The Lost World

A land before time - a journey beyond belief. … Unlucky in love, but desperate to prove himself in an adventure, journalist Ed Malone is sent to test the infamous and hot-tempered Professor Challenger on his bizarre South American expedition findings - not least his sketches of a strange plateau and the monstrous creatures that appear to live there.

But rather than being angry at his questions, Challenger invites him along on his next field trip. Malone is delighted: until it becomes clear that the Professor was telling the truth about the terrible lost world he has discovered.

Will they all survive the terrifying creatures on the island? And will anyone ever believe what they saw there?

Penguin Press Designer Corali Bickford-Smith on Penguin Reds' Boys Own Books which include The Thirty-Nine Steps, The Man Who Was Thursday, The Riddle of the Sands, The Lost World, She and The Prisoner of Zenda.

I wanted the covers to have action-packed illustrations, and to hark back to the golden age of adventure books. I did a lot of research, particularly in the London Library, getting a feel of books from the period. One book I found brilliant for lettering inspiration was Nineteenth century ornamented Typefaces by Nicolete Gray. I made the decision to control the use of colour to give the series a strong identity, while each cover individually contains elements - particularly the typography - appropriate to the time it was first published.

There is an unashamed nostalgia about them, though they aren't facsimilies of old books - they are designed to have a freshness and appeal for younger readers encountering these stories for the first time, as well as for their parents' and grandparents' generations. I spent a lot of time reading each book and picked out the action scenes I thought would make strong illustrations. Then I drew roughs and passed these over to different illustrators and got a lettering artist on board to recreate the type I had found. I really enjoyed working on this project and I think that comes through in the finished product.