Penguin Books is a British
publishing house
Publishing is the activity of making information, literature, music, software and other content available to the public for sale or for free. Traditionally, the term refers to the creation and distribution of printed works, such as books, newsp ...
. It was co-founded in 1935 by
Allen Lane
Sir Allen Lane (born Allen Lane Williams; 21 September 1902 – 7 July 1970) was a British publisher who together with his brothers Richard and John Lane founded Penguin Books in 1935, bringing high-quality paperback fiction and non-fictio ...
with his brothers Richard and John, as a line of the publishers
The Bodley Head
The Bodley Head is an English publishing house, founded in 1887 and existing as an independent entity until the 1970s. The name was used as an imprint of Random House Children's Books from 1987 to 2008. In April 2008, it was revived as an adul ...
, only becoming a separate company the following year.
["About Penguin – company history"](_blank)
, Penguin Books. Penguin revolutionised publishing in the 1930s through its inexpensive
paperback
A paperback (softcover, softback) book is one with a thick paper or paperboard cover, and often held together with adhesive, glue rather than stitch (textile arts), stitches or Staple (fastener), staples. In contrast, hardcover (hardback) book ...
s, sold through
Woolworths
Woolworth, Woolworth's, or Woolworths may refer to:
Businesses
* F. W. Woolworth Company, the original US-based chain of "five and dime" (5¢ and 10¢) stores
* Woolworths Group (United Kingdom), former operator of the Woolworths chain of shops ...
and other stores for
sixpence, bringing high-quality fiction and non-fiction to the mass market. Its success showed that large audiences existed for serious books. It also affected modern British popular culture significantly through its books concerning politics, the arts, and science.
Penguin Books is now an
imprint
Imprint or imprinting may refer to:
Entertainment
* ''Imprint'' (TV series), Canadian television series
* "Imprint" (''Masters of Horror''), episode of TV show ''Masters of Horror''
* ''Imprint'' (film), a 2007 independent drama/thriller film
...
of the worldwide
Penguin Random House
Penguin Random House LLC is an Anglo-American multinational corporation, multinational conglomerate (company), conglomerate publishing company formed on July 1, 2013, from the merger of Penguin Group and Random House.
On April 2, 2020, Bertels ...
, a conglomerate formed in 2013 by its merger with American publisher
Random House
Random House is an American book publisher and the largest general-interest paperback publisher in the world. The company has several independently managed subsidiaries around the world. It is part of Penguin Random House, which is owned by Germ ...
, a subsidiary of German media conglomerate
Bertelsmann
Bertelsmann SE & Co. KGaA () is a German private multinational conglomerate corporation based in Gütersloh, North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany. It is one of the world's largest media conglomerates, and is also active in the service sector and ...
. Formerly,
Penguin Group
Penguin Group is a British trade book publisher and part of Penguin Random House, which is owned by the German media conglomerate Bertelsmann. The new company was created by a merger that was finalised on 1 July 2013, with Bertelsmann initial ...
was wholly owned by British
Pearson plc
Pearson plc is a British multinational corporation, multinational publishing and education company headquartered in London, England.
It was founded as a construction business in the 1840s but switched to publishing in the 1920s.J. A. Spende ...
, the global media company which also owned the ''
Financial Times
The ''Financial Times'' (''FT'') is a British daily newspaper printed in broadsheet and published digitally that focuses on business and economic current affairs. Based in London, England, the paper is owned by a Japanese holding company, Nik ...
''. When Penguin Random House was formed, Pearson had a 47% stake in the new company, which was reduced to 25% in July 2017. Since April 2020, Penguin Random House has been a wholly owned subsidiary of Bertelsmann. It is one of the largest English-language publishers formerly known as the "Big Six"—now the "Big Five", along with
Holtzbrinck
Holtzbrinck Publishing Group () is a privately held German company based in Stuttgart which owns publishing companies worldwide. Through Macmillan Publishers, it is one of the Big Five English-language publishing companies.
In 2015, it me ...
/
Macmillan
MacMillan, Macmillan, McMillen or McMillan may refer to:
People
* McMillan (surname)
* Clan MacMillan, a Highland Scottish clan
* Harold Macmillan, British statesman and politician
* James MacMillan, Scottish composer
* William Duncan MacMillan ...
,
Hachette Hachette may refer to:
* Hachette (surname)
* Hachette (publisher), a French publisher, the imprint of Lagardère Publishing
** Hachette Book Group, the American subsidiary
** Hachette Distribution Services, the distribution arm
See also
* Hachett ...
,
HarperCollins
HarperCollins Publishers LLC is one of the Big Five English-language publishing companies, alongside Penguin Random House, Simon & Schuster, Hachette, and Macmillan. The company is headquartered in New York City and is a subsidiary of News Cor ...
and
Simon & Schuster
Simon & Schuster () is an American publishing company and a subsidiary of Paramount Global. It was founded in New York City on January 2, 1924 by Richard L. Simon and M. Lincoln Schuster. As of 2016, Simon & Schuster was the third largest publ ...
.
Penguin Books has its registered office in the
City of Westminster
The City of Westminster is a City status in the United Kingdom, city and London boroughs, borough in Inner London. It is the site of the United Kingdom's Houses of Parliament and much of the British government. It occupies a large area of cent ...
,
London
London is the capital and largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary down to the North Sea, and has been a majo ...
,
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Wales to its west and Scotland to its north. The Irish Sea lies northwest and the Celtic Sea to the southwest. It is separated from continental Europe b ...
.
["Maps"](_blank)
. City of Westminster. Retrieved on 28 August 2009.
Origins
![Allen Lane Penguin plaque 8 Vigo Street](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/db/Allen_Lane_Penguin_plaque_8_Vigo_Street.jpg)
The first Penguin
paperback
A paperback (softcover, softback) book is one with a thick paper or paperboard cover, and often held together with adhesive, glue rather than stitch (textile arts), stitches or Staple (fastener), staples. In contrast, hardcover (hardback) book ...
s were published in 1935, but at first only as an
imprint
Imprint or imprinting may refer to:
Entertainment
* ''Imprint'' (TV series), Canadian television series
* "Imprint" (''Masters of Horror''), episode of TV show ''Masters of Horror''
* ''Imprint'' (film), a 2007 independent drama/thriller film
...
of
The Bodley Head
The Bodley Head is an English publishing house, founded in 1887 and existing as an independent entity until the 1970s. The name was used as an imprint of Random House Children's Books from 1987 to 2008. In April 2008, it was revived as an adul ...
(of
Vigo Street
Vigo Street (originally Vigo Lane) is a short street in central London that is named after the Anglo-Dutch naval victory over the French and Spanish in the 1702 Battle of Vigo Bay. It has important literary connections.
Location
The street run ...
, London) with the books originally distributed from the
crypt
A crypt (from Latin ''crypta'' "vault") is a stone chamber beneath the floor of a church or other building. It typically contains coffins, sarcophagi, or religious relics.
Originally, crypts were typically found below the main apse of a chur ...
of
Holy Trinity Church Marylebone
Holy Trinity Church, in Marylebone, Westminster, London, is a Grade I listed former Anglican church, built in 1828 and designed by John Soane. In 1818 Parliament passed an act setting aside one million pounds to celebrate the defeat of Napoleon. ...
.
Anecdotally, Lane recounted how it was his experience with the poor quality of reading material on offer at Exeter railway station that inspired him to create cheap, well designed quality books for the mass market. However the question of how publishers could reach a larger public had been the subject of a conference at Rippon Hall, Oxford in 1934 which Lane had attended. Though the publication of literature in paperback was then associated mainly with poor quality lurid fiction, the Penguin brand owed something to the short-lived
Albatross
Albatrosses, of the biological family Diomedeidae, are large seabirds related to the procellariids, storm petrels, and diving petrels in the order Procellariiformes (the tubenoses). They range widely in the Southern Ocean and the North Pacifi ...
imprint of British and American reprints that briefly traded in 1932.
Inexpensive paperbacks did not initially appear viable to Bodley Head, since the deliberately low price of 6
d. made profitability seem unlikely. This helped Lane purchase
publication right
Publication right is a type of copyright granted to the publisher who first publishes a previously unpublished work after that work's original copyright has expired. It is in almost all respects the same as standard copyright, but excludes moral r ...
s for some works more cheaply than he otherwise might have, since publishers were convinced of the business's short-term prospects. In the face of resistance from the traditional book trade, it was the purchase of 63,000 books by
Woolworths Group
Woolworth, Woolworth's, or Woolworths may refer to:
Businesses
* F. W. Woolworth Company, the original US-based chain of "five and dime" (5¢ and 10¢) stores
* Woolworths Group (United Kingdom), former operator of the Woolworths chain of shops ...
that paid for the project outright, confirmed its worth, and allowed Lane to establish Penguin as a separate business in 1936. By March 1936, ten months after the company's launch on 30 July 1935, one million Penguin books had been printed.
Only paperback editions were published until the King Penguin series debuted in 1939, and latterly the ''Pelican History of Art'' was undertaken; these works, considered unsuitable as paperbacks because of their lengths and copious illustrations on art paper, were cloth-bound.
