Penda Press Four: Blair Govinder - Halfway

Book four is sometimes known to Penda scholars as "the first really readable one". And it's true to an extent - Osking Tether, pretty much a middle aged nobody with a desk job behind the scenes at Manchester University before this novel, came up with something that on one level seems a rather florid personal memoir of a lost soul adrift in a modern world but on another is densely and deftly plotted and actively very funny. Govinder is a charming hero and if he is a variation upon Osking Tether himself, it's quite a skill to make him neither a self pitying caricature or wish fulfilment figure but just an amiable everyman whose reactions to the strange world he is thrust into suddenly (upon his fortieth birthday, hence the name of the book) make the reader simply enjoy being in his company. There would be a sequel too, an even greater book.

Penda Press Three: The Mind Awakened

Henrietta Emily Gopping was something of a legendary figure in 1930s artistic circles. By all accounts she was frequently the life and soul of the party (which many have seen as probably a euphemism for being something of a lush), particularly as a mimic of other guests. This mimicry seemed to hide a far more satirical intent and her private writings seem to show a writer who could prick the pretensions of the most ghastly of the artistic circles with but a few words. She seemed to have a skill at pastiche and parody that was truly rare - and came in handy for the third book put out by Penda. As a good friend of Miriam Dunstable particularly, she was asked to put out "some sort of psychic spiritualist book" and this is what she came up with: either a genuine book about the spirit world and how close it is to our own... or a very, very po-faced hatchet job on the overly credulous. The latter seems more likely, as the chapter about ley lines and trams particularly suggests. It didn't sell very well, but has become something of a cult favourite in the last few years.

Penda Press Two: Sidcup's Revenge

The second book to be published by Penda Press was "Sidcup's Revenge" a rather heavy handed attempt to write a piece of Evelyn Waugh inspired satire. No one is entirely certain who "A Friend of Eleven" was, but theories seem to point towards him being a friend of regular Penda contributor, and close friend of the publishers, Vincent Tether. Not much is known about this chief suspect, Dr Martin Pennifer, other than a few bits published in books around the Mass Observation movement and a couple of contributions to Punch (one of which shares a very similar setting and tone to the most memorable sequence in the novel, Lady Glenister's disastrous midnight picnic at the bird sanctuary, hence the possible link to Pennifer*) - he certainly wrote no novels under that name. Future books under the nom de plume would be much more focussed in terms of the satirical content, but there is a certain charm to the sprawl of this first novel to be published by the Dunstables.

*As ever, sterling research work done by Penda expert Patrick Hopwood-Hall

Penda Press One: How Goes the Cornfield?

The first book to be published by Penda Press was a bit of a heavy handed memoir about growing up in the Wessex countryside by one Father Nahum Bohuss: priest, poet and - depending on your point of view - either a literary visionary or a breathlessly naive fool. It would get better from here...

The Books

Penda Press 1943 - 1948

1.   How Goes the Cornfield? – Father Bohuss

2.   Sidcup’s Revenge: A Comedy – “A Friend of Eleven”

3.   The Mind Awakened – H E Gopping

4.   Blair Govinder: Halfway – V Osking Tether

5.   A Childhood Reversed – Henry Dunstable

6.   After the Dawn: New Thoughts on Organic Theology – Ivo Walklate

7.   I Am Heavenfield – Fritz Ganglius

8.   Beauhelius Awakes! – Glenda Spring

9.   Broken Free: A Life’s Promise – H E Gopping

10.  Wermend and Pybba: A Romance – “Barable”

11.  Simon in Danger – Nancy Penright

12.  The Child of Never – Miriam Dunstable

13.  The Fancies of Mr Gillicrap – “A Friend of Eleven”

14.  Hwicce’s Kingdom – Abigail Manyon

15.  Young Henry’s Love  for the Sun – Mrs Ruddock

16.  Beauhelius over Mercia – Glenda Spring

17.  The Travails of Wormwood Sykes – Jerome Fisk

18.  Twenty Daughters, Twenty Sons (and Others) – Fritz Ganglius

19.  That Black Sky – Father Bohuss

20.  Five Times a Window – Emily Furnival

21.  The Alarming Swarming of Bees  – “Iolanthe”

22.  Night’s Black Touch – Eli Cylph

23.  The Deaths at Priory Edge – Nancy Penright

24.  To All A Beacon – Andrew Mukonge

25.  Death’s Black Veil – ed. Henry Dunstable

26.  A Garland for Miriam – ed. Abigail Manyon

27.  Sweet Acanthus – "MOTH"

28.  Absence/ Presence – Ivo Walklate

29.  The Prippenproops Drop By – “A Friend of Eleven”

30.  Upon Cerebration Hill – H E Gopping

31.  Tales of Old Woodlands – translated by “Iolanthe”

WITHDRAWN (Possibly “Breaking Through” – “Havenot”)

32.  The Elucidations of Euclid Bunce – Jerome Fisk

33.  Nockery Vale – Father Bohuss

34.  Criminal Matters – ed. Abigail and John Manyon

35.  Percival Small: The Collected Stories of Mirian Dunstable ed. Henry Dunstable

36.  Christmas Garlands – ed. Henry Dunstable

37.  Old Father Beauhelius – Glenda Spring

38.  The Fat Old Man of the Buttercupes – Fritz Ganglius

39.  The Nine Scarabs – Oliver Westgate

40.  Beacons: To Be a Light in a Dark World – Andrew Mukonge

41.  The Tree of Light – Nancy Penright

42.  The Hollow Bowl – “Iolanthe”

43.  Blair Govinder: Journey Complete – V Osking Tether

44.  The Short Night of Elizabeth Mimms – Claude Halls

45.  Mr Euclid Bunce Investigates – Jerome Fisk

46.  And What Is He To You?  - H E Gopping

47.  Darker Yet – Eli Cylph

48.  The Face of the Seven Sisters – Fritz Ganglius

49.  The Veil Falls – Father Bohuss

50.  Penda’s world – ed. Dunstable and Mayon

Penda Press One

Before we delve too deeply into the history of Penda Press and go through the books published by Henry Dunstable and his collaborators, here are a couple of bits of memorabilia... the earliest business cards of the company and the ones used by Penda after Henry's wife Mirian died tragically and the Abigail and John Manyon became his primary collaborators. These were the cards used up to the final book published by them, "Penda's World".