Penguin turns 75

• Pages: 7-9

7

1 The publis her was

knighted i n 1962.

>>>

PENGUIN

TURNS 75

fiction, blue for biograph y and

green for crim e – has become a de-

sign classic and a hallm ark of the

early paperbacks. Th e initial design

was created by t hen twenty-one -

year-old office junior Edward

Young, who also drew the first ver-

sion of the Penguin logo.

Over the y ears, the company has

expanded, acquiring new imp rints.

Two of the company ’s most famous

names w ere launched in the 19 40s

– Puffin, in 1940, a s a series of non-

fiction pictu re-books fo r children and Penguin

Classics in 1946.

The early success of the Puffin series prompted the

company to start publishing children’s fiction a year

afte r its laun ch. The ch ildren’s fav orite,

Worz el

Gummidge

by Barbara Euphan Todd was among its

first titles. The unveiling of the Penguin Classics se-

ries with E.V. Rieu’s translation of

The Odyssey

, made

classic texts available to the general public. This

world-famous series currently consists of some

1,200 titles (including those in the Penguin Modern

Classics series) ranging from

The Epic of Gilgamesh

,

one of the earliest known works of literature, to the

modern classic,

One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest

.

By the 1960s, Penguin had becom e firmly estab-

lished as a major force in pub lishing and , true to

its p ioneering r oots, helped to tran sform Brita in’s

legal land scape. In 1960 t he co mpany was

charged under the Obs cene Publi cations Act for

publishin g D.H. L awrence’s

Lady C hatterley’s Lover

.

The book was notori ous at the time for it s explic-

it des criptions o f the phy sical relatio nship be-

tween a work ing class man and an aristocratic

woman. Penguin fought back, and won its da y in

The beginnings

Founded by Sir Allen Lane in 1935,

Penguin Books re volutionized the

publishing industry with its popu-

lar low-cos t paperbacks. The trig-

ger for embarking on this busi ness

venture came abou t d uring Mr.

Allen’s1return to Londo n after visit-

ing the author Ag atha Christie in

Devon, England. Frustrated by the

narrow select ion of reading materi-

al available at Exeter railw ay station,

Mr. Allen determined to make a f-

fordable, good quality contemp orary literature

widely availab le in non-traditional book-selling lo-

cations, such as railway statio ns and c hain stores.

He even invented the “Peng uincubator,” the first

vending machine for boo ks, which was installed at

66 Charing Cross R oad, London. For a few pence, a

passerby cou ld immediately get hold of som e-

thing to read. So began the pap erback revolution.

The first Penguin paperbacks appeared in the sum-

mer of 1935 and were distributed out of the crypt

of Holy Trinity Church in Marylebone Road, London,

using a fair-ground slide to receive deliveries from

the street above. They included works by Ernest

Hemingway, André Maurois and Agatha Christie.

The success of Peng uin Boo ks lay in its rec ogni-

tion of the “existence of a vast re ading publ ic for

intelligen t books.” By offeri ng entertai ning and

good qua lity contempo rary literat ure at low cost,

Penguin conve rted the readin g pub lic from

“book-bor rowers into bo ok-buyers.”

The simple and dis tinctive appearanc e of the

book covers – three horizontal bands, t he upper

and lower of whi ch were color coded – orang e for

From its humble beginnin gs in 1935, Peng uin h as gr own i nto on e of the most belove d int ernational

brands boasting a back-list o f some of the world’ s best sel ling authors . The icon ic internati onal publish -

ing co mpany, whi ch turned 75 last year, ha s publishe d the w orks of 25 Nobel Prize win ners, 16 Pulitzer

Prize winners an d 10 Bo oker Prize winners. It keeps more t han 5,000 different titles i n print at any time

and w ith office s in 1 5 countrie s, it c onnects au thors with readers across the globe. The g roup cater s to

every stage of a reade r’s life, offering a wide range of genres including popular, l iterary, a nd classic fic-

tion as well as n on-fiction, t ravel, lifes tyle, childre n’s and ref erence works .

Penguin – an iconic brand

Photo: Penguin Group