Penguin Books Inc was incorporated in 1939 to satisfy US copyright law; and, despite being a late entrant into an already well established paperback market, enjoyed further success under vice president
Kurt Enoch
Kurt Enoch (22 November 1895 – 15 February 1982) was a German-born publisher who co-founded Albatross Books in Germany and Penguin Books Inc. and New American Library in the United States, bringing high-quality paperback fiction and non-fict ...
with such titles as ''What Plane Is That'' and ''The New Soldier Handbook''.
The company's expansion saw the hiring of
Eunice Frost
Eunice Frost (1914–1998), was a British publisher. She started in 1936, working for Penguin Books, as secretary to co-founder Allen Lane
Sir Allen Lane (born Allen Lane Williams; 21 September 1902 – 7 July 1970) was a British publishe ...
—first as a secretary, then as editor, and ultimately as a director, who was to have a pivotal influence in shaping the company. In 1945 she was entrusted with the reconstruction of Penguin Inc after the departure of its first managing director,
Ian Ballantine
Ian Keith Ballantine (February 15, 1916 – March 9, 1995) was an American publisher who founded and published the paperback line of Ballantine Books from 1952 to 1974 with his wife, Betty Ballantine. The Ballantines were both inducted by the ...
.
From the outset, design was essential to Penguin's success. Avoiding the illustrated gaudiness of other paperback publishers, Penguin opted for the simple appearance of three horizontal bands, the upper and lower of which were colour-coded according to the series to which the title belonged; this is sometimes referred to as the horizontal grid. In the central white panel, the author and title were printed in
Gill Sans
Gill Sans is a humanist sans-serif typeface designed by Eric Gill and released by the British branch of Monotype from 1928 onwards.
Gill Sans is based on Edward Johnston's 1916 "Underground Alphabet", the corporate font of London Underground. ...
, and in the upper band was a
cartouche
In Egyptian hieroglyphs, a cartouche is an oval with a line at one end tangent to it, indicating that the text enclosed is a royal name. The first examples of the cartouche are associated with pharaohs at the end of the Third Dynasty, but the fea ...
with the legend "Penguin Books". The initial design was created by then 21-year-old office junior
Edward Young
Edward Young (c. 3 July 1683 – 5 April 1765) was an English poet, best remembered for ''Night-Thoughts'', a series of philosophical writings in blank verse, reflecting his state of mind following several bereavements. It was one of the mos ...
, who also drew the first version of the Penguin
logo
A logo (abbreviation of logotype; ) is a graphic mark, emblem, or symbol used to aid and promote public identification and recognition. It may be of an abstract or figurative design or include the text of the name it represents as in a wordma ...
. Series such as Penguin Specials and The Penguin Shakespeare had individual designs (by 1937, only S1 and B1-B18 had been published).
The colour schemes included: orange and white for general fiction, green and white for crime fiction, cerise and white for travel and adventure, dark blue and white for biographies, yellow and white for miscellaneous, red and white for drama; and the rarer purple and white for
essays
An essay is, generally, a piece of writing that gives the author's own argument, but the definition is vague, overlapping with those of a letter, a paper, an article, a pamphlet, and a short story. Essays have been sub-classified as formal ...
and
belles lettres
is a category of writing, originally meaning beautiful or fine writing. In the modern narrow sense, it is a label for literary works that do not fall into the major categories such as fiction, poetry, or drama. The phrase is sometimes used pejora ...
and grey and white for world affairs. Lane actively resisted the introduction of cover images for several years. Some recent publications of literature from that time have duplicated the original look.
In 1937, Penguin's headquarters were established at
Harmondsworth
Harmondsworth is a village in the London Borough of Hillingdon in the county of Greater London with a short border to the south onto Heathrow Airport, London Heathrow Airport. The village has no railway stations, but adjoins the M4 motorway and t ...
, close to
Heathrow
Heathrow Airport (), called ''London Airport'' until 1966 and now known as London Heathrow , is a major international airport in London, England. It is the largest of the six international airports in the London airport system (the others bei ...
Airport.
War years
The
Second World War
World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...
saw Penguin emerge as a national institution. Though it had no formal role in the war effort, it was integral to it thanks to the publication of such bestselling manuals as ''Keeping Poultry and Rabbits on Scraps'' and ''Aircraft Recognition,'' and supplying books for the services and British
POW
A prisoner of war (POW) is a person who is held captive by a belligerent power during or immediately after an armed conflict. The earliest recorded usage of the phrase "prisoner of war" dates back to 1610.
Belligerents hold prisoners of war ...
s. In the war's six years, it printed some 600 titles and started 19 new series. At a time of enormous increase in the demand for books, Penguin enjoyed a privileged place among its peers.
Paper rationing was the besetting problem of publishers in wartime, with the
fall of France
The Battle of France (french: bataille de France) (10 May – 25 June 1940), also known as the Western Campaign ('), the French Campaign (german: Frankreichfeldzug, ) and the Fall of France, was the German invasion of France during the Second World ...
cutting off supply of
esparto
Esparto, halfah grass, or esparto grass is a fiber produced from two species of perennial grasses of north Africa, Spain and Portugal. It is used for crafts, such as cords, basketry, and espadrilles. ''Stipa tenacissima'' and ''Lygeum spartum ...
grass, one of the constituents of the
pulp
Pulp may refer to:
* Pulp (fruit), the inner flesh of fruit
Engineering
* Dissolving pulp, highly purified cellulose used in fibre and film manufacture
* Pulp (paper), the fibrous material used to make paper
* Molded pulp, a packaging material
* ...
Penguin used. When rationing was introduced in March 1940, the
Ministry of Supply
The Ministry of Supply (MoS) was a department of the UK government formed in 1939 to co-ordinate the supply of equipment to all three British armed forces, headed by the Minister of Supply. A separate ministry, however, was responsible for aircr ...
allocated a quota to each publisher as a percentage of the amount that firm used between August 1938 and August 1939. This was particularly advantageous to Penguin, who, as a volume printer, was very successful that year. Further, in a deal with the
Canadian Government
The government of Canada (french: gouvernement du Canada) is the body responsible for the federal administration of Canada. A constitutional monarchy, the Crown is the corporation sole, assuming distinct roles: the executive, as the ''Crown-in-C ...
, Penguin agreed to exclusively publish editions for their armed forces, for which they were paid in tons of paper.
By January 1942 the Book Production War Economy Agreement regulations came into force which determined rules on paper quality, type size and margins. Consequently Penguin eliminated dust jackets, trimmed margins and replaced sewn bindings with metal staples. Aside from the noticeable deterioration in paperbacks' appearance, it became a practical impossibility to publish books of more than 256 pages, resulting in some titles falling out of print for want of material. In addition to their paper allocation, in 1941 Penguin secured a deal with the
War Office
The War Office was a department of the British Government responsible for the administration of the British Army between 1857 and 1964, when its functions were transferred to the new Ministry of Defence (MoD). This article contains text from ...
, through Bill William's connections with
ABCA and
CEMA, to supply the troops with books through what was known as the Forces Book Club. Penguin received 60 tons a month from Paper Supply in return for 10 titles a month in runs of 75,000 at 5d.
[Wood, ''Dignified Flippancy'', 1983, p. 23.]
Originally, every paperback carried the message, "FOR THE FORCES – Leave this book at a Post Office when you have read it, so that men and women in the Services may enjoy it too" at the bottom of the back cover, inviting the reader to take advantage of the
Royal Mail
, kw, Postya Riel, ga, An Post Ríoga
, logo = Royal Mail.svg
, logo_size = 250px
, type = Public limited company
, traded_as =
, foundation =
, founder = Henry VIII
, location = London, England, UK
, key_people = * Keith Williams ...
's free transmission of books to the forces. However, demand exceeded supply on the home front, leading Lane to seek a monopoly on
army
An army (from Old French ''armee'', itself derived from the Latin verb ''armāre'', meaning "to arm", and related to the Latin noun ''arma'', meaning "arms" or "weapons"), ground force or land force is a fighting force that fights primarily on ...
books made specifically for overseas distribution. Their established paper supply put Penguin in an especially strong position after the war as rationing continued. For this reason, and for the popular prestige the company enjoyed, many of Penguin's competitors had no choice but to concede paperback reprint rights to it.
Post-war history
In 1945, Penguin began what would become one of its most important branches, the
Penguin Classics
Penguin Classics is an imprint of Penguin Books under which classic works of literature are published in English, Spanish, Portuguese, and Korean among other languages. Literary critics see books in this series as important members of the Western ...
, with a translation of
Homer
Homer (; grc, Ὅμηρος , ''Hómēros'') (born ) was a Greek poet who is credited as the author of the ''Iliad'' and the ''Odyssey'', two epic poems that are foundational works of ancient Greek literature. Homer is considered one of the ...
's ''
Odyssey
The ''Odyssey'' (; grc, Ὀδύσσεια, Odýsseia, ) is one of two major Ancient Greek literature, ancient Greek Epic poetry, epic poems attributed to Homer. It is one of the oldest extant works of literature still widely read by moder ...
'' by
E. V. Rieu
Emile Victor Rieu CBE (10 February 1887 – 11 May 1972) was a British classicist, publisher, poet and translator. He initiated the Penguin Classics series of books in 1946 and edited it for twenty years.
Biography
Rieu was born in London, the y ...
