The Penguin Guide to Recorded Classical Music

In 1951 the British publisher Collins issued a guide to recorded classical music under the title The Record Guide. The authors were Edward Sackville-West and Desmond Shawe-Taylor. Supplements were published in 1952 and 1953; a new edition of the guide was published in 1955, and a final supplement was issued the following year. Four years later the Long Playing Record Library (LPRL) published The Stereo Record Guide, edited by Ivan March and written by March, Edward Greenfield and Denis Stevens. Nine editions were published between 1960 and 1974; Robert Layton joined the panel of reviewers in 1968 and Stevens left after that year's two volumes. The LPRL issued two editions of A Guide to the Bargain Classics, in 1962 and 1965. ==Penguin guides==

Penguin Books published three editions of The Penguin Guide to the Bargain Classics by March and his co-authors, in 1966, 1970 and 1972. In 1975 they published The Penguin Stereo Record Guide containing 1114 pages and selling for £3.50. From then until 2012, March and his team wrote a succession of Penguin guides. When the guides started it was still possible to include almost all available stereo classical recordings in the coverage. ==Ratings==

The early editions of the guides used a one to three star rating system: :*** "An outstanding performance and recording in every way." :** "A good performance and recording of today's normal high standard." :* "A fair performance, reasonably well or well recorded." Brackets round one or more of the stars indicated some reservations about its inclusion and readers were advised to refer to the text. From the outset the authors included an additional annotation – a rosette. "Unlike our general evaluations, in which we have tried to be consistent, a Rosette is a quite arbitrary compliment by a member of the reviewing team to a recorded performance which he finds shows special illumination, magic, a spiritual quality, or even outstanding production values that place it in a very special class." ==Reputation==

In 2011 Ron Cerabona wrote in The Canberra Times, "I owe Penguin a lot: I've discovered a lot of wonderful music through it", but, "If you want to start a flame war on a classical music newsgroup, all you have to do is bring up the allegation of British bias in Penguin (and/or Gramophone)". From a British perspective Terry Grimley wrote in The Birmingham Post in 2005: In the same year The Independent commented that the guide "may be faulted in detail, yet no similar publication matches its consistency and authority in the mainstream classics" In the US, The Denver Post commented, "It is no secret that, even in the classical field, more compact discs are made than any one person can reasonably expect to be able to listen to. What's a poor collector to do? One answer for years has been The Penguin Guide to Compact Discs". In a survey of guides to recorded music in 1997 The Charlotte Observer called the Penguin Guide: ==Notes, references and sources==

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