Penguin Books is a publisher founded in 1935 by Sir Allen Lane. Penguin revolutionised publishing in the 1930s through its high quality, inexpensive paperbacks, sold through Woolworths and other high street stores for sixpence. Penguin's success demonstrated that large audiences existed for serious books. Penguin also had a significant impact on public debate in Britain, through its books on politics, the arts, and science.
Penguin Books is now the flagship imprint of the worldwide Penguin Group and is owned by Pearson PLC, the global media company who also own the Financial Times, the business information group and Pearson, the world's largest education publishing and technology company.
Noel Carrington, an editor at Country Life magazine, first approached Lane with the idea of publishing low cost, illustrated non-fiction children's books in 1938. Inspired by the Editions Père Castor books drawn by Rojan and the technique of auto lithography used in the poster art of the time, Carrington's suggestion for what was to become the Puffin Picture Book series was adopted by Penguin in 1940 when, as Lane saw it, evacuated city children would need books on farming and natural history to help adjust to the country. The first four titles appeared in December 1940; War on Land, War at Sea, War in the Air and On the Farm, and a further nine the following year. Despite Lane's intention to publish twelve a year paper and staff shortages meant only thirteen were issued in the first two years of the series. The Picture Books' 120 titles resulted in 260 variants altogether, the last number 116 Paxton Chadwick's Life Histories, was issued hors série in 1996 by the Penguin Collector's Society.
Inexpensive paperback children's fiction did not exist at the time Penguin sought to expand their list into this new market. To this end Eleanor Graham was appointed in 1941 as the first editor of the Puffin Story Books series, a venture made particularly difficult due to the resistance of publishers and librarians in releasing the rights of their children's books. The first five titles, Worzel Gummidge, Cornish Adventure,The Cuckoo Clock, Garram the Hunter and Smokey were published in the three horizontal stripes company livery of the rest of the Penguin output, a practice abandoned after the ninth volume when full-bleed colour illustrated covers were introduced, a fact that heralded the much greater design freedom of the Puffin series over the rest of Penguin's books. Graham retired in 1961 and was replaced by Kaye Webb who presided over the department for 18 years in a period that saw greatly increased competition in the children's market as well as a greater sophistication in production and marketing. One innovation of Webb's was the creation of the Puffin Club in 1967 and its quarterly magazine the Puffin Post, which at its height had 200,000 members. The Puffin authors' list added Arthur Ransome, Roald Dahl and Ursula le Guin during Webb's editorship and saw the creation of the Peacock series of teenage fiction.
Tony Lacey took over Webb's editorial chair in 1979 at the invitation of Penguin managing director Peter Mayer when Puffin was one of the few profitable divisions of the beleaguered company. In line with Mayer's policy of more aggressive commercialisation of the Penguin brand Lacey reduced the number of Puffin imprints, consolidated popular titles under the Puffin Classics rubric and inaugurated the successful interactive gamebook series Fighting Fantasy. Complimentary to the Puffin Club the Puffin School Book Club, addressed specifically to schools and organisations, grew significantly in this period helping to confirn Puffin market position such that by 1983 one in three Penguin books sold was a Puffin.
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