. Between 1947 and 1949, the German typographer
Jan Tschichold
Jan Tschichold (born Johannes Tzschichhold, also known as Iwan Tschichold, or Ivan Tschichold; 2 April 1902 – 11 August 1974) was a German calligrapher, typographer and book designer. He played a significant role in the development of gra ...
redesigned 500 Penguin books, and left Penguin with a set of influential rules of design principles brought together as the ''
Penguin Composition Rules
Penguin Composition Rules were the guidelines written by typographer Jan Tschichold for use in composing the pages and typography of Penguin Books. The rules were embodied in a four-page booklet of typographic instructions for editors and composito ...
'', a four-page booklet of
typographic
Typography is the art and technique of arranging type to make written language legible, readable and appealing when displayed. The arrangement of type involves selecting typefaces, point sizes, line lengths, line-spacing ( leading), and ...
instructions for editors and compositors. Tschichold's work included the woodcut illustrated covers of the classics series (also known as the medallion series), and with
Hans Schmoller
Hans Peter Schmoller (9 April 1916 – 25 September 1985) was a German and British graphic designer who worked as Head of Typography and Design at Penguin Books from 1949 to 1976. During his Penguin years he played a crucial role in postwar B ...
, his eventual successor at Penguin, the vertical grid covers that became the standard for Penguin fiction throughout the 1950s. By this time the paperback industry in the UK had begun to grow, and Penguin found itself in competition with then fledgeling
Pan Books
Pan Books is a publishing imprint that first became active in the 1940s and is now part of the British-based Macmillan Publishers, owned by the Georg von Holtzbrinck Publishing Group of Germany.
Pan Books began as an independent publisher, est ...
. Many other series were published such as the ''
Buildings of England
The Pevsner Architectural Guides are a series of guide books to the architecture of Great Britain and Ireland. Begun in the 1940s by the art historian Sir Nikolaus Pevsner, the 46 volumes of the original Buildings of England series were published b ...
'', the ''Pelican History of Art'' and ''Penguin Education''.
In 1949, Harry F. Paroissien (who had been Sir Allen Lane's deputy) was sent by him to the United States to set up Penguin Books in Baltimore, Maryland.
By 1960, a number of forces were to shape the direction of the company, the publication list and its graphic design. On 20 April 1961, Penguin became a publicly listed company on the London Stock Exchange; consequently, Allen Lane had a diminished role at the firm though he was to continue as Managing Director. New techniques such as
phototypesetting
Phototypesetting is a method of setting type. It uses photography to make columns of type on a scroll of photographic paper.
It has been made obsolete by the popularity of the personal computer and desktop publishing (digital typesetting).
Th ...
and
offset-litho printing were to replace
hot metal
''Hot Metal'' (1986–88) is a British sitcom produced by London Weekend Television about the newspaper industry.
Written by David Renwick and Andrew Marshall, it is very much a continuation in style from their previous sitcom '' Whoops Apoc ...
and
letterpress printing
Letterpress printing is a technique of relief printing. Using a printing press, the process allows many copies to be produced by repeated direct impression of an inked, raised surface against sheets or a continuous roll of paper. A worker comp ...
, dramatically reducing cost and permitting the printing of images and text on the same paper stock, thus paving the way for the introduction of photography and novel approaches to graphic design on paperback covers. In May 1960,
Tony Godwin
Anthony Richard James Wylie Godwin (17 December 1919 – 15 March 1976) was an influential British publisher of the 1960s/1970s. His contribution to the publishing industry is recognized in the form of the Tony Godwin Memorial Trust.
Born in Led ...
was appointed as editorial adviser, rapidly rising to Chief Editor from which position he sought to broaden the range of Penguin's list and keep up with new developments in graphic design. To this end, he hired
Germano Facetti
Germano Facetti (5 May 1926 – 8 April 2006) was an Italian graphic designer who headed design at Penguin Books from 1962 to 1971.
Biography
Born in Milan, Facetti was arrested in 1943, age 17, for putting up anti- Fascist posters. He was ...
in January 1961, who was to decisively alter the appearance of the Penguin brand. Beginning with the crime series, Facetti canvassed the opinion of a number of designers including
Romek Marber
Romek Marber (25 November 1925 – 30 March 2020) was a Polish-born British graphic designer and academic known for his work illustrating the covers of Penguin Books. He retired in 1989, becoming a Professor Emeritus of Middlesex University.
...
for a new look to the Penguin cover. It was Marber's suggestion of what came to be called the Marber grid along with the retention of traditional Penguin colour-coding that was to replace the previous three horizontal bars design and set the pattern for the design of the company's paperbacks for the next twenty years. Facetti rolled out the new treatment across the Penguin line starting with crime, the orange fiction series, then Pelicans, Penguin Modern Classics, Penguin Specials, and Penguin Classics, giving an overall visual unity to the company's list. A somewhat different approach was taken to the Peregrine, Penguin Poets, Penguin Modern Poets, and Penguin Plays series. There were over a hundred different series published in total.
Just as Lane well judged the public's appetite for paperbacks in the 1930s, his decision to publish ''
Lady Chatterley's Lover
''Lady Chatterley's Lover'' is the last novel by English author D. H. Lawrence, which was first published privately in 1928, in Italy, and in 1929, in France. An unexpurgated edition was not published openly in the United Kingdom until 1960, w ...
'' by
D. H. Lawrence
David Herbert Lawrence (11 September 1885 – 2 March 1930) was an English writer, novelist, poet and essayist. His works reflect on modernity, industrialization, sexuality, emotional health, vitality, spontaneity and instinct. His best-k ...
in 1960 boosted Penguin's notoriety. The novel was at the time unpublished in the United Kingdom and the predicted
obscenity
An obscenity is any utterance or act that strongly offends the prevalent morality of the time. It is derived from the Latin ''obscēnus'', ''obscaenus'', "boding ill; disgusting; indecent", of uncertain etymology. Such loaded language can be use ...
trial, ''
R v Penguin Books Ltd
''R v Penguin Books Ltd'' was the public prosecution in the United Kingdom of Penguin Books under the ''Obscene Publications Act 1959'' for the publication of D. H. Lawrence's 1928 novel ''Lady Chatterley's Lover''. The trial took place over ...
'', not only marked Penguin as a fearless publisher, it also helped drive the sale of at least 3.5 million copies. Penguin's victory in the case heralded the end to the
censorship
Censorship is the suppression of speech, public communication, or other information. This may be done on the basis that such material is considered objectionable, harmful, sensitive, or "inconvenient". Censorship can be conducted by governments ...
of books in the UK, although censorship of the written word was only finally defeated after the ''Inside Linda Lovelace'' trial of 1978.
Pearson takeover
By the end of the 1960s Penguin was in financial trouble, and several proposals were made for a new operating structure. These included ownership by a consortium of universities, or joint ownership by the
Cambridge University Press
Cambridge University Press is the university press of the University of Cambridge. Granted letters patent by Henry VIII of England, King Henry VIII in 1534, it is the oldest university press
A university press is an academic publishing hou ...
and
Oxford University Press
Oxford University Press (OUP) is the university press of the University of Oxford. It is the largest university press in the world, and its printing history dates back to the 1480s. Having been officially granted the legal right to print books ...
, but none of them came to anything. Sir Allen Lane died on 7 July, and six weeks later, Penguin was acquired by
Pearson PLC
Pearson plc is a British multinational corporation, multinational publishing and education company headquartered in London, England.
It was founded as a construction business in the 1840s but switched to publishing in the 1920s.J. A. Spende ...
on 21 August 1970. A new emphasis on profitability emerged and, with the departure of Facetti in 1972, the defining era of Penguin book design came to an end.
Penguin merged with long-established U.S. publisher
Viking Press
Viking Press (formally Viking Penguin, also listed as Viking Books) is an American publishing company owned by Penguin Random House. It was founded in New York City on March 1, 1925, by Harold K. Guinzburg and George S. Oppenheim and then acquire ...
in 1975.
The first Penguin Bookshop opened in Covent Garden in 1980.
In 1985, Penguin purchased British hardback publisher
Michael Joseph and in 1986,
Hamish Hamilton
Hamish Hamilton Limited was a British book publishing house, founded in 1931 eponymously by the half-Scot half-American Jamie Hamilton (''Hamish'' is the vocative form of the Gaelic Seumas eaning James ''James'' the English form – which was ...
. After these acquisitions, Penguin moved its offices to central London (27 Wrights Lane, W8 5TZ). Thus 'Harmondsworth' disappeared as the place of publication after half a century. (The warehouse at Harmondsworth would remain in operation until 2004.)
Also in 1986, Penguin purchased American publisher
New American Library
The New American Library (also known as NAL) is an American publisher based in New York, founded in 1948. Its initial focus was affordable paperback reprints of classics and scholarly works as well as popular and pulp fiction, but it now publishe ...
(NAL) and its hard-cover affiliate
E. P. Dutton
E. P. Dutton was an American Publishing, book publishing company. It was founded as a book retailer in Boston, Massachusetts, in 1852 by Edward Payson Dutton. Since 1986, it has been an imprint of Penguin Group.
Creator
Edward Payson Dutton ( ...
.
New American Library had originally been Penguin U.S.A. and had been spun off in 1948 because of the high complexity of import and export regulations. Penguin repurchased it in order to extend its reach into the US market, and NAL saw the move as a way to gain a hold in international markets.
Penguin published
Deborah Lipstadt
Deborah Esther Lipstadt (born March 18, 1947) is an American historian, best known as author of the books ''Denying the Holocaust'' (1993), ''History on Trial: My Day in Court with a Holocaust Denier'' (2005), ''The Eichmann Trial'' (2011), and ' ...
