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1Sylak
A few years ago now, Del Prado published a partworks of miniature books titled The Miniature Classics Library, which was sold at news agents throughout the U.K.
I liked them because they were so affordable and I could build a large collection very quickly.
Has anyone come across any of these?
The entire collection consists of 101 - 67mm x 52mm books. Of these titles, 15 span two or more volumes (as the books are unabridged), so the number of actual works is in fact 84.
Considering what they are, the build quality was very good.
The only thing I am careful of is that often I will find the first 3-4 pages near the front/back covers may be stuck together at the edges from glue used to bond the book casing together. I keep a *tool handy for this purpose.
Only one of my books 'The Adventures of Peter Pan' came with minor damage (The backing page which is glued to the book casing had found itself creased slightly under itself during production). It initially caused the front end paper to get bonded to the cover where the damage occurred, but I was able to carefully free it with care and so further damage was thus avoided.
Otherwise, all the books have proper stitched headbands, nice ivory coloured bible paper. The print quality is superb and very readable (without eyeglasses). The obvious result is that the books are rather chunky, often spanning over several volumes. Unfortunately the lack of any illustrations is most obvious in tomes such as Alice in Wonderland.
So far I've not come across any page numbering or other printing errors, and none of the pages have fell out from use either - although I haven't read them all.
I know you get what you pay for: leather-look (vinyl) binding only, and printed titles rather than embossed etc. but 15 years on my books still look impressive on their miniature bookshelf (which came with the collection).
The *tool I use is the plastic/foil tear-strip from a medical patch, which is both very thin and smooth and at the same time extremely ridged - perfect for the job.
I liked them because they were so affordable and I could build a large collection very quickly.
Has anyone come across any of these?
The entire collection consists of 101 - 67mm x 52mm books. Of these titles, 15 span two or more volumes (as the books are unabridged), so the number of actual works is in fact 84.
Considering what they are, the build quality was very good.
The only thing I am careful of is that often I will find the first 3-4 pages near the front/back covers may be stuck together at the edges from glue used to bond the book casing together. I keep a *tool handy for this purpose.
Only one of my books 'The Adventures of Peter Pan' came with minor damage (The backing page which is glued to the book casing had found itself creased slightly under itself during production). It initially caused the front end paper to get bonded to the cover where the damage occurred, but I was able to carefully free it with care and so further damage was thus avoided.
Otherwise, all the books have proper stitched headbands, nice ivory coloured bible paper. The print quality is superb and very readable (without eyeglasses). The obvious result is that the books are rather chunky, often spanning over several volumes. Unfortunately the lack of any illustrations is most obvious in tomes such as Alice in Wonderland.
So far I've not come across any page numbering or other printing errors, and none of the pages have fell out from use either - although I haven't read them all.
I know you get what you pay for: leather-look (vinyl) binding only, and printed titles rather than embossed etc. but 15 years on my books still look impressive on their miniature bookshelf (which came with the collection).
The *tool I use is the plastic/foil tear-strip from a medical patch, which is both very thin and smooth and at the same time extremely ridged - perfect for the job.
2Sylak
