and the Three Investigators again I also have a lot of MMP nonfiction science, math, history, philosophy by Asimov, Irving, Coppleston, etc... i even have a bunch of old Scholastic books I got in grade school almost 60 years ago 😊
I envy you your complete Alfred Hitchcock and The Three Investigators collection. I recently acquired the first book, The Secret of Terror Castle. One of my happy memories from elementary school
@@user-om3oc8xi2s those books are great I occasionally reread books from my childhood but I most read classics and nonfiction (science, history, etc..) now
One of your BEST! T
Good to see you again in 2024
I have the Bantam Stories from the Twilight Zone but in size format A ! (4 3/8 x 7) ie. not the Mass market size. Spooky.
I remember in grade school buying a lot of paperbacks from Scholastic. After that, I picked up Bantam and Signet classics on my own. (Never Penguins -- were they more expensive?) And I still have the same War & Peace copy you have.
Great video, Michael! One of my early mass-market PBs was the Dell Laurel Leaf edition of Dracula, with the awesome cover portrait of Drac, with the yellow eye that follows you around as you move! Scary stuff. I miss those mass-market books, though most have teeny-tiny print. But mostly, I miss the days when you could buy an awesome copy of Dracula for 60 cents!
I still possess my Signet Classics book of Romantic Poetry (Byron, Keats, Wordsworth, etc.) from my Gothic Literature elective class from over 23 years ago. I credit that class with my love of poetry and Gothic literature. My friend in class hated it, though, and spent his time reading DUNE. LOL.
I am older than you, and when I was a kid mass market paperbacks were everywhere, grocery stores, drug stores, dime stores (the precursors of dollars stores, but not so tacky), bus stations, etc. There wasn’t so many entertainment options back in the 50s and early 60s, and mass market paperbacks were a cheap form of entertainment. Folks read them then like folks stare at iPhone screens now.
I'm right there with you. We would read paperbacks on lunch breaks. On train commutes. On a nice day outside. Everywhere really. I read Vonnegut, Sturgeon, Harlan Ellison, Bradbury, to pick a few, all in paperbacks. My favorite book of all time, To Kill a Mockingbird, was read in paperback. The Lord of The Rings trilogy was a set of 3 paperbacks wrapped in a wonderful slipcase. It wasn't till I was older that I would even consider the luxury of purchasing hardcover books. Do you remember the, I believe, Ace double books? On one side was one book/novella, flip it over and there was a completely different cover with another book. I would make a case for paperbacks being responsible for a more informed and better educated society.
Very nice books! I've got a few of these scattered throughout my shelves, not many, but I do love them and wish I had more.
Happy new year Mr. Vaughan! I love you 😻
I remember seeing some Penguin mass market for Steinbeck at B&N very recently.
Mass market form factor has become so difficult for me because of the print size and how they want to close on their own. Trade paperback size is where I'm at these days.
I do love the MM bantams and signets, but don't forget Mentor who usually had some of the best unique introductions.
And even better than Pelican and Signet Shakespeares were the ones from Washington Square Press with the annotations and obscure word definitions on the facing pages that was sometimes published by Folger library, sometimes New American Library but most commonly as an imprint under Pocket Books.
I have a little bit of a love/hate with Signet Shakespeare: a lot of the word definitions they offered were , well, wrong. They would often include introductory essays by amazing historical figures. . . Because they were in public domain; like what Samuel Johnson or various romantic poets have to say about Shakespeare. Interesting, yes but not always helpful to a high school student trying to figure out the damn play!
I think he means he really likes the video.
Most of my classics are still in paperback form. I just don't associate them with trade paperbacks in my brain.
Wonderful topic, Michael. I also grew up on the various Signet/Bantam Classics in every public or school library (my first read of 1984 was a Signet). 😛 Even now, a lot of the library copies I see are still Signets. I adore mass market paperbacks for a multitude of reasons, which other commenters have gone into in much more detail than me. 🤣
I agree, it sucks that the mass market seems to have mostly fallen out of favor (other than those awful tall paperbacks 🤢), although I know Penguin in the UK still publish mass market classics. At least they did the last time I was there. Great stuff! 😊
How did you keep your Signet War and Peace intact? Mine fell apart. The binding couldn't hold on to all those pages. I agree that the translation is one of the best. I've read three versions and that's the one I have the best memories of.