's book ''Denying the Holocaust'', which accused
David Irving
David John Cawdell Irving (born 24 March 1938) is an English author and Holocaust denier who has written on the military and political history of World War II, with a focus on Nazi Germany. His works include ''The Destruction of Dresden'' (19 ...
of
Holocaust denial
Holocaust denial is an antisemitic conspiracy theory that falsely asserts that the Nazi genocide of Jews, known as the Holocaust, is a myth, fabrication, or exaggeration. Holocaust deniers make one or more of the following false statements:
...
. Irving sued Lipstadt and Penguin for libel in 1998 but lost in a much publicised
court case
A legal case is in a general sense a dispute between opposing parties which may be resolved by a court, or by some equivalent legal process. A legal case is typically based on either civil or criminal law. In most legal cases there are one or mor ...
. Other titles published by Penguin which gained media attention, and controversy, include ''Massacre'' by
Siné
Maurice Sinet (; 31 December 1928 – 5 May 2016), known professionally as Siné (), was a French political cartoonist. His work is noted for its anti-capitalism, anti-clericalism, anti-colonialism, anti-semitism, and anarchism.
Biography
As a ...
, ''
Spycatcher
''Spycatcher: The Candid Autobiography of a Senior Intelligence Officer'' (1987) is a memoir written by Peter Wright, former MI5 officer and Assistant Director, and co-author Paul Greengrass. He drew on his own experiences and research into ...
'', which was suppressed in the UK by the government for a time, and ''
The Satanic Verses
''The Satanic Verses'' is the fourth novel of British-Indian writer Salman Rushdie. First published in September 1988, the book was inspired by the life of the Islamic prophet Muhammad. As with his previous books, Rushdie used magical realism ...
'', leading to its author
Salman Rushdie
Sir Ahmed Salman Rushdie (; born 19 June 1947) is an Indian-born British-American novelist. His work often combines magic realism with historical fiction and primarily deals with connections, disruptions, and migrations between Eastern and Wes ...
having to go into hiding for some years after
Ayatollah Khomeini
Ruhollah Khomeini, Ayatollah Khomeini, Imam Khomeini ( , ; ; 17 May 1900 – 3 June 1989) was an Iranian political and religious leader who served as the first supreme leader of Iran from 1979 until his death in 1989. He was the founder of ...
of Iran issued a ''
Fatwā
A fatwā ( ; ar, فتوى; plural ''fatāwā'' ) is a legal ruling on a point of Islamic law (''sharia'') given by a qualified '' Faqih'' (Islamic jurist) in response to a question posed by a private individual, judge or government. A jurist i ...
'', an edict amounting to a sentence of death against him.
In 2006, Penguin attempted to involve the public in collaboratively writing a novel on a
wiki
A wiki ( ) is an online hypertext publication collaboratively edited and managed by its own audience, using a web browser. A typical wiki contains multiple pages for the subjects or scope of the project, and could be either open to the pu ...
platform. They named this project
A Million Penguins
''A Million Penguins'' was an experimental collaborative fiction framed as a "wiki-novel". It was launched in 2007 by Penguin Books in collaboration with Kate Pullinger on behalf of the Institute of Creative Technologies at De Montfort Universi ...
. On 7 March 2007, the Penguin Books UK blog announced that the project had come to an end.
In 2014, the Penguin Hotline was created by Madeline McIntosh. An orange commemorative plaque was unveiled at Exeter train station in May 2017 to mark Lane's significant contribution to the publishing industry.
Imprints and series
Penguin Classics
Consonant with Penguin's corporate mission to bring canonical literature to the mass market, the company first ventured into publishing the classics in May 1938 with the issue of ''Penguin Illustrated Classics''. The savings from the author's payments on these royalty-free titles were instead invested in commissioning woodcut engravings from
Robert Gibbings
Robert John Gibbings (23 March 1889 – 19 January 1958) was an Irish artist and author who was most noted for his work as a wood engraver and sculptor, and for his books on travel and natural history.Martin J. Andrews, ''The Life and Work of R ...
and his circle emanating from the
Central School of Arts and Crafts
The Central School of Art and Design was a public school of fine and applied arts in London, England. It offered foundation and degree level courses. It was established in 1896 by the London County Council as the Central School of Arts and Cr ...
. The books were distinct from the rest of the Penguin marque in their use of a vertical grid (anticipating Tschichold's innovation of 1951) and
albertus
Albertus Magnus (c. 1200 – 15 November 1280), also known as Saint Albert the Great or Albert of Cologne, was a German Dominican friar, philosopher, scientist, and bishop. Later canonised as a Catholic saint, he was known during his life ...
typeface. The series was not a financial success and the list ceased after just ten volumes the same year it began. Penguin returned to classics with the printing of
E. V. Rieu
Emile Victor Rieu CBE (10 February 1887 – 11 May 1972) was a British classicist, publisher, poet and translator. He initiated the Penguin Classics series of books in 1946 and edited it for twenty years.
Biography
Rieu was born in London, the y ...
's translation of Homer's ''Odyssey'' in 1946, which went on to sell three million copies.
Penguin's commercial motivation was, as ever, populist; rendering the classics in an approachable modern English was therefore a difficult task whose execution did not always satisfy the critics. Dr Rieu said of his work that "I have done my best to make Homer easy reading for those who are unfamiliar with the Greek world." He was joined in 1959 by
Betty Radice
Betty Radice (3 January 1912 – 19 February 1985) was a literary editor and translator. She became joint editor of Penguin Classics, and vice-president of the Classical Association. Her English translations of classical and medieval Latin texts ...
who was first his assistant then, after his retirement in 1964, she assumed the role of joint editor with
Robert Baldick
Robert André Edouard Baldick, FRSL (9 November 1927 – April 1972), was a British scholar of French literature, writer, translator and joint editor of the Penguin Classics series with Betty Radice. He was a Fellow of Pembroke College, Oxford.
...
. As the publisher's focus changed from the needs of the marketplace to those of the classroom the criticism became more acute, Thomas Gould wrote of the series "most of the philosophical volumes in the Penguin series are bad – some very bad indeed. Since Plato and Aristotle are the most read philosophers in the world today, and since some of these Penguin translations are favourites among professional philosophers in several countries, this amounts to a minor crisis in the history of philosophy."
The imprint publishes hundreds of classics from the Greeks and Romans to Victorian Literature to modern classics. For nearly twenty years, variously coloured borders to the front and back covers indicated the original language. The second period of design meant largely black covers with a colour illustration on the front. In 2002, Penguin announced it was redesigning its entire catalogue, merging the original Classics list (known in the trade as "Black Classics") with what had been the old Penguin Twentieth-Century Classics list, though the silver covers for the latter have so far been retained for most of the titles. Previously this line had been called 'Penguin Modern Classics' with a pale green livery.
The redesign – featuring a colourful painting on the cover, with black background and orange lettering – was well received. However, the quality of the paperbacks themselves seemed to decrease: the spines were more likely to fold and bend. The paperbacks are also printed on non-acid-free pulp paper, which, by some accounts, tends to yellow and brown within a couple of years.
The text page design was also overhauled to follow a more closely prescribed template, allowing for faster copyediting and typesetting, but reducing the options for individual design variations suggested by a text's structure or historical context (for example, in the choice of text
typeface
A typeface (or font family) is the design of lettering that can include variations in size, weight (e.g. bold), slope (e.g. italic), width (e.g. condensed), and so on. Each of these variations of the typeface is a font.
There are list of type ...
). Prior to 2002, the text page typography of each book in the Classics series had been overseen by a team of in-house designers; this department was drastically reduced in 2003 as part of the production costs. The in-house text design department still exists, albeit much smaller than formerly. Recent design work includes the Penguin Little Black Classic series, designed by Claire Mason.
Pelican Books
Lane expanded the business in 1937 with the publication of
George Bernard Shaw
George Bernard Shaw (26 July 1856 – 2 November 1950), known at his insistence simply as Bernard Shaw, was an Irish playwright, critic, polemicist and political activist. His influence on Western theatre, culture and politics extended from ...
's ''
The Intelligent Woman's Guide to Socialism and Capitalism
''The Intelligent Woman's Guide to Socialism and Capitalism'' is a non-fiction book written by the Irish playwright George Bernard Shaw. The book employs socialist and Marxist thought. It was written in 1928 after his sister-in-law, Mary Stewart ...
'' under the
imprint, an imprint designed to educate the reading public rather than entertain. Recognising his own limitations Lane appointed
V. K. Krishna Menon
Vengalil Krishnan Krishna Menon (3 May 1896 – 6 October 1974) was an Indian academic, politician, and non-career diplomat. He was described by some as the second most powerful man in India, after the first Prime Minister of India, Jawa ...
as the first commissioning editor of the series, supported by an advisory panel consisting of
Peter Chalmers Mitchell
Sir Peter Chalmers Mitchell (23 November 1864 – 2 July 1945) was a Scottish zoologist who was Secretary of the Zoological Society of London from 1903 to 1935. During this time, he directed the policy of the Zoological Gardens of London and c ...
, H. L. Bales and
W. E. Williams. Several thousand Pelicans were published over the next half-century and brought high quality accounts of the current state of knowledge in many fields, often written by authors of specialised academic books. (The Pelican series, in decline for several years, was finally discontinued in 1984.)
