Henry Eliot Interview

This week UCL’s Vice Dean of Wellbeing, Professor Samantha Rayner, chats with Henry Eliot, Creative Editor of Penguin Classics, about his new book. They meander through literary landscapes, how the time of year affects how we perceive stories, why we reach for classics, the wellbeing effects of walking and reading, and how one goes about creating compendium and companion books.

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Show notes

Henry’s Twitter
Prof Rayner’s Twitter
Henry’s new book The Penguin Modern Classics Book
Henry’s previous book The Penguin Classics Book
Hint from Samantha that these make fabulous gifts for book lovers!

Things mentioned in the episode:
The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer
William Morris
Le Morte d’Arthur by Sir Thomas Mallory
PG Wodehouse
Finnegans Wake by James Joyce
Tess of the d’Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy
Iain Sinclair
The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman by Laurence Sterne
Charles Dickens
War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy
David Copperfield by Charles Dickens
The Small Hand by Susan Hill
The Penguin Modern Classics Book by Henry Eliot
Crossing the Mangrove by Maryse Condé
Second Class Citizen by Buchi Emecheta
The Salt Eaters by Toni Cade Bambara
The Penguin Classics Book by Henry Eliot
Season of Migration to the North by Tayeb Salih
Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad
A Room of One’s Own by Virginia Woolf
The Second Sex by Simone de Beauvoir
The Feminine Mystique by Betty Friedan
Women, Race and Class by Angela Y. Davis
The Book of Disquiet by Bernardo Soares
Água Viva (The Stream of Life) by Clarice Lispector
Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll
Gulliver’s Travels by Jonathan Swift
Selected Poems of TS Eliot
The Travels of Sir John Mandeville by John Mandeville
Ernest Hemingway
Graham Green
Ivy Compton-Burnett
Colette
JD Salinger
The Tartar Steppe by Dino Buzzati
Franz Kafka
Samuel Beckett
Locos by Felipe Alfau