Excellent books...I really need to pick up copy of the horror classic Dracula. Great video MKV!
I struggled reading Kidnapped. I got thru it, but I couldn't tell you much about it.
Maybe try watching one of the film versions. Sometimes watching the movie can give one a different take on the book.
I mostly read classics electronically because they're free electronically, but if I buy them in physical format I usually try to buy them in mass market. Especially when it comes to the ones that are true tomes, hardcover just gets too heavy and cumbersome to read comfortably. Not to mention expensive.
Happy (gregorian) new year Michael... Quick fact- In India, new year happens in April called 'sakranti' which is celebrated from antiquity in Hinduism.
Penguin has the orange mass markets. Do you have those in America?
It might still be the best format 🤷🏻♂️
Have you ever heard of Dell Mapbacks!?
That _War and Peace_ you have there is a brick. _War and Peace_ doesn't need any supplementary scholarship; Tolstoy provides that himself. I gotta say that _War and Peace_ is a lot more convenient to read as an ebook, which is how I read it.
As much as I adore physical books, I do have to admit that ebooks make it more convenient to read giant tomes. That's especially true if you are the type of reader that reads on the go. Much of my reading time used to be standing on a packed train, on the way to and from work. I'm generally an expert train rider who can balance holding an open book, a purse/bag, and sometimes a travel mug, all without holding on. (I hate touching those nasty train poles.) It is SO much easier with an ereader!
I was a bookseller for forty years. Respectfully I can say Penguin Books WERE NOT mass market books. Some were the same trim size as mass market paperbacks. Penguins were/are trade paperbacks sold mostly in bookstores and were returned to publishers whole. Mass markets were stripped of their covers, covers returned for credit, the books discarded. Big box stores for years have pressured publishers to provide higher priced product for their square footage devoted to books. So fewer mass markets were published, more trade paperbacks and hardcovers. Now mass markets are an endangered species. I hate it.
Just so I know, if they are mass market size what’s the difference?
@@michaelk.vaughan8617 MM books use cheaper grades of paper for the covers and pages, but the main difference is one you can't see: trade paperbacks must be returned to their publisher whole copy. MM books must have only the covers returned for credit.
I used to have that same edition of War and Peace. Don’t remember what happened to it… hmmm….. 🤔 🤨
The purpose for trade paperbacks was so that they could triple the price.
Hey Michael, I bought that anthology with the Woody Allen Dracula story 😱 thanks to your channel. Who gets the Vaughan Manor cut - you or Roger?
Oh, I want to read that Arthur book! (I can't pronounce it for anything.) I didn't know it came in a small edition like that. Is that the full text? When I looked online it was huge.
🤠
I’ve been picking up Signets at the charity warehouse. Yesterday I finished _Tom Sawyer._ Somebody at an Amazon review I read said that the edition I used is abridged, but nowhere does the Signet volume say so. So I’m worried. With Penguin or Oxford you expect a certain textual credibility. Can you with Signet? (My Bantam _Woman in White_ looks shorter than it should be.) Maybe Steve Donoghue could speak definitively on the topic, I know of no one else who could. And no one else would care.
Oh, no. That would worry me as well!
Love the mass market paperback. I prefer those because of the size and portability. Michael, I was thinking, if you do read Pride and Prejudice and other books that belong to the Lady of the Manor, do they count towards your 500 book challenge, since they are not technically yours? Or do they count because they are part of the Manor’s Estate? 🤔
No, the Lady’s books wouldn’t count.
If LotR hadn't been split into 3 books by the publisher and was only available as a doorstop-sized tome like War & Peace - would it still be as popular?
Not mass market but have you seen the Seawolf press books? They have really nice illustrations. They are all the same classics.
Is it me or are mass market paperbacks getting more expensive? I think even more expensive than the regular paperbacks?
Cheap is always good. In my case anyway…
Classic become classic by English professors and teachers deciding to make their students read them and sit through long boring lectures about the books.