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It was in 1935 when Allen Lane, Managing Director of Bodley Head Publishers, stood on a platform at Exeter railway station looking for something good to read on his journey back to London. Lane’s disappointment and subsequent anger at the range of books generally available led him to found a company – and change the world.
Reading habits have changed since Penguin was born in 1935, but Penguin still believes in publishing the best books for everybody to enjoy. We still believe that good design costs no more than bad design, and we still believe that quality books published passionately and responsibly make the world a better place.
So wherever you see the little bird – whether it’s on a piece of prize-winning literary fiction or a celebrity autobiography, political tour de force or historical masterpiece, a serial-killer thriller, reference book, world classic or a piece of pure escapism – you can bet that it represents the very best that the genre has to offer.
...because we're not the only ones who
like books on our birthday.
‘For 20-year-olds like myself making our way in Fleet Street on tiny salaries, and avid readers in our spare time (I had made a resolution to educate myself by reading all the Everymans!), it was magic when in 1935 Allen Lane announced the Penguin books at sixpence each, and we could afford to buy and read crisp new books, and not grubby, heavily-used books from the public library! The classics and the Pelicans soon followed, and among others I still have my Homer’s Odyssey (which I read in quiet periods while doing night turns on the Press Association), but which by 1946, cost two shillings. Still a bargain, however.’
Reginald Turnill, author and broadcaster who covered the Apollo Moonlandings as the BBC’s Aerospace Correspondent
In celebration of Penguin’s 75th Anniversary,
Douglas Coupland has created a special project, Speaking to the Past, looking back at 1935 from 2010 with a series of 30 images captured on Penguin book jackets.
Find out how you can design your own...
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