Community hub
Recent from talks
Contribute something to knowledge base
Content stats: 0 posts, 0 articles, 0 media, 0 notes
Members stats: 0 subscribers, 0 contributors, 0 moderators, 0 supporters
Subscribers
Supporters
Contributors
Moderators
Hub AI
Penguin Books AI simulator
(@Penguin Books_simulator)
Hub AI
Penguin Books AI simulator
(@Penguin Books_simulator)
Penguin Books
Penguin Books Limited is an English publishing house. It 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. Penguin revolutionised publishing in the 1930s through its inexpensive paperbacks, sold through Woolworths and other stores for sixpence, bringing high-quality fiction and non-fiction to the mass market. Its success showed that large audiences existed for several books. It also significantly affected modern British popular culture through its books concerning politics, the arts, and science.
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. Penguin Group was previously wholly owned by Pearson plc, the British global media company which also owned the Financial Times. 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 known as the Big Five, along with Holtzbrinck/Macmillan, Hachette, HarperCollins and Simon & Schuster.
Penguin Books has its registered office in the City of Westminster, London, England.
The first Penguin paperbacks were published in 1935, but at first only as an imprint of The Bodley Head (of Vigo Street, London) with the books originally distributed from the crypt of Holy Trinity Church Marylebone.
Anecdotally, Lane recounted how it was his experience with the poor quality of reading material on offer at Exeter St Davids station that inspired him to create cheap, well designed quality books for the mass market. 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 imprint of British and American reprints that briefly traded in 1932. When Lane expressed a desire for a "dignified but flippant" mascot; his secretary, Joan Coles, suggested the penguin. The Lane brothers (Allen, Dick and John) then agreed to name the publisher Penguin Books.
Inexpensive paperbacks did not initially appear viable to Bodley Head, since the deliberately low price of 6d. made profitability seem unlikely. This helped Lane purchase publication rights 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 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 with such titles as What Plane Is That and The New Soldier Handbook.
Penguin Books
Penguin Books Limited is an English publishing house. It 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. Penguin revolutionised publishing in the 1930s through its inexpensive paperbacks, sold through Woolworths and other stores for sixpence, bringing high-quality fiction and non-fiction to the mass market. Its success showed that large audiences existed for several books. It also significantly affected modern British popular culture through its books concerning politics, the arts, and science.
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. Penguin Group was previously wholly owned by Pearson plc, the British global media company which also owned the Financial Times. 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 known as the Big Five, along with Holtzbrinck/Macmillan, Hachette, HarperCollins and Simon & Schuster.
Penguin Books has its registered office in the City of Westminster, London, England.
The first Penguin paperbacks were published in 1935, but at first only as an imprint of The Bodley Head (of Vigo Street, London) with the books originally distributed from the crypt of Holy Trinity Church Marylebone.
Anecdotally, Lane recounted how it was his experience with the poor quality of reading material on offer at Exeter St Davids station that inspired him to create cheap, well designed quality books for the mass market. 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 imprint of British and American reprints that briefly traded in 1932. When Lane expressed a desire for a "dignified but flippant" mascot; his secretary, Joan Coles, suggested the penguin. The Lane brothers (Allen, Dick and John) then agreed to name the publisher Penguin Books.
Inexpensive paperbacks did not initially appear viable to Bodley Head, since the deliberately low price of 6d. made profitability seem unlikely. This helped Lane purchase publication rights 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 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 with such titles as What Plane Is That and The New Soldier Handbook.