A GOOD BOOK THAT IS MISSING

Tales Retold For Easy Reading is a series in English literature published by Oxford University Press we all miss today. It was a series written on widest of topics, starting from 'crime and detection', 'world's greatest stories', 'Gulliver's Travels Stories', 'Myths and Legends' to Shakespeare's vast literature. One such series "The stories of Shakespeare's plays" was an excellent compilation edited by H.G.Wyatt and first published in England in 1939 and then subsequent editions and reprints brought out from India at a rather low cost. Priced only at seventy-five paise in India in 1968 and stories retold by H.G.Wyatt and David Fullerton in the most easily soluble form was a gift of the Magi you can imagine of. The first volume of this series which contained only seventy six pages in paperback bearing the best of Shakespeare's creativity like 'The merchant of Venice', 'Macbeth', 'The Tempest', 'Hamlet' and 'King Lear' is unmistakably a reader's delight. Schools in those days invariably kept this book in their curriculum in seventh standard or class seven, as you like to call it. This book is one, I still remember reading during my off-study hours not remembering that I hated school books. Such lucid was the writing that it would unknowingly make you buy a 'Complete Works of Shakespeare' ,  you later realizing that how difficult it is to read his plays and enjoy. This series would be an ideal choice of a parent who stresses his or her child to learn correct English and while learning the language develop a subtle taste for good literature. There are some hand drawn illustrations of poor standard in it but it matters little when you are engrossed with the book. If this is re-published today, imagine how beautiful computer generated images can be incorporated. I failed to find in the internet someone from the field of  English literature reviewing this book and demanding a publisher to publish it. This writing of mine, I believe can barely inspire an adult to shed his sweat in some old book's store, for his offspring.