Book Review: The African Queen – #6 In My Modern Library Classics Challenge

The Book Review

Classics Challenge

This is the sixth book in my 2022 Modern Library Classics Challenge. I’m challenging myself to read at least one of my Modern Library classics each month this year, though I’m a bit late in finishing this one. It’s part of my overall goal to read 100 books for the year. 

I own over 40 Modern Library editions that I collected in my first years out of college. At the time I was buying them, I admired them more as “art” than as books. I just liked the idea of pocket sized hardcovers, which is interesting since at the time most of the books I was buying to read were trade-sized paperbacks. Treated as art on my shelf, I haven’t ever read my Modern Library editions. So, it’s about time to do so now that I’m retired.

Book 1: The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway

Book 2: A Portrait of the Artist As a Young Man by James Joyce

Book 3: The Rise of Silas Lapham by William Dean Howells

Book 4: Out of Africa by Isak Dinesen

Book 5: The Daring Young Man on the Flying Trapeze by William Saroyan

Borrow or Purchase The African Queen here:

  Borrow this book: Find out if your library has the ebook or audiobook available through OverDrive or Libby.

Buy this book: Amazon | Barnes & Noble | AbeBooks* | Powell’s | ThriftBooks 

Support Indie Bookstores: Buy this book directly from Bookshop.org* or find an Independent Bookstore near you*. 

Visit my Bookshop.org shop to see all my reviewed books. 

Title: The African Queen

Author: C.S. Forester

Publisher: Little, Brown and Company (Hachette Book Group)*

Publish Date: June 30,1984*

ISBN-13: 9780316289108

Publisher’s List Price: $16.99 (Paperback as of 07/2022)

* The African Queen was originally published in 1935, by Little, Brown and Company. 

My Modern Library edition appears to have been printed sometime between 1940 and 1975, and unusually long range likely prolonged by the popularity of the movie. This estimate is based on the book’s dust jacket, and the research on ModernLib.com. 

Modern Library is now an imprint of Penguin Random House (PRH). Random House doesn’t list an edition of The African Queen on their website. (As of April 2020, PRH is a subsidiary of the privately held German conglomerate Bertelsmann.)