A Beatle’s reading list: John Lennon’s favourite books

By editorial board on June 8, 2020

Growing up in the tough and brutal working-class streets of Liverpool was not always the kindest place for a sensitive soul like John Lennon.

As a young lad in Liverpool, musician and peace activist John Lennon often struggled to connect with his peers and would seek solace in the pages of his aunt’s library.(radicalread)

In a 1980 interview, conducted just a few months before his death, he says: “It was scary as a child, because there was nobody to relate to. Neither my auntie nor my friends nor anybody could ever see what I did. It was very, very scary and the only contact I had was reading about an Oscar Wilde or a Dylan Thomas or a Vincent van Gogh – all those books that my auntie had that talked about their suffering because of their visions. Because of what they saw, they were tortured by society for trying to express what they were.

John Lennon’s favourite books:

Beano
Ronald Searle (illustrations)
Little Women by Louisa May Alcott
Curiosities of Natural History by Francis T. Buckland
Alice in Wonderland & Through the Looking Glass by Lewis Carroll
Jabberwocky by Lewis Carroll
Just William by Richmal Crompton
Howl by Allen Ginsberg
Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
Finnegan’s Wake by James Joyce
On The Road by Jack Kerouac
The Psychedelic Experience: A Manual Based on the Tibetan Book of the Dead by Timothy Leary
Grapefruit by Yoko Ono
1984 by George Orwell
Animal Farm by George Orwell
Complete Tales and Poems by Edgar Allen Poe
Born Under a Bad Sign by Tony Palmer & Ralph Steadman
Forty-One Years In India by Field Marshal Lord Roberts
Major Works by Jonathan Swift
Major Works by Alfred Lord Tennyson
Under Milkwood by Dylan Thomas
I Am Also a You by Jay Thompson
Writings and Drawings by James Thurber
Complete Works by Oscar Wilde
Source: Radical Reads

 

His lifelong love of wordplay found a much wider audience with the publication of his first book, In His Own Write, in 1964. A work of nonsense literature, its success led to another book deal just a year later, and the story-writing process brought a profound change to his songs: “I’d have a separate songwriting John Lennon who wrote songs for the meat market, and I didn’t consider them (the lyrics or anything) to have any depth at all; to express myself I would write A Spaniard in the Works or In His Own Write, the personal stories which were expressive of my personal emotions. Then I started being me about the songs, not writing them objectively, but subjectively.”

But he never set out to be published: “There was never any real thought of writing a book. It was something that snowballed. If I hadn’t been a Beatle I wouldn’t have thought of having the stuff published; I would have been crawling around broke and just writing it and throwing it away. I might have been a Beat poet!”⠀

Early this year Lennon's SCI-FI magazine went on auction.

John Lennon’s fascination with aliens and UFOs has been well documented throughout his life. As a member of one of the most famous bands of all time, The Beatles, Lennon often talked about his belief in alien life and even wrote about it. From his earlier years with wife Cynthia to his sighting in New York over the East River in 1974, the Beatles member continued to be mesmerized with life in space, even as much as to site visitations from aliens when he was married to Yoko Ono. On March 30, 2019, Kruse GWS Auctions will offer an extraordinary collection of John Lennon’s personal drawings and Sci-Fi magazines, long collected by an old friend who shared his passion.

On July 6, 1957, a fellow Liverpoolian befriended Lennon when he was performing as part of the Quarrymen, the group that eventually evolved into The Beatles. The band appeared at St. Peters Church in Woolten Village in Liverpool.

The young man shared a fascination with space and would strike up a conversation with John who was looking through a UFO magazine. From there on, the friendship would continue on for decades and John and the gentleman exchanged letters, drawings, opinions, and magazines about UFOs, space and all things extraterrestrial.

During this time, John Lennon would send his new friend drawings and some of his personal science fiction books and magazines, all of which was kept throughout the gentlemen’s life and even after Lennon moved to the U.S. The drawings and magazines to be auctioned for the very first time, are now being offered by the man’s stepson who has also chronicled the story of the unlikely friendship.

There are four drawings done in crayon and pencil and date to the 1950s and early 1960s. The drawings along with the collection of personal sci-fi books and magazines represent a passion of a member of the world’s most famous band – The Beatles.

Two of the pieces being offered are in red crayon, early examples of his characteristic line drawings. One appears to be someone smoking a marijuana joint, while the back side features a character possessing an excessively large nose and sad face. The other captures two inversed smiling faces, a kind of yin and yang, staring at each other. The other two drawings are done in pencil and apparently drew inspiration from his first wife, Cynthia. In one drawing a UFO is seen flying above her head and the the word “Cyn” on it and John’s initials ‘JL’ incorporated into the illustration.

The second pencil drawing again captures Cynthia, and this time, displays John’s full initials of ‘JWL’ (John Winston Lennon). Lennon’s personal Sci-Fi magazine collection includes Science Fiction Analog and New Worlds Science Fiction. Each drawing will be accompanied by a copy of the letter received from the stepson describing the two’s lifelong friendship. One of the lots will include the original document.

As the flying saucer drawing and science fiction collection attest, Lennon had long been obsessed with aliens and outer space fantasies. His fixation on ET visits and claims of alien abduction culminated in his most infamous sighting, when he saw a UFO from his balcony fly over the East River on August 23, 1974.

In 1974, John and his lover May Pang (during his separation from Yoko) were living in an apartment overlooking New York’s East River, when John saw what he described as a UFO. Lennon went on to describe it along with its path and May Pang has been noted as saying John screamed out the window “wait – take me with you.”

The drawings will be offered in museum quality glass and frames and sold individually, and the sci-fi collection will be sold in one lot. The crayon drawings measure 4.5″ x 3″ and 4″ x 3.25″ and the pencil pieces are 8.5″ x 6″ and 5.5″ x 3.5.”

To register or for more info, please visit: www. gwsauctions.com

 

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