Penguin Books
From Free net encyclopedia
Penguin Books is a British publisher founded in 1935 by Allen Lane. Lane's idea was to provide quality writing cheaply, for the same price as a pack of cigarettes. He also wanted them to be sold not only in bookshops but in train stations, general stores and corner shops. Its most emblematic products are its paperbacks. The first Penguin paperbacks were published in 1935, but at first only as an imprint of Bodley Head with the books originally distributed from a church crypt.
Today Penguin Books is a division of the world-wide Penguin Group and is owned by Pearson PLC. Its counterpart in the United States is Penguin Group (USA). Penguin is the lead publisher for the United Kingdom, New Zealand and Australia.
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History
The publication of literature in paperback, then associated mainly with poor quality, lurid fiction, did not appear viable to Bodley Head and the deliberately cheap price of 6d. made profitability seem unlikely. This helped Allen Lane purchase publication rights cheaply for some works, from other publishers convinced of the short term prospects of the business. The purchase of 63,000 books by Woolworth paid for the project outright, confirmed its worth and allowed Lane to establish Penguin as a separate business in 1936. By March 1936, one million Penguin books were in print.
In the early days, Penguin paperbacks had distinctive colour schemes: orange and white for general fiction, green and white for crime fiction, a maroon colour for the travel series and dark blue for biographies. Lane actively resisted the introduction of cover images for several years. Some recent publications of literature from that time have duplicated the original look.
Lane expanded the business in 1937 with the publication of George Bernard Shaw's The Intelligent Woman's Guide to Socialism and Capitalism under the Pelican Books imprint, an imprint designed to educate the reading public rather than entertain. The war years continued the company's success with the healthy sales of titles meaning that Penguin suffered less from the paper rationing which afflicted other publishers and Aircraft Recognition by Saville-Sneath, RA being a best seller. In 1945 Penguin began what would become one of its most important branches, the Penguin Classics, with a translation of Homer's Odyssey by E. V. Rieu. Between 1947 and 1949 the Swiss typographer Jan Tschichold redesigned 500 Penguin books, and left Penguin with a set of influential rules of design principles.
Just as Lane well judged the public's appetite for paperbacks in the 1930s, his decision to publish Lady Chatterley's Lover by D. H. Lawrence in 1960 boosted Penguin's notoriety. The novel was at the time unpublished in Britain and the predicted obscenity trial 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 of books in Britain, although censorship of the written word was only finally defeated after the Inside Linda Lovelace trial of 1978. Other controversial titles published by Penguin include Spycatcher and The Satanic Verses.
First titles
The first twenty books published by Penguin under the Bodley Head imprint were:
- Ariel: a Shelley Romance — André Maurois
- A Farewell to Arms — Ernest Hemingway
- Poets Pub — Eric Linklater
- Madame Claire — Susan Ertz
- The Unpleasantness at the Bellona Club — Dorothy Sayers
- The Mysterious Affair at Styles — Agatha Christie
- Twenty-Five — Beverley Nichols
- William — E.H. Young
- Gone to Earth — Mary Webb
- Carnival — Compton Mackenzie
- South Wind — Norman Douglas
- The Purple Land — W.H. Hudson
- Patrol — Phillip MacDonald
- The Thin Man — Dashiell Hammett
- Four Frightened People — E.Arnat Robertson
- The Edwardians — Vita Sackville-West
- The Informer — Liam O'Flaherty
- Debonair — G.B. Stern
- The Strange Case of Miss Annie Spragg — Louis Bromfield
- Erewhon — Samuel Butler
Other imprints
Other imprints of Penguin Books include Puffin Books, for children's literature and Allen Lane, for original academic non-fiction. They have also acquired Ladybird Books, Michael Joseph, Dorling Kindersley and the Rough Guides. Former Penguin imprints include ROC, for science fiction and fantasy, Penguin Special for political works as well as Peregrine Books.
Penguin Classics
Today, most readers probably associate Penguin with the Penguin Classics imprint. The imprint publishes hundreds of classics from the Greeks and Romans to Victorian Literature to modern classics. It currently owns the rights to Jack Kerouac's On the Road. In 2002, Penguin announced it was redesigning its entire catalog. The redesign — featuring a colorful 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.
Trademark disputes
Penguin Books has been in some disputes over names and trademarks. In 1986, it pushed Penguin Software to give up its name. More recently, it published a book katie.com which caused problems for the unrelated user of that domain, and then tried to acquire the domain.
See also
Further reading
- Penguin Books — Fifty Penguin Years (1985) ISBN 0140085890
- Phil Baines — Penguin by Design: A Cover Story 1935-2005 (2005) ISBN 0713998393
- Gerald Cinnamon — 'Hans Schmoller, Typographer', The Monotype Recorder (New Series), 6, April (1987)
- Jeremy Lewis — Life and Times of Allen Lane (Penguin Special) (2005) ISBN 0670914851