''Aircraft Recognition'' (S82) by R. A. Saville-Sneath, was a bestseller. In 1940, the children's imprint
Puffin Books
Puffin Books is a longstanding children's imprint of the British publishers Penguin Books. Since the 1960s, it has been among the largest publishers of children's books in the UK and much of the English-speaking world. The imprint now belongs t ...
began with a series of non-fiction picture books; the first work of children's fiction published under the imprint was
Barbara Euphan Todd
Barbara Euphan Todd (9 January 1890 – 2 February 1976) was an English writer widely remembered for her ten books for children about a scarecrow called Worzel Gummidge. These were adapted for radio and television. The title story was chosen as ...
's ''
Worzel Gummidge
Worzel Gummidge is a scarecrow in British children's fiction, who originally appeared in a series of books by the English novelist Barbara Euphan Todd. '' the following year. Another series that began in wartime was the ''Penguin Poets'': the first volume was a selection of
Tennyson
Alfred Tennyson, 1st Baron Tennyson (6 August 1809 – 6 October 1892) was an English poet. He was the Poet Laureate during much of Queen Victoria's reign. In 1829, Tennyson was awarded the Chancellor's Gold Medal at Cambridge for one of his ...
's poems (D1) in 1941. Later examples are ''The Penguin Book of Modern American Verse'' (D22), 1954, and ''The Penguin Book of Restoration Verse'' (D108), 1968. J. M. Cohen's ''Comic and Curious Verse'' appeared in three volumes over a number of years.
Pelican Books was relaunched as a digital imprint in 2014, with four books published simultaneously on 1 May: ''Economics: A User's Guide'' by Ha-Joon Chang, ''The Domesticated Brain'' by the psychologist Bruce Hood, ''Revolutionary Russia'' by Orlando Figes and ''Human Evolution'' by the anthropologist Robin Dunbar.
Penguin Education
![PenguinEducation Wikipedia-Covers](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c6/PenguinEducation_Wikipedia-Covers.jpg)
In 1965 Penguin entered the field of educational publishing, Allen Lane's aim being to carry the radical and populist spirit of Pelicans into the schoolbook market. His final major initiative, the division was established as a separate publishing operation from Harmondsworth, and based in West Drayton in Middlesex. During its nine-year life it had a major impact on school books, breaking new ground in their concept and design and strongly influencing other publishers’ lists.
Among the most successful and influential series were Voices and Junior Voices, Connexions, and the Penguin English Project. Alongside these and other series, the imprint continued another Penguin tradition by producing Education Specials, titles which focussed on often controversial topics within education and beyond. They included highly topical books such as ''The Hornsey Affair'' and ''Warwick University Ltd'', reflecting the student unrest of the late 1960s and contributing to the intense national debate about the purpose of higher education. Other titles featured the radical and influential ideas about schooling propounded by writers and teachers from America and elsewhere.
Penguin Education also published an extensive range of Readers and introductory texts for students in higher education, notably in subjects such as psychology, economics, management, sociology and science, while for teachers it provided a series of key texts such as ''Language, the Learner and the School'' and ''The Language of Primary School Children''. Following Allen Lane's death in 1970 and the takeover the same year by Pearson Longman, the division discontinued publishing school books and was closed in March 1974. More than 80 teachers, educational journalists and academics signed a letter to the Times Educational Supplement regretting the closure of the influential imprint.
Penguin Specials
In November 1937, Penguin inaugurated a new series of short, polemical books under the rubric of ''Penguin Specials'' with the publication of
Edgar Mowrer
Edgar Ansel Mowrer (March 8, 1892 – March 2, 1977) was a Pulitzer Prize-winning American journalist and writer best known for his writings on international events.
Life and career
Born in Bloomington, Illinois to Rufus and Nellie née Scot ...
's ''Germany Puts the Clock Back''. Their purpose was to offer in-depth analysis of current affairs that would counter the perceived bias of the newspapers in addition to being the company's response to the popularity of
Gollancz's
Left Book Club
The Left Book Club was a publishing group that exerted a strong left-wing influence in Great Britain from 1936 to 1948.
Pioneered by Victor Gollancz, it offered a monthly book choice, for sale to members only, as well as a newsletter that acqui ...
. Whereas the Left Book Club was avowedly pro-Soviet, Penguin and Lane expressed no political preference as their editorial policy, though the widespread belief was that the series was left-leaning since the editor was the communist
John Lehmann
Rudolf John Frederick Lehmann (2 June 1907 – 7 April 1987) was an English poet and man of letters. He founded the periodicals ''New Writing'' and ''The London Magazine'', and the publishing house of John Lehmann Limited.
Biography
Born in ...
and its authors were, with a few exceptions, men of the left. Speed of publication and delivery (a turnaround of weeks rather than months) were essential to the topicality and therefore success of the Specials,
Genevieve Tabouis
Genevieve (french: link=no, Sainte Geneviève; la, Sancta Genovefa, Genoveva; 419/422 AD –
502/512 AD) is the patroness saint of Paris in the Catholic and Orthodox traditions. Her feast is on 3 January.
Genevieve was born in Nanterre and ...
's anti-appeasement tract ''Blackmail or War'' sold over 200,000 copies for example. However even this immediacy did not prevent them being overtaken by events:
Shiela Grant Duff
Shiela Grant Duff (11 May 1913 – 19 March 2004) was a British author, journalist and foreign correspondent. She was known for her opposition to appeasement before the Second World War.
Early years
The youngest daughter of Adrian Grant Du ...
's ''Europe and the Czechs'' only made it onto the bookstands on the day of the
Munich agreement
The Munich Agreement ( cs, Mnichovská dohoda; sk, Mníchovská dohoda; german: Münchner Abkommen) was an agreement concluded at Munich on 30 September 1938, by Nazi Germany, Germany, the United Kingdom, French Third Republic, France, and Fa ...
, but nevertheless went on to be a bestseller. Thirty-five Penguin Specials were published before the outbreak of war, including two novels
Hašek Hašek (feminine: Hašková) is a Czech-language surname that may refer to:
* Dominik Hašek, Czech ice hockey goaltender
** The asteroid 8217 Dominikhašek, named in honour of Dominik Hašek's Olympic gold
* Eliška Hašková-Coolidge, Special Ass ...
's ''Good Soldier Schweik'' and Bottome's ''The Mortal Storm''; they collectively made a significant contribution to the public debate of the time, with many of the more controversial titles being the subject of leading articles in the press.
After a hiatus between 1945 and 1949, the ''Penguin Specials'' continued after the war under the editorship of first Tom Maschler, then after 1961 Tony Godwin. The first title in the revived series was
William Gallacher's ''The Case for Communism''. Godwin initiated the "What's Wrong with Britain" series of Specials in the run up to the 1964 election, which constituted a platform for the New Left's brand of cultural analysis that characterised the leftist political radicalism of the 1960s. Indeed, Penguin Books contributed to the funds that set up
Richard Hoggart
Herbert Richard Hoggart (24 September 1918 – 10 April 2014) was a British academic whose career covered the fields of sociology, English literature and cultural studies, with emphasis on British popular culture.
Early life
Hoggart was bor ...
and
Stuart Hall's
Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies
Center or centre may refer to:
Mathematics
*Center (geometry), the middle of an object
* Center (algebra), used in various contexts
** Center (group theory)
** Center (ring theory)
* Graph center, the set of all vertices of minimum eccentricity ...
at Birmingham University in 1964. This brief period of revival for Penguin Specials in contributing to the national dialogue was not sustained after the departure of Godwin in 1967, and with the rise in television journalism the Specials series declined in significance through the 1970s and 1980s. The last Special was published in 1988 with Keith Thompson's ''Under Siege: Racism and Violence in Britain Today''.
In December 2011, Penguin launched nine titles as 'Penguin Shorts' which featured the iconic tri-band covers. These books were novellas and short length works of fiction and/or memoirs. In 2012 they became known as Penguin Specials following an agreement with The Economist made in March of that year. These works focused on the kind of topical journalism that was a feature of the original Penguin Specials. Subsequent Penguin Specials released in 2012 and 2013 continued to include both fiction, including the publication of the works shortlisted for the Monash Undergraduate Prize 2012, and topical journalism. Collected columns of cultural critics were also featured.
Puffin
Noel Carrington
Noel Lewis Carrington (1895 – 11 April 1989) was an English book designer, editor, publisher, and the originator of Puffin Books. He was the author of books on design and on recreation and also worked for Oxford University Press and Penguin Books ...
, an editor at ''
Country Life'' magazine, first approached Lane with the idea of publishing low-cost, illustrated non-fiction children's books in 1938. Inspired by the Editions Père Castor books drawn by
Rojan and the technique of autolithography used in the poster art of the time, Carrington's suggestion for what was to become the ''Puffin Picture Book'' series was adopted by Penguin in 1940 when, as Lane saw it, evacuated city children would need books on farming and natural history to help adjust to the country. The first four titles appeared in December 1940; ''War on Land'', ''War at Sea'', ''War in the Air'' and ''On the Farm'', and a further nine the following year. Despite Lane's intention to publish twelve a year paper and staff shortages meant only thirteen were issued in the first two years of the series. The Picture Books' 120 titles resulted in 260 variants altogether, the last number 116 Paxton Chadwick's ''Life Histories'', was issued ''hors série'' in 1996 by the Penguin Collector's Society.
