Peanuts Classics #[nn]
☆ Be the first to review + Add to your collection — Join freeThe 1970 Holt, Rinehart and Winston Peanuts Classics hardback is one of only five large-format compilation volumes that HRW released in this oversized format, and it stands as one of the earliest book collections to reprint strips featuring Franklin — the strip's first Black character, who had debuted in the daily newspaper on July 31, 1968. By gathering daily strips alongside 92 pages of full-color Sunday features in a single oversize volume, it offered readers the most visually ambitious presentation of Charles M. Schulz's work that the original publisher had yet attempted. The breadth of characters indexed — spanning the full ensemble from Charlie Brown and Snoopy through Franklin, Peppermint Patty, and Woodstock — captures Peanuts at the precise cultural moment when its cast had reached its richest diversity and its television and cultural reach were at their peak.
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Holt, Rinehart and Winston had been Peanuts' primary book publisher since 1960, when Rinehart & Co. merged with Henry Holt and the John C. Winston Company to form HRW — a relationship that stretched back to Rinehart's first Peanuts paperback reprint in 1952. The large-format hardback compilation series, of which this 1970 volume is a part, represented a departure from the publisher's standard digest-sized paperback 'Original' line: these oversized volumes measured roughly 9 by 11 inches and ran approximately 200 pages, with either five daily strips or one Sunday strip per page, the Sundays rendered in color. A book-club edition was produced alongside the trade first edition, reflecting the demand for Schulz's work in institutional and home-library markets at the height of the strip's popularity.
Trivia · 8 facts
- Published by Holt, Rinehart and Winston, New York, 1970 (first edition stated); ISBN 0030850789 / 978-0030850783.
- One of five large-format hardback compilations HRW released in this oversized format (approximately 9×11 inches, roughly 200 pages), distinct from the publisher's standard 5×8-inch digest paperback 'Originals' line.
- Contains popular daily comic strips plus 92 pages of Sunday full-color features — making it among the most visually complete single-volume Peanuts collections the original publisher produced.
- All content written, drawn, and lettered solely by Charles M. Schulz, who completed 17,897 daily and Sunday strips entirely by his own hand across his career.
- Indexed characters include Franklin, whose newspaper debut was July 31, 1968 — meaning this 1970 hardback is among the earliest book-format reprints to include strips featuring Peanuts' first Black character, introduced by Schulz following correspondence with Los Angeles schoolteacher Harriet Glickman after the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
- A book-club edition was issued alongside the trade first edition, evidenced by surviving copies that lack dust jackets and carry book-club designations.
- The title 'Peanuts Classics' was reused in the 1990s by the same company (by then operating as Owl Books / Henry Holt) for an entirely separate paperback reissue line — a frequent source of cataloging confusion between the 1970 hardback compilation and the later digest-sized paperbacks.
- HRW's reprint relationship with the Peanuts strip dates to 1952 under predecessor Rinehart & Co., making this 1970 volume part of nearly two decades of continuous strip-collection publishing by the same corporate lineage.
Cast · 11 characters
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Full plot ⚠ may contain spoilers
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Charlie Brown and Lucy disagree about what is worse.
Plot details indexed by the Grand Comics Database (CC BY-SA).
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