To celebrate its 60th anniversary circa 1995, Penguin Books released several boxed sets of "Penguin 60s", miniature books about sixty pages in length. The books were also sold individually.
The main set, with black spines, (, ) contained 60 "classic" works. The UK set with orange spines ( / ) focused on 20th century or contemporary writers and contained 60 books. A similar set of 60 orange spine books was released for the US market with 13 books in common with the UK set. Smaller, ten item sets focusing on biography/autobiography, travel and cookery were also issued. A children's set () was released, consisting of 30 volumes.
Further books in the series were planned but appear to have been cancelled. Thirty Obituaries of Wisden selected by Matthew Engel (, ) was published but did not appear in any of the other sets of books. Ten orange spine books were released as a limited edition boxed set sold through Blackwell's bookshops in the UK () with Stephen King's Umney's Last Case the only title appearing in the US orange spine editions. The other nine titles in the Blackwells set were unique titles that did not appear in the other sets (Surprised by Summer by David Lodge, Postcards from Summer by Peter Mayle, Lizzie Borden by Angela Carter, The Girl Who Loved Graveyards by P.D. James, Expulsion from Paradise by Howard Jacobson, Meeting Bilal by Esther Freud, The Rock of Crack as Big as the Ritz by Will Self, The Pocket Watchmaker by Richard Dawkins and Scenes from the Dwarf by Rob Grant and Doug Naylor). Another 19 titles appear to have been planned as they are listed at the back of the biography and travel editions but do not appear to have been published.
The American orange spine set and British orange spine set only had 13 books that were in common. They are:
Hans Christian Andersen – The Emperor's New Clothes
Anton Chekov – The Black Monk and Peasants
Roald Dahl – Lamb to the Slaughter and Other Stories
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle – The Man with the Twisted Lip and The Adventure of the Devil's Foot Graham Greene – Under the Garden Rudyard Kipling – Baa, Baa, Black Sheep and The Gardener Gabriel García Márquez – Bon Voyage, Mr President and Other Stories Herman Melville – Bartleby and The Lightning-rod Man Michel De Montaigne – Four Essays John Mortimer – Rumpole and the Younger Generation Edgar Allan Poe – The Pit and the Pendulum and Other Stories Edith Wharton – Madame de Treymes Oscar Wilde – The Happy Prince and Other Stories
Series
Black set (60) () Jane Austen – The history of England Apollonius of Rhodes – Jason and the Argonauts Aristophanes – Lysistrata Balzac – The Atheist's Mass Boccaccio – Ten Tales from the Decameron Beowulf and Grendel Buddha's Teachings James Boswell – Meeting Dr Johnson Matsuo Bashō – Haiku Thomas Carlyle – On Great Men Charlotte Perkins Gilman – The Yellow Wallpaper Charlotte Brontë – Mina Laury Cao Xueqin – Dream of the Red Chamber Miguel de Cervantes – The Jealous Extremaduran Castiglione – Etiquette for Renaissance Gentlemen Joseph Conrad – The Secret Sharer Charles Darwin – The Galapagos Islands Dostoyevsky – The Gentle Spirit Bernal Díaz del Castillo – The Betrayal of Montezuma Frederick Douglass – The Education of Frederick Douglass Dante – The First Three Circles of Hell De Quincey – The pleasures and pains of opium Daniel Defoe – A Visitation of the Plague Benjamin Franklin – The Means and Manner of Obtaining Virtue Flaubert- A Simple Heart Gibbon – Reflections of the Fall of Rome Gilgamesh and Enkidu Goethe – Letters from Italy George Eliot – The Lifted Veil Henry David Thoreau – Civil Disobedience Henry James – The Lessons of the Master Homer – The Rage of Achilles Homer – The Voyages of Odysseus Franz Kafka – The Judgement and In the Penal Colony Krishna's Dialogue on the Soul Kate Chopin – The Kiss Heinrich von Kleist – The Marquise of O Livy – Hannibal's Crossing of the Alps Machiavelli – The Art of War Thomas Malory – The Death of King Arthur Maupassant – Boule de Suif Nietzsche – Zarathustra's Discourses Ovid – Orpheus in the Underworld Edgar Allan Poe – The Murders in the Rue Morgue Plato – Phaedrus Rimbaud – A Season in Hell Jean-Jacques Rousseau – Meditations of a Solitary Walker Saint Augustine – Confessions of a Sinner Robert Louis Stevenson – Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde Thomas à Kempis – Counsels on the Spiritual Life Two Viking Romances Tolstoy – The Death of Ivan Ilyich Tales of Cú Chulainn Turgenev – Three Sketches from a Hunter Diary Mark Twain – The Man That Corrupted Hadleyburg Tacitus – Nero and the Burning of Rome Vasari – Lives of Three Renaissance Artists Edith Wharton – Souls Belated Oscar Wilde – The Portrait of Mr W. H. Walt Whitman – Song of Myself