Inexpensive paperback children's fiction did not exist at the time Penguin sought to expand their list into this new market. To this end
Eleanor Graham
Eleanor Graham (9 January 1896, in Walthamstow, England – 8 March 1984, in London) was a book editor and children's book author.
She worked for Muriel Paget's aid mission in Czechoslovakia before becoming an editor for publishers Heinemann an ...
was appointed in 1941 as the first editor of the ''Puffin Story Books'' series, a venture made particularly difficult due to the resistance of publishers and librarians in releasing the rights of their children's books. The first five titles (''
Worzel Gummidge
Worzel Gummidge is a scarecrow in British children's fiction, who originally appeared in a series of books by the English novelist Barbara Euphan Todd. '', ''Cornish Adventure'', ''
The Cuckoo Clock'', ''Garram the Hunter'' and ''
Smokey)'' were published in the three horizontal stripes company livery of the rest of the Penguin output, a practice abandoned after the ninth volume when
full-bleed colour illustrated covers were introduced, a fact that heralded the much greater design freedom of the Puffin series over the rest of Penguin's books.
Graham retired in 1961 and was replaced by
Kaye Webb
Kathleen ("Kaye") Webb (26 January 1914 – 16 January 1996), was a British editor and publisher. She was a recipient of the Eleanor Farjeon Award.
Early life and education
Kathleen Webb was born in Chiswick, London, in 1914, the second of ...
who presided over the department for 18 years in a period that saw greatly increased competition in the children's market as well as a greater sophistication in production and marketing. One innovation of Webb's was the creation of the Puffin Club in 1967 and its quarterly magazine ''Puffin Post'', which at its height had 200,000 members. The Puffin authors' list added
Arthur Ransome
Arthur Michell Ransome (18 January 1884 – 3 June 1967) was an English author and journalist. He is best known for writing and illustrating the ''Swallows and Amazons'' series of children's books about the school-holiday adventures of childre ...
,
Roald Dahl
Roald Dahl (13 September 1916 – 23 November 1990) was a British novelist, short-story writer, poet, screenwriter, and wartime fighter ace of Norwegian descent. His books have sold more than 250 million copies worldwide. Dahl has be ...
and
Ursula K. Le Guin
Ursula Kroeber Le Guin (; October 21, 1929 – January 22, 2018) was an American author best known for her works of speculative fiction, including science fiction works set in her Hainish universe, and the '' Earthsea'' fantasy series. She was ...
during Webb's editorship and saw the creation of the Peacock series of teenage fiction.
Tony Lacey took over Webb's editorial chair in 1979 at the invitation of Penguin managing director
Peter Mayer
Peter Michael Mayer (28 March 1936 – 11 May 2018) was a British-born American independent publisher who was president of The Overlook Press/Peter Mayer Publishers, Inc., a Woodstock, New York-based publishing company he founded with his father ...
when Puffin was one of the few profitable divisions of the beleaguered company. In line with Mayer's policy of more aggressive commercialisation of the Penguin brand Lacey reduced the number of Puffin imprints, consolidated popular titles under the Puffin Classics rubric and inaugurated the successful interactive
gamebook
A gamebook is a work of printed fiction that allows the reader to participate in the story by making choices. The narrative branches along various paths, typically through the use of numbered paragraphs or pages. Each narrative typically does not ...
series
Fighting Fantasy
''Fighting Fantasy'' is a series of single-player role-playing gamebooks created by Steve Jackson and Ian Livingstone. The first volume in the series was published in paperback by Puffin in 1982.
The series distinguished itself by mixing Choos ...
.
[Baines, ''Puffin by Design'', 2010, p. 147.] Complementary to the Puffin Club the Puffin School Book Club, addressed specifically to schools and organisations, grew significantly in this period helping to confirm Puffin market position such that by 1983 one in three Penguin books sold was a Puffin.
The Buildings of England
Nikolaus Pevsner
Sir Nikolaus Bernhard Leon Pevsner (30 January 1902 – 18 August 1983) was a German-British art historian and architectural historian best known for his monumental 46-volume series of county-by-county guides, ''The Buildings of England'' (1 ...
first proposed a series of volumes amounting to a county by county survey of the monuments of England in ten or more books to both the
Cambridge University Press
Cambridge University Press is the university press of the University of Cambridge. Granted letters patent by Henry VIII of England, King Henry VIII in 1534, it is the oldest university press
A university press is an academic publishing hou ...
and
Routledge
Routledge () is a British multinational publisher. It was founded in 1836 by George Routledge, and specialises in providing academic books, journals and online resources in the fields of the humanities, behavioural science, education, law, and ...
before the war, however for various reason his plan came to nothing. It was only through his involvement with Penguin that he was in a position to make a similar suggestion to Allen Lane and be accepted. Pevsner described the project of the Buildings of England as an attempt to fill the gap in English publishing for those multi-volume survey of national art familiar on the continent. In particular
Georg Dehio
Georg Gottfried Julius Dehio (22 November 1850 in Reval (now Tallinn), Governorate of Estonia, Russian Empire – 21 March 1932 in Tübingen), was a Baltic German art historian.
In 1900, Dehio started the "''Handbuch der deutschen Kunstgesch ...
's ''Handbuch der deutschen Kunstdenkmaler'', a topographical inventory of Germany's important historic buildings that was published in five volumes between 1905 and 1912. Though Pevsner's ambition for the series was to educate and inform the general public on the subtleties of English architectural history, the immediate commercial imperative was competition with the
Shell Guides
The Shell Guides were originally a 20th-century series of guidebooks on the counties of Britain. They were aimed at a new breed of car-driving metropolitan tourist, and for those who sought guides that were neither too serious nor too shallow and ...
edited by
John Betjeman
Sir John Betjeman (; 28 August 190619 May 1984) was an English poet, writer, and broadcaster. He was Poet Laureate from 1972 until his death. He was a founding member of The Victorian Society and a passionate defender of Victorian architecture, ...
of which 13 had been published by 1939. With Lane's agreement in 1945 Pevsner began work personally touring the county that was to be the subject of observation aided by notes drawn up by researchers. The first volume, ''Cornwall'', appeared in 1951, and went on to produce 46 architectural guidebooks between then and 1974 of which he wrote 32 alone and ten with assistance. As early as 1954 the series was in commercial difficulty and required sponsorship to continue, a grant from the
Leverhulme Trust
The Leverhulme Trust () is a large national grant-making organisation in the United Kingdom. It was established in 1925 under the will of the 1st Viscount Leverhulme (1851–1925), with the instruction that its resources should be used to suppo ...
amongst other sources secured its completion. The series continued after Pevsner's death in 1983, financed in part by the Pevsner Books Trust and published by
Yale University Press
Yale University Press is the university press of Yale University. It was founded in 1908 by George Parmly Day, and became an official department of Yale University in 1961, but it remains financially and operationally autonomous.
, Yale Universi ...
.
Pevsner's approach was of ''Kunstgeschichte'' quite distinct from the antiquarian interest of local and family history typical of English county histories. Consequently, there is little mention of monumental brasses, bells, tracery, the relationship of the building to the landscape. Nor is there much discussion on building techniques, nor industrial architecture, nor on Art Deco buildings, omissions that his critics hold have led to those subjects undervaluation and neglect. Nevertheless, Pevsner's synoptic study brought rigorous architectural history to an appreciative mass audience, and in particular he enlarged the perception of the Victorian achievement in architecture.
Magazine publishing
Wartime paper rationing, which had resulted in a generous allocation to Penguin, also forced the reduction in space for book reviews and advertising in the newspapers and was partly the cause of the folding of several
literary journal
A literary magazine is a periodical devoted to literature in a broad sense. Literary magazines usually publish short stories, poetry, and essays, along with literary criticism, book reviews, biographical profiles of authors, interviews and letters ...
s, consequently left a gap in the magazine market that Lane hoped to fill. In January 1941 the first issue of ''
Penguin New Writing'' appeared and instantly dominated the market with 80,000 copies sold compared to its closest rival,
Cyril Connolly
Cyril Vernon Connolly CBE (10 September 1903 – 26 November 1974) was an English literary critic and writer. He was the editor of the influential literary magazine ''Horizon'' (1940–49) and wrote '' Enemies of Promise'' (1938), which combin ...
's ''
Horizon
The horizon is the apparent line that separates the surface of a celestial body from its sky when viewed from the perspective of an observer on or near the surface of the relevant body. This line divides all viewing directions based on whether i ...
'', which mustered 3,500 sales in its first edition. ''Penguin New Writings editor
John Lehmann
Rudolf John Frederick Lehmann (2 June 1907 – 7 April 1987) was an English poet and man of letters. He founded the periodicals ''New Writing'' and ''The London Magazine'', and the publishing house of John Lehmann Limited.
Biography
Born in ...
was instrumental in introducing the British public to such new writers as
Lawrence Durrell
Lawrence George Durrell (; 27 February 1912 – 7 November 1990) was an expatriate British novelist, poet, dramatist, and travel writer. He was the eldest brother of naturalist and writer Gerald Durrell.
Born in India to British colonial pare ...
,
Saul Bellow
Saul Bellow (born Solomon Bellows; 10 July 1915 – 5 April 2005) was a Canadian-born American writer. For his literary work, Bellow was awarded the Pulitzer Prize, the Nobel Prize for Literature, and the National Medal of Arts. He is the only wr ...
and James Michie. Yet despite popular and critical success further rationing and, after 1945 declining sales, led monthly publication to become quarterly until the journal finally closed in autumn 1950 after 40 issues.