Here is the definitive a to z list of all the miniature books in the Miniature Classics series by del Prado.
A Christmas Carol, Charles Dickens
A Dolls House, Henrik Ibsen
Alices Adventures in Wonderland, Lewis Carroll
All for Love, John Dryden
An Old Maid, Honore de Balzac
A Season in Hell, Illuminations, Poems, Last lines, Arthur Rimbaud
A Sentimental Journey Through France and Italy, Laurence Sterne
A Study in Scarlet, Arthur Conan Doyle
Bartleby the Scrivener – Benito Cereno, Herman Melville
Beowulf
Bucolics, The Georgics, Virgil
Candide, Voltaire
Confessions of an English Opium Eater, Thomas de Quincey
Discourse on the Method, Rene Descartes
Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, Robert Louis Stevenson
-Endymion I, John Keats
-Endymion II, John Keats
Eves Diary – Extracts from Adams Diary, Mark Twain
Fables, Aesop
-Frankenstein I, Mary Shelley
-Frankenstein 2, Mary Shelley
From London to Lands End, Daniel Defoe
Gullivers Travels: Part 1 A Voyage to Lilliput, Jonathan Swift
Heart of Darkness, Joseph Conrad
Heroides, Ovid
In Memoriam, Alfred Tennyson
In Praise of Folly, Erasmus of Rotterdam
-Leaves of Grass (Selection) I, Walt Whitman
-Leaves of Grass (Selection) II, Walt Whitman
Life is a Dream, Pedro Calderon de la Barca
Macbeth, William Shakespeare
Maggie A Girl of the Streets, Stephen Crane
Much Ado About Nothing, William Shakespeare
-Odyssey I, Homer
-Odyssey II, Homer
Oedipus Rex – Antgone, Sophocles
-Paradise Lost I, John Milton
-Paradise Lost II, John Milton
Prometheous Unbound, Percy B. Shelly
-Persuasion I, Jane Austen
-Persuasion II, Jane Austen
Pygmalion, George Bernard Shaw
Round The Moon, Jules Verne
Selected Poetry, Dante Gabriel Rossetti
Selected Poetry, Emily Dickinson
Selected Poetry, John Donne
Selected Poems, Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Selected Poetry, William Wordsworth
Selected Tales, Anton Chekhov
Selected Tales, E.T.A Hoffmann
Selected Tales - Shorter Prose Pieces, Oscar Wilde
-Silas Marner I, George Eliot
-Silas Marner II, George Eliot
Sonnets, William Shakespeare
South Sea Tales, Jack London
Taras Bulba, Nikolay Gogol
-Tales from the Alhambra I, Washington Irving
-Tales from the Alhambra II, Washington Irving
Tartuffe, Moliere
The Adventures of Peter Pan, J. M. Barrie
-The Bride of Lammermoor I, Walter Scott
-The Bride of Lammermoor II, Walter Scott
-The Canterbury Tales I, Geoffrey Chaucer
-The Canterbury Tales II, Geoffrey Chaucer
-The Canterbury Tales III, Geoffrey Chaucer
-The Canzoniere I, Petrarch
-The Canzoniere II, Petrarch
The Corsair, Lord Byron
The Death of Ivan Ilych, Leo Tolstoy
-The Divine Comedy – Paradise, Dante Alighieri
-The Divine Comedy – Pugatory, Dante Alighieri
-The Divine Comedy – Hell, Dante Alighieri
The Fall of the House of Usher & Other Stories, Edgar Allan Poe
The Flowers of Evil, Charles Baudelaire
The Gambler, Fyodor Dostoevsky
The Garden Party, Katherine Mansfield
The Guilty River, Wilkie Collins
The Importance of Being Earnest, Oscar Wilde
The Jungle Book, Rudyard Kipling
The Metamorphosis, Franz Kafka
-The Prince and the Pauper I, Mark Twain
-The Prince and the Pauper II, Mark Twain
The Prince, Nicolo Machiavelli
-The Scarlet Letter I, Nathaniel Hawthorne
-The Scarlet Letter II, Nathaniel Hawthorne
The School for Husbands – The School for Wives, Moliere
The Seagull, Anton Chekhov
The Social Contract, Jean Jacques Rousseau
The Sonnets to Orpheus – Selected Poems, Rainer Maria Rilke
The Son’s Veto and Other Stories, Thomas Hardy
The Sorrows of Young Werther, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
The Spanish Tragedy, Thomas Kyd
The Time Machine, H G Wells
The Tragical History of Dr Faustus, Christopher Marlowe
The Turn of the Screw, Henry James
The Yellow Plush Papers, William makepeace Thackeray
-Thoughts I, Blaise Pascal
-Thoughts II, Blaise Pascal
Treasure Island, Robert Louis Stevenson
Utopia, Thomas More
William Tell, Friedrich von Schiller
*Many thanks to mattsminiaturebooks.com for making this list available to me.
