Monday, May 31, 2010

A working library


Here's another small selection of books from Janet Frame's well-thumbed and extensive personal library.

It's no secret among authors that you have to be a reader before you can be a writer.

Janet Frame wasn't a book collector, although she had a huge collection: she was a reader. She borrowed books, she lent books, and she used public libraries. She bought books second hand and new.

The Pilgrim's Progress John Bunyan
Tacitus The Histories tr. Kenneth Wellesley (Penguin 1964)
Critical Existentialism Nicola Abbagagnano (Doubleday 1969)
Religion and the Rise of Capitalism RH Tawney (Pelican 1948 reprint)
Pascal Pensees (Gallimard 1962)
Why War? C.E.M.Coad Penguin (1939)
Thomas Aquinas Selected Writings Everyman (1943 reprint)
The Ethics of Aristotle Tr. JAK Thomson (Penguin 1958 reprint)
Contemplative Prayer Thomas Merton (1971 Doubleday Imagereprint)
Industrialize - and Perish! M.K. Gandhi (Navajivan 1st edition 1956)
"My Dear Child" M.K. Gandhi (Navajivan 2nd edition 1959)
An Enquiry into Meaning and Truth Bertrand Russell (Pelican edition, 1962)
Anglicanism Stephen Neill (Pelican 1965 edition)
The Confessions of St Augustine (Doubleday Image 1960)
Confessio Amantis John Gower (Trs. Terence Tiller Penguin 1963)
Radical Theology and the Death of God Altizer & Hamilton (Pelican 1968)
Chinese Zodiac Signs: Year of the Rat (Arrow Books 1984)
Quotations from Chairman Mao Tse-Tung (FLP 1967)
Bhagavad-Gita Trs. Edwin Arnold

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