Though ''New Writing'' was the most durable of Penguin's periodicals it wasn't the publisher's only foray into journalism with ''Russian Review'', ''Penguin Hansard'' and ''Transatlantic'' begun during the war, and ''Penguin Film Review'', ''Penguin Music Magazine'', ''New Biology'' (1945 - 1960), ''Penguin Parade'', ''Penguin Science Survey'' and ''Penguin Science News'' having brief runs after 1945.
As of the 2020s, the publication ''The Happy Reader'' retails in Europe.
Popular Penguins
Penguin's Australian subsidiary released the Popular Penguins series late in 2008. The series has its own website. It was intended to include 50 titles, many of which duplicate those on the
Penguin Celebrations list but this was reduced to 49 titles as one of the 50, ''
Hegemony or Survival
''Hegemony or Survival: America's Quest for Global Dominance'' is a study of the American imperialism, American empire written by the American linguist and political activist Noam Chomsky, a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology ...
'' by
Noam Chomsky
Avram Noam Chomsky (born December 7, 1928) is an American public intellectual: a linguist, philosopher, cognitive scientist, historian, social critic, and political activist. Sometimes called "the father of modern linguistics", Chomsky is ...
, had to be withdrawn after its initial release as Penguin discovered they no longer held the rights to it.
Popular Penguins are presented as a return to Lane's original ethos good books at affordable prices. They have been published with a cover price of A$9.95, less than half of the average price of a paperback novel in Australia at the time of release.
Popular Penguins are presented in a more "authentic" interpretation of the Penguin Grid than that of the Celebrations series. They are correct size, when compared to an original 'grid-era' Penguin, and they use
Eric Gill
Arthur Eric Rowton Gill, (22 February 1882 – 17 November 1940) was an English sculptor, letter cutter, typeface designer, and printmaker. Although the ''Oxford Dictionary of National Biography'' describes Gill as ″the greatest artist-cra ...
's typefaces in a more or less exact match for
Jan Tschichold
Jan Tschichold (born Johannes Tzschichhold, also known as Iwan Tschichold, or Ivan Tschichold; 2 April 1902 – 11 August 1974) was a German calligrapher, typographer and book designer. He played a significant role in the development of gra ...
's "tidying" of
Edward Young
Edward Young (c. 3 July 1683 – 5 April 1765) was an English poet, best remembered for ''Night-Thoughts'', a series of philosophical writings in blank verse, reflecting his state of mind following several bereavements. It was one of the mos ...
's original three panel cover design. The covers are also printed on a card stock that mirrors the look and feel of 1940s and 50s Penguin covers. On the other hand, all of the Popular Penguins series are in Penguin Orange, and not colour-coded in the manner of the original designs and the "Celebrations" titles.
In July 2009, another 50 Popular Penguins were released onto the Australian and New Zealand markets. A further 10 titles written by New Zealand authors were released in March 2010. Another 75 titles were released in Australia in July 2010 to mark Penguin's 75th anniversary.
King Penguin Books
King Penguin Books was a series of pocket-sized
monographs
A monograph is a specialist work of writing (in contrast to reference works) or exhibition on a single subject or an aspect of a subject, often by a single author or artist, and usually on a scholarly subject.
In library cataloging, ''monograph ...
published by Penguin Books between 1939 and 1959. They were in imitation of the Insel-Bücherei series published in Germany by
Insel Verlag
Suhrkamp Verlag is a German publishing house, established in 1950 and generally acknowledged as one of the leading European publishers of fine literature. Its roots go back to the "arianized" part of the S. Fischer Verlag.
In January 2010 the ...
from 1912 onwards, and were pioneer volumes for Penguins in that they were their first volumes with hard covers and their first with colour printing.
The books originally combined a classic series of colour plates with an authoritative text. The first two volumes featured sixteen plates from
John Gould
John Gould (; 14 September 1804 – 3 February 1881) was an English ornithologist. He published a number of monographs on birds, illustrated by plates produced by his wife, Elizabeth Gould, and several other artists, including Edward Lear, ...
's ''The Birds of Great Britain'' (1873) with historical introduction and commentary on each plate by
Phyllis Barclay-Smith
Ida Phyllis Barclay-Smith (18 May 1902 – 2 January 1980) was a British ornithologist and editor of the ''Avicultural Magazine''. She led the International Council of Bird Preservation. In 1958, she became the first woman to receive an MB ...
, and sixteen plates from
Redouté's ''Roses'' (1817–24) with historical introduction and commentary by
John Ramsbottom. The third volume began the alternative practice of colour plates from a variety of sources.
Some of the volumes, such as
Nikolaus Pevsner
Sir Nikolaus Bernhard Leon Pevsner (30 January 1902 – 18 August 1983) was a German-British art historian and architectural historian best known for his monumental 46-volume series of county-by-county guides, ''The Buildings of England'' (1 ...
's ''Leaves of Southwell'' (1945) or
Wilfrid Blunt
Wilfrid Scawen Blunt (17 August 1840 – 10 September 1922), sometimes spelt Wilfred, was an English poet and writer. He and his wife Lady Anne Blunt travelled in the Middle East and were instrumental in preserving the Arabian horse bloodlines ...
's ''Tulipomania'' (1950) were pioneering works of scholarship. Others such as ''The Bayeux Tapestry'' by
Eric Maclagan
Sir Eric Robert Dalrymple Maclagan (4 December 1879 – 14 September 1951) was a British museum director and art historian.
Early years
Born on 4 December 1879 in London, Maclagan was the only son of William Dalrymple Maclagan, Archbishop of Yo ...
(1943), ''Ur : The First Phases'' by
Leonard Woolley
Sir Charles Leonard Woolley (17 April 1880 – 20 February 1960) was a British archaeologist best known for his Excavation (archaeology), excavations at Ur in Mesopotamia. He is recognized as one of the first "modern" archaeologists who excavat ...
(1946) or ''Russian Icons'' (1947) by
David Talbot Rice
David Talbot Rice (11 July 1903 in Rugby – 12 March 1972 in Cheltenham) was an English archaeologist and art historian. He has been described variously as a "gentleman academic" and an "amateur" art historian, though such remarks are no ...
were distillations by experts of their own pioneering works. Some volumes by experts went into revised editions, such as ''A Book of English Clocks'' (1947 and 1950) by R. W. Symonds.
Elizabeth Senior edited the series until 1941, after which Nikolaus Pevsner took over and remained editor until the end of the series. The series ran to 76 volumes.
The King Penguin imprint was briefly revived in 1981 for a series of contemporary works, chiefly fiction.
Pelican History of Art
Allen Lane
Sir Allen Lane (born Allen Lane Williams; 21 September 1902 – 7 July 1970) was a British publisher who together with his brothers Richard and John Lane founded Penguin Books in 1935, bringing high-quality paperback fiction and non-fictio ...
approached
Nikolaus Pevsner
Sir Nikolaus Bernhard Leon Pevsner (30 January 1902 – 18 August 1983) was a German-British art historian and architectural historian best known for his monumental 46-volume series of county-by-county guides, ''The Buildings of England'' (1 ...
in 1945 for a series of illustrated books that would match the success of the King Penguins. Pevsner recalled his response: "Allen said, 'You have done the King Penguins now and we are going on with them, but if you had your way, what else would you do?' I had my answer ready—and the answer was very formidable, because I outlined both ''The Pelican History of Art'' and ''The Buildings of England'' on the spot, each about 40 to 50 volumes. Allen said, 'Yes, we can do both,' and that was the end of the meeting." Pevsner's industry quickly bore fruit with the first contracts signed by 1946 for
John Summerson
Sir John Newenham Summerson (25 November 1904 – 10 November 1992) was one of the leading British architectural historians of the 20th century.
Early life
John Summerson was born at Barnstead, Coniscliffe Road, Darlington. His grandfather wo ...
's ''Architecture in Britain'',
Anthony Blunt
Anthony Frederick Blunt (26 September 1907 – 26 March 1983), styled Sir Anthony Blunt KCVO from 1956 to November 1979, was a leading British art historian and Soviet spy.
Blunt was professor of art history at the University of London, dire ...
's ''Art and Architecture in France'', and
Rudolf Wittkower
Rudolf Wittkower (22 June 1901 – 11 October 1971) was a British art historian specializing in Italian Renaissance and Baroque art and architecture, who spent much of his career in London, but was educated in Germany, and later moved to the Unite ...
's ''Italian art and architecture'', the first title ''Painting in Britain, 1530–1790'' by
Ellis Waterhouse
Sir Ellis Kirkham Waterhouse (16 February 1905 – 7 September 1985) was an English art historian and museum director who specialised in Roman baroque and English painting. He was Director of the National Galleries of Scotland (1949–52) ...
was issued in 1953. By 1955, Pevsner produced a prospectus for the series announcing the publication of four new volumes and a plan for the rest of the series totalling 47 titles. The ambition of the series exceeded previously published multi-volume histories of art such as André Michel's ''Histoire de l'art'' (17 vols., 1905–28), the ''Propyläen Kunstgeschichte'' (25 vols., 1923–35). Forty-one volumes were published by the time Pevsner retired from editing in 1977. His work was continued by Judy Nairn (his editorial assistant on the ''Buildings of England'') and the medievalist
Peter Lasko
Peter Erik Lasko (5 March 1924 – 18 May 2003) was a British art historian, Professor of Visual Art at the University of East Anglia, from 1965 to 1974, Director of the Courtauld Institute of Art, London, from 1974–85 and a Fellow of the B ...