A Christmas Carol, Charles Dickens
A Dolls House, Henrik Ibsen
Alices Adventures in Wonderland, Lewis Carroll
All for Love, John Dryden
An Old Maid, Honore de Balzac
A Season in Hell, Illuminations, Poems, Last lines, Arthur Rimbaud
A Sentimental Journey Through France and Italy, Laurence Sterne
A Study in Scarlet, Arthur Conan Doyle
Bartleby the Scrivener – Benito Cereno, Herman Melville
Beowulf
Bucolics, The Georgics, Virgil
Candide, Voltaire
Confessions of an English Opium Eater, Thomas de Quincey
Discourse on the Method, Rene Descartes
Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, Robert Louis Stevenson
-Endymion I, John Keats
-Endymion II, John Keats
Eves Diary – Extracts from Adams Diary, Mark Twain
Fables, Aesop
-Frankenstein I, Mary Shelley
-Frankenstein 2, Mary Shelley
From London to Lands End, Daniel Defoe
Gullivers Travels: Part 1 A Voyage to Lilliput, Jonathan Swift
Heart of Darkness, Joseph Conrad
Heroides, Ovid
In Memoriam, Alfred Tennyson
In Praise of Folly, Erasmus of Rotterdam
-Leaves of Grass (Selection) I, Walt Whitman
-Leaves of Grass (Selection) II, Walt Whitman
Life is a Dream, Pedro Calderon de la Barca
Macbeth, William Shakespeare
Maggie A Girl of the Streets, Stephen Crane
Much Ado About Nothing, William Shakespeare
-Odyssey I, Homer
-Odyssey II, Homer
Oedipus Rex – Antgone, Sophocles
-Paradise Lost I, John Milton
-Paradise Lost II, John Milton
Prometheous Unbound, Percy B. Shelly
-Persuasion I, Jane Austen
-Persuasion II, Jane Austen
Pygmalion, George Bernard Shaw
Round The Moon, Jules Verne
Selected Poetry, Dante Gabriel Rossetti
Selected Poetry, Emily Dickinson
Selected Poetry, John Donne
Selected Poems, Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Selected Poetry, William Wordsworth
Selected Tales, Anton Chekhov
Selected Tales, E.T.A Hoffmann
Selected Tales - Shorter Prose Pieces, Oscar Wilde
-Silas Marner I, George Eliot
-Silas Marner II, George Eliot
Sonnets, William Shakespeare
South Sea Tales, Jack London
Taras Bulba, Nikolay Gogol
-Tales from the Alhambra I, Washington Irving
-Tales from the Alhambra II, Washington Irving
Tartuffe, Moliere
The Adventures of Peter Pan, J. M. Barrie
-The Bride of Lammermoor I, Walter Scott
-The Bride of Lammermoor II, Walter Scott
-The Canterbury Tales I, Geoffrey Chaucer
-The Canterbury Tales II, Geoffrey Chaucer
-The Canterbury Tales III, Geoffrey Chaucer
-The Canzoniere I, Petrarch
-The Canzoniere II, Petrarch
The Corsair, Lord Byron
The Death of Ivan Ilych, Leo Tolstoy
-The Divine Comedy – Paradise, Dante Alighieri
-The Divine Comedy – Pugatory, Dante Alighieri
-The Divine Comedy – Hell, Dante Alighieri
The Fall of the House of Usher & Other Stories, Edgar Allan Poe
The Flowers of Evil, Charles Baudelaire
The Gambler, Fyodor Dostoevsky
The Garden Party, Katherine Mansfield
The Guilty River, Wilkie Collins
The Importance of Being Earnest, Oscar Wilde
The Jungle Book, Rudyard Kipling
The Metamorphosis, Franz Kafka
-The Prince and the Pauper I, Mark Twain
-The Prince and the Pauper II, Mark Twain
The Prince, Nicolo Machiavelli
-The Scarlet Letter I, Nathaniel Hawthorne
-The Scarlet Letter II, Nathaniel Hawthorne
The School for Husbands – The School for Wives, Moliere
The Seagull, Anton Chekhov
The Social Contract, Jean Jacques Rousseau
The Sonnets to Orpheus – Selected Poems, Rainer Maria Rilke
The Son’s Veto and Other Stories, Thomas Hardy
The Sorrows of Young Werther, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
The Spanish Tragedy, Thomas Kyd
The Time Machine, H G Wells
The Tragical History of Dr Faustus, Christopher Marlowe
The Turn of the Screw, Henry James
The Yellow Plush Papers, William makepeace Thackeray
-Thoughts I, Blaise Pascal
-Thoughts II, Blaise Pascal
Treasure Island, Robert Louis Stevenson
Utopia, Thomas More
William Tell, Friedrich von Schiller
*Many thanks to mattsminiaturebooks.com for making this list available to me.
3Sylak
This was the original promotional leaflet that accompanied the partworks. I thought it was worth posting on this thread for anyone interested.
Admittedly, if you produce a booklet boasting quality and attention to detail, getting your grammar correct would be the first step to convincing your clients. 'The publisher has' or 'The publishers have'. Not 'Publishers has made a special effort' (above).
I will just add that the build quality of the bookcase was not great. I purchased spares, to help distribute the 101 tomes better. Even at half the number of books some of the shelves have sagged (noticeable when you try to open the doors). The wood glue has also dried out over time, allowing parts of the coving to fall off.
Enjoy.
Admittedly, if you produce a booklet boasting quality and attention to detail, getting your grammar correct would be the first step to convincing your clients. 'The publisher has' or 'The publishers have'. Not 'Publishers has made a special effort' (above).
I will just add that the build quality of the bookcase was not great. I purchased spares, to help distribute the 101 tomes better. Even at half the number of books some of the shelves have sagged (noticeable when you try to open the doors). The wood glue has also dried out over time, allowing parts of the coving to fall off.
Enjoy.
4Sylak
...and here (finally) is the completed LT publisher series for the Del Prado Miniature Classics Library.
