Picador White Spines - Virago Modern Classics - 2024 Collection Tour

Picador White Spines - Virago Modern Classics - 2024 Collection Tour

In today's video we take a look at my fledgling vintage Picador white spine collection and my Virago Modern Classics. Both these series I have only recently started collecting but the are great fun, with beautiful covers and on the whole, decent books. I hope you enjoy taking a look!

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#picadorbooks #virago #viragomodernclassics

[willk]

"Invisible Cities" is one of my favorite books, so strange and imaginative. Nice cover on that one!

[ModerateObserver]

Picador secured an incredible roster of authors for the white spine series. They were really killing it!

[ProfessorEchoMedia]

Very interesting! We tend to think that graphic design went steadily downhill in the 70’s and 80’s, but many of these are nicely done and definitely of their time. When I graduated high school in 1976 I was determined to start teaching myself all the things that I thought were lacking in my school curriculum, so as part of that I began to devour literature! And sure enough, many wound up in my initial attention and affection based on cover art! So I do remember the designs of that era very well.

[forenichtreader]

Looking forward to seeing how the Picador and Virago collections grow. The highlights of the Picadors I own are two omnibus editions of Jim Thompson novels. I think I only own one Virago book - Dawn Powell's The Golden Spur. An excellent book, but it seems to be the only Powell novel that Virago ever released.

[zetectic]

Interesting. I have a couple of Margaret Attwood in Virago: Handmaids Tale & The Blind Assasin.
I wanted to buy more Picador but they were always more expensive than Pan, Penguin or Panther. I bought Wolf Solent by John Cowper Powys and while an interesting read I found it heavy going and despite buying it on a friend's recommendation I gave away his A Glastonbury Romance as it was like 200 pages longer than Wolf Solent. I did have the Tolkien Companion but that may have gone to make space on the shelf. I shall have to look out for them.
Good luck with the white spine collecting & look forward to an update at some point.

[Fred-gupk]

I would like to say that you and Outlaw have sparked a bit of an interest in the publishers of books i am interested in and the series they printed on particular topics (gardening). There was the gardening book club publishing hardbacks and pan did a series of paperbacks.
PS considering how well your local secondhand bookshop has done you, you should probably name it.

[blackjuju]

I was just watching an older video and this appeared.

[ElfGoblin]

Very interesting subject. According to the Virago website there are 718 Virago Modern Classics and although i've read quite a few over the years I only have two in my collection - Leonora Carrington's Seventh Horse and Other Tales and Margaret Kennedy's The Constant Nymph (I kept that one because of the cover art which is a detail from Annie Ovenden's Ophelia). It will be interesting to find out which ones, out of the 718, are the rarer and more collectible. I notice there is an edition of Le Guin's Left Hand Of Darkness that I have never seen and which I wouldn't mind owning. As for Picador white spines, i've only got a copy of Anna Kavan's Sleep Has His House which has recently become collectible ( it's also the name of an album by the great Current 93!). Interestingly, in the spring I did read a copy of John Cowper Powys' After My Fashion which was a Picador white spine true first edition though unfortunately it was in poor condition and it fell apart as I was reading it.
Anyway, a great video as always.

[SlowDazzle]

Fantastic. Recently, I joined the Picador Collectors Club, thanks to Mr Royle! I already have a core collection of white spine Picadors including Flaubert's Parrot, Ancient Evenings, the Henry Green omnbus and Memoirs of a Survivor, though my copy has a photo of Julie Christie- from the film. I didn't know there was a movie of it. I will try to track down Angela Carter's "Heroes and Villains" with that cover by the painter Grunewald. I have Carter's The Magic Toyshop in Virago Classics, but in the later design. I will keep my eyes open for more Picadors and Viragos. Many thanks.

[outlawbookselleroriginal]

Meant to tell you that Virago Modern Classics did publish two books by men, a Wells and a Shaw, I recall them being in print. I think the Shaw was 'An Unsocial Socialist' while the Wells was probably 'Ann Veronica'....it was a long time ago. The other publisher at that time who definitively only issued books by females was of course Women's Press.

[iansmith]

Angela Carter was a proper genius wasn’t she? I wish she was still with us

[sherrirabinowitz]

I just started to collect Virago, I love them but I am going slowly. I only have four of them.