On 30th of July 1935 the first Penguin book was published. It was a sea change in publishing and it meant books could be within the price range of thousands of more people.
Penguin Books was co-founded in 1935 by Allen Lane with his brothers Richard and John, as a line of the publishers The Bodley Head, only becoming a separate company the following year.
The first 10 books published were:
- Ariel By Andre Maurois
- A Farewell to Arms By Ernest Hemingway
- Poet’s Pub By Eric Linklater
- Madame Claire By Susan Ertz
- The Unpleasantness at the Bellona Club By Dorothy L. Sayers
- The Mysterious Affair By Agatha Christie
- Twenty-Five By Beverley Nichols
- William By E.H. Young
- Gone to Earth By Mary Webb
- Carnival By Compton Mackenzie
Penguin Books is now an imprint of the worldwide Penguin Random House, a conglomerate formed in 2013 by its merger with American publisher Random House, a subsidiary of German media conglomerate Bertelsmann.
For many, their first paperback books, would have been Penguins.
The logo was the inspirational work of 21 year old Edward Young. You can read about that story here: How the Penguin Logo has evolved
Hannah Lowery, archivist and special collections manager at the University of Bristol, is in charge of the Penguin Archive. For her, the logo has endured “because it is simple, because it is easy to identify, and as a brand says quality”.
And you can explore the timeline of Penguin books here: Company History
Puffin Books was a natural side ways progression for Penguin Books. The first children’s book published by Puffin was Barbara Euphan Todd‘s story Worzel Gummidge in 1941.
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