The Pelican History of England Retrospective

I spent the first half of this year reading the Pelican History of England, a series of nine paperback books chronicling the history of England from the Roman conquest up to the 1970s. The first eight were originally released in the 1950s, joined by a ninth in the 1960s. They were reissued, as far as I can tell, fairly consistently until the 1990s when Penguin finally let them go out of print. Some were reprinted as is, but others went into multiple editions—volume 4 had eight! In some cases, the differences between editions were apparently pretty small, but others were almost wholly rewritten. In one case (volume 6), the book was replaced by one written by a different author in the 1970s.

One thing that fascinated me reading the books was how much history had to be squeezed into these slim volumes. Volume 2, for example, goes from A.D. 449 to 1066, covering 617 years in 237 pages, meaning each page has to cover 2.6 years! But also as the series went on, each volume got a narrower year range... and some of the later volumes were thicker than the early ones, too.

Volume	Start	End	Years	Pages	Pages/Year
1	500 B.C.	449	949	189	0.20
2	449	1066	617	237	0.38
3	1066	1307	241	267	1.11
4	1307	1536	229	254	1.11
5	1485	1603	118	303	2.57
6	1603	1714	111	345	3.11
7	1714	1815	101	204	2.02
8	1815	1914	99	227	2.29
9	1914	1979	65	348	5.35

(You could argue volume 1's start date should be A.D. 43, since its overview of pre-Roman Britain is pretty quick; that would change its years covered to 406, and its pages per year to 0.47. Also, yes, volumes 4 and 5 do overlap for some reason. It's volume 4 that's at fault, actually; the series was released out of order, and volume 5 was published first.)

As you can see, the volume covering the twentieth century far and away gets the most detail. Partially this is because it is somehow the longest volume despite having the least amount of time to cover! I was surprised to realized the series peaked, though, with volumes 5 and 6, which were a bit chunkier than the subsequent volumes.

Lastly, here's a picture of my eclectic set of editions:

The blue-spine ones are 1970s printings. These I picked up at a used bookstore, and are what launched me on this project to collect them all. The white-spine ones are 1980s printings. Volume 8 I found in a box of free books in grad school.

When buying the other volumes to plug the gaps for this project, I stuck to 1990s printings in order to have the most recent editions of each book; these are the ones with orange spines. You can't always trust online booksellers, though; I am pretty sure the copy I bought of volume 5 was listed as a 1990s one but I received a 1980s one instead.

The picture demonstrates how, even within a decade, Penguin did not do a good job of maintaining consistency. Why does my 1982 printing of volume 5 have a different spine design than my 1986 printing of volume 8? Why was the 1990s printing of volume 1 taller than all the other volumes? (I'm guessing it's related to the fact that the 1990s printing of volume 1 was a new edition, whereas all of these other stopped getting new editions in the 1980s at the latest.) Why are the book title and author name in black on volume 6 when they are white on all other 1990s printings? Why does the spine of volume 7 call it the Penguin History of England instead of the Pelican? (An attempt to rebrand the series that didn't last? Or an honest mistake?)

These are the questions that keep me up at night. 

The third edition of volume 1 was released in 1995; this was the first significant change to the series since the second edition of volume 6 came out in 1985. Weirdly, just a year later, Penguin began superseding the series with its new effort, the Penguin History of Britain; the first release of that series, volume 6 (covering 1603-1714) came out in 1996. It would take two decades to publish them all; the last was volume 8 (covering 1800-1906) in 2017. (Except that volume 7, covering 1707-1815, never came out at all!) These are, I understand, a bit different in approach than the Pelican Histories: hardcovers without a uniform design or branding. 

I do intend to read them too, but that will be a project for 2026... I need a break!