Some Classic Penguin Covers 1 – The Wallet of Kai Lung

Strolling through Bloomsbury the other week I passed a second hand bookshop with a table of, admittedly rather battered, Penguins. Still, all priced at an honest Queen’s pound per book, and well worth it for the covers alone. This one is Ernest Braham’s The Wallet of Kai Lung. Though published in 1936 by Penguin in the early of their iconic paperbacks, Braham’s book dates back to 1900 and had been reprinted by other publishers pretty much consistently since then. It was a very popular book – a collection of fantasy stories told by Kai Lung, an itinerant Chinese story teller. It’s a little hackneyed for a modern audience to be honest and I didn’t get very far into it before basically giving up and just enjoying the cover but apparently some thought Manchester-born Braham’s comedic work as good as Jerome K Jerome (who’s secretary Braham was for a time) and, apparently, Orwell liked him. Braham is perhaps best remembered today for coining the term, supposedly said by all Chinese sagely, ‘may you live in interesting times’, which of course nobody in China has ever actually said.