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Penguin packs off rare books... at half price!Posted at 8:40AM Thursday 08 Jul 2004 Penguin has quietly sold 100,000 books from its archives to a dealer in Dallas, to the astonishment of booksellers and collectors.Early editions of classics by Graham Greene, Agatha Christie and John Steinbeck are among titles that are now lining the shelves of Half Price Books' 80 stores across America. Many of them date back to the 1930s, and books by John Buchan and James Joyce bear scribblings, editorial notes and design instructions that could have been invaluable for future historians and researchers, experts said yesterday. The collection includes a copy of Aku-Aku signed by its author, Thor Heyerdahl, the Norwegian ethnologist and adventurer who led the Kon-Tiki expedition in 1947. The book is dedicated to Sir Allen Lane, who founded Penguin in the 1930s. A senior publishing figure said: "If this is so, it is a major cultural crime."
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