Strike The Father Dead - John Wain

WORLD BOOKS

1ST PRINTING 1963

LONDON, UK

FIRST PUBLISHED BY MACMILLAN & CO 1962

The 'hero' of John Wain's latest novel is a young man called Jeremy, who rebels against the stuffy future envisaged for him by his father, an upright Professor of Classics in a 'red-brick' university. He runs away from school at the age of seventeen and becomes a jazz pianist in a low dive club in one of the seamier haunts of London. The year is 1942.

It is during this wartime period that Jeremy meets an American negro horn-player called Percy Brett, a huge, gentle, delightful character who dominates the rest of the story. Percy teaches Jeremy what jazz can really be, and much else about life besides.

The thrill and rhythm of jazz music pervade the greater part of this extremely interesting novel. Running through it, too, is another theme : the bitter relationship between Jeremy and his austere father. Jeremy's choice of a way of life has been a terrible shock to the ageing professor ; communication between them has ceased, and the only news that filters through comes by way of occasional paragraphs in the tabloid newspapers. Yet we learn gradually that the father had himself rebelled against his father; we follow his agonies as he in turn tries to come to terms with a younger generation. 

Penguin Modern Poets 5 - Gregory Corso, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Allen Ginsberg

PENGUIN BOOKS D78

1ST PRINTING 1963

MIDDLESEX, UK

COVER ART BY ROGER MAYNE

This series is an attempt to introduce contemporary poetry to the general reader by publishing some thirty poems by each of three modern poets in a single volume. In each case the selection is made to illustrate the poet's characteristics in style and form, Penguin Modern Poets 1, 2, 3, and 4, have already appeared and further volumes are in preparation.

Halfway Down The Stairs - Charles Thompson

Ann, a product of the beat generation; boldly curious about life, love and her search for excitement in the turbulence of college days

PANTHER BOOKS 913

1ST PRINTING SEPTEMBER 1959

LONDON, UK 

ANN...BOLDLY CURIOUS ABOUT LIFE AND LOVE

Ann Carlin is surely one of the most astonishing heroines in recent fiction-a creature at once perverse and pitiful, innocent and depraved. The story of her relationship with Dave Pope gives meaning to their curious college days, when the rage was for new music, old cars and sex...

As sensitive as Fitzgerald and as outspoken as O'Hara, Charles Thompson's novel sets a new standard for literature about the Beat Generation.

The Salt Of The Hide - Betty Singleton

Astonishing...a bitter terrifying novel of wild teenage delinquents

ACE BOOKS (UK) H443

1ST PRINTING 1961

LONDON, UK

ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED IN HARDBACK BY ROBERT HALE 1958

Miss Singleton takes on the problem of the Teddy Boy...The atmosphere of slum and youth club is well done and here is a book clearly with its heart in the right place.

-NEWS CHRONICLE

What makes a Teddy Boy? This realistic yet compassionate novel illustrates the immense difficulties facing those trying to help boys who are the victims not only of themselves but of bad surroundings and associates. Effective blend of story with topical social problems.

-SUNDAY TIMES

The humanity behind the story is genuine, the story itself is moving and leaves a lasting impression.

-BOOKS AND BOOKMEN

Miss Singleton shows an astounding familiarity with the argot of teenage gangsters...as modern as a two-tone convertible...A remarkable novel.

-THE TABLET

Teddy Boy - Ernest Ryman

MICHAEL JOSEPH 

1ST PRINTING 1958

LONDON, UK

COVER ART BY DONALD GREEN

JIMMIE ALBAN is a Teddy boy whose career ends in murder, and this is the story of his successive steps on the path towards an unusually mean and horrible crime. But it is only towards the end of the story that the paths of Jimmie Alban and Charlie Bowker cross. Charlie also claims to be a Teddy boy, but in his case the reasons for a distorted view of life become apparent as we follow his progress through Fulwood, which is an Approved School-one of those places to which we send youthful delinquents.

Life at Fulwood, seen through the eyes of one of the instructors, is never dull. 'Laughter and jeers, violence and courage, cheating and generosity were daily in evidence...Teachers were dealing with lads who had, in many ways, had a greater experience of the world than themselves....We had to make ordinary, decent living attractive to lads who had known the luxury of West End hotels and the excitement of nocturnal prowlings and gang activities.'

In this book delinquents come alive as human beings. Moreover, at Fulwood, Teddy boys form only a minority among the simple-minded, the psychopaths, and boys with perverted cleverness. In their life together they show resentment of all authority, and a constant, clamorous demand for attention and affection. There are many amusing passages in the story, much adventure, and surprising dignity.

Teddy Boy is not a documentary dealing with facts and figures. Its emphasis is on human beings.

Zip-Gun Angels - Albert L. Quandt

A Powerful Story of Teen-Age Girls Who Fight Recklessly for Life and Love!

ORIGINAL NOVELS NO. 721

1ST PRINTING 1952

NEW YORK, USA

The streets swarm with them. The city slums pour them out into the world, and then leave them to take care of themselves...and in their way, the girls do. Some of them take the "easy" road, with men in bars and on street corners. Others fight for decency and a home and future. Some are beautiful, and dream of using their bodies to win fame and applause...and men with the money to give them what they want. Others are plain...but they're still female, with all the urges and yearnings of ripening women.

They all start out on the streets of the city...and from the beginning it's a battle...for food, for decency, for love. Boys in the same predicament form themselves into gangs, and fight with broken bottles and zip-guns, defying the world to stop them...

THIS IS THE STORY OF ONE GIRL WHO FOUGHT WITH EVERYTHING SHE HAD, WITH BODY, WITH HEART, AND FRESH YOUNG BEAUTY...AS THE LEADER OF A NEW KIND OF STREET GANG...A GANG OF TOUGH AND BEAUTIFUL GIRLS.

Undertow - Helen Parkhurst

The Story of a Boy called Tony

G. BELL & SONS

1ST PRINTING 1964

LONDON, UK

Undertow is the biography of Tony who, in his twenty-seven years of life, experienced crime, punishment and redemption. Bred in New York's Harlem, the son of Italian parents, he took part in his first hold-up at the age of thirteen and graduated to a five-year sentence for peddling heroin at the age of seventeen. On his release from prison he married and attempted to earn an honest living but, through his wife's folly, was obliged to leave the sanctuary he had found in Connecticut and return to New York. There he was shot by his former associates and his body thrown on the municipal garbage dump.

Tony's story is true. Indeed, large sections of it are vividly told in his own words recorded by Miss Helen Parkhurst, the distinguished educationalist who became Tony's counsellor during his long struggle to break with his past. Her book has all the inevitability, and something of the poetry, of a Greek tragedy-a man's progress towards personal integrity which is achieved only at the cost of his life.

In his foreword Mr C. A. Joyce writes: 'This is a book that should be in every Teachers' Training College Library and it should be read by all who are concerned with the adolescent in Clubs and elsewhere...If you do pick it up you will find it difficult to put down.' Tony's history will be of close interest to the general reader as well as to teachers, to all who work with young people, and to sociologists.