.
Yale University Press
Yale University Press is the university press of Yale University. It was founded in 1908 by George Parmly Day, and became an official department of Yale University in 1961, but it remains financially and operationally autonomous.
, Yale Universi ...
acquired the series in 1992 when 45 titles had been completed; by 2004 they had published 21 volumes, mostly revisions of existing editions. New volumes continue to be produced in the 2010s, and new editions of older ones.
For Penguin the series was a departure from their commercial mainstay of paperbacks as the histories of art were the first large format, illustrated hardback books they had produced. Despite their relatively high price they were a financial success, yet for Pevsner they were intended primarily as graduate level texts in what was, for the English speaking world, the newly emerging academic discipline of art history. Nevertheless, the series was criticised from within the academy for its evident biases. Many of its authors were German émigrés, consequently there was a methodological preference for the ''kunstwissenschaft'' practiced in Vienna and Berlin between the wars; a
formalism
Formalism may refer to:
* Form (disambiguation)
* Formal (disambiguation)
* Legal formalism, legal positivist view that the substantive justice of a law is a question for the legislature rather than the judiciary
* Formalism (linguistics)
* Scient ...
that ignored the social context of art. Moreover, the weight given to some subjects seemed disproportionate to some critics, with seven of its 47 volumes dedicated to
English art
English art is the body of visual arts made in England. England has Europe's earliest and northernmost ice-age cave art. Prehistoric art in England largely corresponds with art made elsewhere in contemporary Britain, but early medieval Anglo-Sax ...
, a "tributary of the main European current" as the ''
Burlington Magazine
''The Burlington Magazine'' is a monthly publication that covers the fine and decorative arts of all periods. Established in 1903, it is the longest running art journal in the English language. It has been published by a charitable organisation sin ...
'' observed. Though the 1955 plan was never fully executed—the volumes on
Greek painting and
sculpture
Sculpture is the branch of the visual arts that operates in three dimensions. Sculpture is the three-dimensional art work which is physically presented in the dimensions of height, width and depth. It is one of the plastic arts. Durable sc ...
,
quattrocento
The cultural and artistic events of Italy during the period 1400 to 1499 are collectively referred to as the Quattrocento (, , ) from the Italian word for the number 400, in turn from , which is Italian for the year 1400. The Quattrocento encom ...
painting and
cinquecento
The cultural and artistic events of Italy during the period 1500 to 1599 are collectively referred to as the Cinquecento (, ), from the Italian for the number 500, in turn from , which is Italian for the year 1500. Cinquecento encompasses the s ...
sculpture were not written—the Pelican History remains one of the most comprehensive surveys of world art published.
Penguin on Wheels
Mobile bookstore launched by Penguin Books India in collaboration with Ms. Satabdi Mishra and Mr. Akshaya Rautaray.
See also
*
Everyman's Library
Everyman's Library is a series of reprints of classic literature, primarily from the Western canon. It is currently published in hardback by Random House. It was originally an imprint of J. M. Dent (itself later a division of Weidenfeld & Ni ...
*
Great Books of the 20th Century ''Great Books of the 20th Century'' is a series of twenty novels published by Penguin Books released at the end of the millennium.
The following novels are included in the series:
*''Heart of Darkness'' by Joseph Conrad (1899–1902)
*''Swann's Wa ...
*
List of early Puffin Story Books
*
List of Penguin Classics
This is a list of books published as Penguin Classics.
In 1996, Penguin Books published as a paperback ''A Complete Annotated Listing of Penguin Classics and Twentieth-Century Classics'' ().
This article covers editions in the series: black lab ...
*
New Penguin Shakespeare
New Penguin Shakespeare is a series of the works of William Shakespeare published from 1967 to 1987 as an imprint of Penguin Books. Printed in paperback the editions were very popular in schools where they were used for teaching Shakespeare.
This ...
*
Penguin 60s Classics
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 "clas ...
*
''Penguin Books Ltd. v India Book Distributors and Others''
*
Penguin Collectors Society
The Penguin Collectors Society (PCS) is a charity based in the United Kingdom. Its main purpose is to promote the study and research of all aspects of Penguin Books, the publishing company founded by Allen Lane in 1935.
History
The PCS was started ...
*
Penguin Essentials
''Penguin Essentials'' (also called ''Essential Penguins'') refers to two series of books published by Penguin Books in the UK. The first series began in 1998, and the second in 2011. For both series, the classic books were released in smaller A ...
*
Penguin Modern Poets
''Penguin Modern Poets'' was a series of 27 poetry books published by Penguin Books in the 1960s and 1970s, each containing work by three contemporary poets (mostly but not exclusively British and American). The series was begun in 1962 and publis ...
*
Penguin poetry anthologies
The Penguin poetry anthologies, published by Penguin Books, have at times played the role of a "third force" in British poetry, less literary than those from Faber and Faber, and less academic than those from Oxford University Press..
''The Peng ...
*
Penguin Red Classics
''Penguin Red Classics'' is a series of novels published by Penguin Books in the UK. There are 39 books in the series. The books are from the Penguin Classics imprint, but do not contain any introductory material or commentary, instead focussing ...
*
Tauchnitz publishers
Tauchnitz was the name of a family of German people, German printers and publishers. They published English language literature for distribution on the European continent outside Great Britain, including initial serial publications of novels by Ch ...
Notes and references
Further reading
* Baines, Phil (2007): ''Penguin by Design: a Cover Story 1935–2005''. London: Allen Lane (published to accompany the exhibition "Penguin by design" held at the Victoria and Albert Museum, 8 June – 13 November 2005).
*Baines, Phil (2010): ''Puffin by Design: 70 years of imagination 1940–2010''. London: Allen Lane.
* ''Penguin by Illustrators''.
* Cinamon, Gerald (1987): "Hans Schmoller, Typographer", ''The Monotype Recorder'' (New Series), 6 April 1987.
* Graham, Tim (2003): ''Penguin in Print – a Bibliography''.
Penguin Collectors Society
The Penguin Collectors Society (PCS) is a charity based in the United Kingdom. Its main purpose is to promote the study and research of all aspects of Penguin Books, the publishing company founded by Allen Lane in 1935.
History
The PCS was started ...
.
* Hall, David J., "King Penguins", in ''The Private Library'' Winter 1977, published by the
Private Libraries Association The Private Libraries Association (PLA) came into being in 1956 when 18-year-old Philip Ward wrote a letter to the ''Observer'' inviting booklovers and book collectors to attend a meeting to discuss the setting up of an association whose aims would ...
.
* Hare, Steve (1995): ''Penguin Portrait: Allen Lane and the Penguin Editors, 1935–1970''. London: Penguin Books.
* Joicey, Nicholas (1993): "A Paperback Guide to Progress: Penguin Books 1935–c.1951", ''Twentieth Century British History'', Vol. 4, No. 1, pp. 25–56.
* Kells, Stuart (2015): "Penguin and the Lane Brothers: The Untold Story of a Publishing Revolution", Black Inc., Melbourne, Australia.
* Lewis, Jeremy (2005): ''Penguin Special: Life and Times of Allen Lane'' .
* Morpurgo, J. E. (1979): ''Allen Lane: King Penguin''. London: Hutchinson.
* Aynsley, J., Lloyd Jones, L. (1985), ''Fifty Penguin Years''. .
* Cherry, B. (1983): ''The Buildings of England: A short History and Bibliography'', Penguin Collectors Society, London.
* Edwards, R. (1997): ''A Penguin Collector's Companion'', Penguin Collector's Society, London.
* Holland, S. (1993): ''Mushroom Jungle: A History of Postwar Paperback Publishing'', Westbury.
* Pearson, J. (1996): ''Penguins March On: Books for the Forces During World War II'', Penguin Collector's Society, London.
* Lane, A., Fowler, D. et al. (1960): Penguins Progress, 1935–1960, Harmondsworth.
* ''Ten Years of Penguins: 1935–1945'', Harmondsworth.
* Williams, W. E. (1956): ''The Penguin Story'', Harmondsworth.
* Wood, S. (1985): ''A Sort of Dignified Flippancy'', Edinburgh University Library.
External links
*Official websites
*
Penguin Books USA*
Penguin Books UK*
Penguin Books Portugal*Other
Penguin ArchiveUniversity of Bristol Library Special Collections
*
Penguin Archive ProjectUniversity of Bristol
*
King Penguin Book Series
*
The Art of Penguin Science FictionThe history and cover art of science fiction published by Penguin Books from 1935 to the present day
*
Penguin First EditionsGuide to the early (1935–1955) first editions published by Penguin Books
*
Penguin book covers*
Penguin Cerise TravelCelebrating Penguin Books' early 'Travel and Adventure' series
*
Foley Collection—articles and extensive lists*
by Toby Clements, ''The Telegraph'', 19 February 2009.
** Archival Material at
{{Authority control
1935 establishments in England
Book publishing companies of the United Kingdom
Book publishing company imprints
British brands
British companies established in 1935
Publishing companies established in 1935