HAPPY BIRTHDAY, PENGUIN

by Sheila Connolly

We're giving away several Penguin books, classics and new mysteries, to a few lucky readers today. To enter the drawing, leave a comment and give us an e-mail address where you can be reached.

Today marks the 75th anniversary of Penguin Books, launched in London in 1935. Since I’m published by a current imprint of Penguin (Berkley Prime Crime), I was happy to volunteer to join in the national celebration of the publisher. I’ll admit that it was Penguin Books who suggested this, but they’re sweetening the pot by giving away one of their books.

Penguin’s start is a great lesson in identifying a niche and marketing a product wisely. The firm was founded by Allen Lane, who already had some publishing experience. He invited Edward Young to join him, and it was Young who came up with the signature penguin logo. Penguin isn’t ashamed to tell us that it was Lane’s secretary who came up with the name, and then Lane sent Young off to the London Zoo to sketch penguins. Young is said to have been less than pleased, finding the penguins rather smelly.

However, the logo stuck, and was used on all Penguin books until 1949. But Young’s contribution went beyond a drawing: he was responsible for using easily recognizable and consistent color schemes for all the firm’s book covers; crime and detective novels were green.

We who are surrounded by books these days will be hard-pressed to appreciate the impact that the Penguin imprint had when it was introduced. In the 1930s, the global economy was a mess, and Hitler was gearing up for war. In addition, paperback books in those days were usually trashy novels with lurid covers. Lane chose to offer quality paperbacks with tasteful covers, and in a shrewd move, made them available at railway stations and news stands as well as bookstores. His strategy worked: in the first ten months, Penguin printed one million books, and within a year, the firm had sold three million paperbacks. Penguin offered good books at affordable prices, at a time when reading could have been seen as a luxury, and the company thrived.

While not all of the early books published by Penguin have enjoyed lasting popularity, among the first ten published were Dorothy L. Sayers’ The Unpleasantness at the Bellona Club and Agatha Christie’s The Mysterious Affair at Styles—both still in print. Among books 11 through 20 was Dashiell Hammett’s The Thin Man. Lane had a good eye.

Penguin was responsible for a lot more notable publishing achievements. In 1941 they established Puffin, a children’s imprint; in 1946, Penguin Classics (and its launch book, The Odyssey, became Penguin’s best selling book).

And there are American connections as well, as you will see as I lay out the “genealogy” of modern-day Penguin:

--1996: The Penguin Group acquired the Putnam Berkley Group, forming Penguin Putnam Inc.
--1965: G. P. Putnam’s Sons acquired Berkley Books, a mass market paperback house
--1866: G. P. Putnam & Sons was created when George Palmer Putnam’s three sons joined him in the business
--1848: Putnam founded G. Putnam Broadway, after dissolving a partnership with John Wiley
--1838: Putnam and Wiley formed the publishing firm of Wiley & Putnam in New York

And why, you ask, have I outlined this (skipping over a whole lot of other mergers and acquisitions)? Because in 1845, Wiley & Putnam published Edgar A. Poe’s Tales, including, among other stories, “The Murders in the Rue Morgue,” “The Purloined Letter,” and “The Gold Bug,” for which Poe’s Deadly Daughters salute this Penguin progenitor.

I am honored to share a publisher with the likes of Poe, Christie and Sayers, and one which continues to turn out quality books in an increasingly difficult publishing climate. Penguin authors have won 25 Nobel Prizes, 18 National Book Awards, and 12 Pulitzer Prizes. They publish more than 300 books each year in the United States, and they have more than 3,600 Penguin Books and 1,500 Penguin classics in print.

I hope I’m doing as well at 75. Happy birthday, Penguin!