Introduction 

Delve into the Puffin archives and get a more detailed insight into the Puffin story. 

  | 1939 | 1961 | 1980's|  1990's| 2001 | 

In  1939  Noel Carrington met Allen Lane, the founder of Penguin Books, at lunch and put to him an idea for a series of children's non-fiction picture books. It took Allen Lane just two minutes to decide he wanted such children's picture books for Penguin and so the Puffin list was born. The first picture books, published in 1940, were very successful and showed Allen Lane the potential children's paperbacks had if only the right titles could be found. And in 1941, Puffin Story Books were launched properly under the first Puffin editor, Eleanor Graham, and  Worzel Gummidge by Barbara Euphan Todd was published.

Paper rationing during the war years, an unwillingness by hardback children's publishers to sell paperback rights, and the fact that libraries still really only wanted hardbacks, made Eleanor Graham's job difficult at times. However, focusing on books that children themselves really wanted, she sought out titles from other publishers and created her own original Puffin books until she was publishing around 12 titles a year. Amongst the titles she published were  Ballet Shoes by Noel Streatfield and  Professor Branestawm by Norman Hunter.

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By  1961, when Eleanor graham retired and Kaye Webb became Editor of Puffin, there were 151 titles in print. By 1969, after what was to be an enormous boom in children's publishing, there were 1213! The growth experienced by children's books in the UK in the 1960's came from growing customer affluence in general and growth in funding for schools and libraries. Puffin benefited from both and from the fact that at last children's paperbacks were getting the recognition they deserved as the type of book children themselves wanted. Puffin sales grew by over 300% between 1960 and 1965, with some great children's classics making their first appearance on the Puffin list, such as the  Narnia titles,  Mary Poppins, Stig of the Dump, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Watership Down and  Tom's Midnight Garden. Kaye Webb also began a picture book list, Picture Puffins, and published joke books and non-fiction titles too, as well as experimenting with a teenage fiction list.

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Kaye Webb's belief was that children themselves needed a living relationship with books and so in 1967 she created the much-loved Puffin Club, which soon gained tens of thousands of members. "It will make children into readers" she promised Allen Lane. And indeed it did, growing Puffin's success with it. Even today Puffin continues with its work to reach children directly and the Puffin Book Club, which operates through schools in the UK, was relaunched in 2000 with the aim of reaching more children than ever before.

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By the time Kaye retired, though, in the early  1980's  competition in the paperback market, both children's and adult's had increased and Peter Mayer joined Penguin as Chief Executive to bring back excitement and innovation to its publishing. Under new leadership, first Tony Lacey's and then Liz Attenborough's, Puffin began to break new ground. The Spot series by Eric Hill and the Meg and Mog series by Helen Nicoll and Jan Pienkowski became bestsellers in the Picture Puffin range along with The Snowman and other titles by Raymond Briggs and books by Janet and Allan Ahlberg. The phenomenal Fighting Fantasy series created a whole new market for adventure game books. The Puffin Classics range was launched and new fiction writers including Dick King-Smith, the creator of Babe the Sheep Pig, Jill Murphy and Anne Fine joined the fiction list. Roald Dahl's world famous titles, meanwhile, continued from strength to strength.

Penguin and Puffin also grew internationally, with offices opening worldwide and Puffin has now grown to be not only the leading children's paperback brand in the UK but also in much of the English language-speaking world.

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The  1990's  saw Puffin turning fifty and competition growing from other publishers and other media and leisure activities in children's lives. Puffin has risen to such challenges and while its list still contains familiar and much-loved classics, some of which are celebrated in the Puffin Modern Classics series, it remains forward-looking and innovative, publishing work by great contemporary writers and illustrators such as Eoin Colfer, Gillian Cross, Melvin Burgess, Eric Carle, Laurence and Catherine Anholt and Jon Scieszka and Lane Smith. Puffin also specialises in media tie-ins and has publishing relationships with a number of major film studios, including Disney and Dreamworks as well as licensing agreements for dynamic children's character properties such as Digimon. In addition, realising from an early stage the impact the Internet would have, Puffin set up its first website Puffin.co.uk, more than five years ago. 

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In  2001  Puffin celebrated its sixtieth birthday and, as a children's publisher, enjoyed being sixty years young!  We also relaunched this Puffintastic new website, we hope you like it!

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