By Andrew Wilkins
The Popular Penguins follow Allen Lane’s ethos of making great writing affordable and available to everybody — now you can own a piece of the Penguin story.
— marketing blurb from Penguin Web site
If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of giants.
— Sir Isaac Newton
MELBOURNE: You may have heard of it. Last year, in celebration of its 75th anniversary, Penguin launched a series of books dubbed “Popular Penguins” in Australia, New Zealand and India. Priced at just AU$9.95, they are a series of classic titles which are priced cheaper than a pack of cigarettes, the original notion when the very idea of a Penguin paperback was launched in the last century.
Much as I’m full of admiration for Penguin’s campaign, which has seen titles from its “Popular Penguins” series appear seemingly everywhere, dare I suggest there’s some mythologizing going on here?
The Penguin story is a great publishing story but, lest we forget, this latest campaign is less a celebration of a world-changing event and more a part of the ongoing battle for market share among the major publishers. It’s about selling books, and sucking up shelf space that would otherwise be taken up by Penguin’s competitors in the process.
There’s also a danger of history being re-written in two ways:
1. While Penguin itself doesn’t make the claim explicitly, you might be left with the impression that Allen Lane changed the world by inventing the paperback book.
As the editor of Penguin Portrait: Allen Lane and the Penguin Editors 1935-1970, Steve Hare, says at the beginning of that tome:
If the idea behind Penguin Books was so basic and simple, why had no-one ever thought it before? The simple answer is that they had. The idea of a paperback book in itself was nothing new. Both on the Continent and in Britain many publishers, including the Bodley Head, had toyed with the idea … Ernest Benn even predated the Pelican idea with an extensive sixpenny library of diminutive non-fiction works.
Hare goes on to quote from a 1952 letter sent from Allen Lane himself to Ernest Benn, in which he says:
“I have always considered that they ['Stead's Books for the Bairns'] really gave me the first idea of Penguins.”
2. The phrase “now you can own a piece of the Penguin story” could be read to suggest that all the titles in the “Popular Penguins” series are Penguin books and have been from the start; that Penguin was responsible for originating the books that are today dressed in its vintage livery.
It’s not the case. By my reckoning, Penguin was the originating publisher of just 20 books in the series.
There’s a risk, therefore, that we might forget that the vast majority of the “Popular Penguins” were first discovered and published by other publishers — that the Penguin empire was initially built on the publishing skills and acumen of others.* Penguin briefly acknowledges (as it should) the books’ originating publishers on the imprint page of each title in its series but, as someone fascinated by the history of publishing, I thought I’d find out more about those publishers whose legacies are now extinguished beneath the Penguin logo.
So, I’ve gone through the list of “Popular Penguins” from the Penguin Australia website — my local one — and indicated those books originated by Penguin itself in bold. As you can see, the series relies heavily on books originated by other publishing houses, many great, many now defunct. Where possible, I’ve included links to information about them.
As they say, credit where credit is due.
Madame Bovary (Gustave Flaubert), Michel Lévy Frères, 1857
First edition cover of A Room of One's Own
* Of course, while it started as a reprint house, today Penguin is an originator of a vast number of new books.
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[...] Farago’s Andrew Wilkins has just posted an article on the international publishing news site Publishing Perspectives on the ‘Popular Penguins’ series produced for Penguin’s 75th anniversary. He [...]
Doris Mousdale
4 months ago
Take out the 21 books that were published prior to the establishment of Penguin, then go through the list and question how many of the books would have disappeared forever if Penguin hadn’t kept them in print and then look again at who is buying the books in the latest promotion.
People who owned them first time round but disposed of the”disposable book’ in too much of a hurry,
generations of readers who missed two decades or more of great reads and then there are the folk who should have read more books and want to fill in the gaps in their reading list and wider education.
Yes it is a clever campaign, yes there are”adoptions” to the brand Penguin but you cannot argue with customers who flock to the orange book collection knowing they are going to get a good read at a third of the price of a current mediocre trade paperback.
I attended Penguins 50th birthday in Birmingham in the UK,here’s hoping I make the centenary and there will still be real books in proper bookshops
Andrew Wilkins
4 months ago
I’m sure you’ll be at Penguin’s 100th, Doris!
I don’t have any quibble with your comment – it is a great and worthy campaign and it’s worth asking the question: if not Penguin, then who? The fact is that it’s the great paperback houses of the 20th century that now dominate global English language publishing, not the hardback originators. This suggests marketing has a lot more to do with publishing success that many give it credit for. And Penguin’s success is a great marketing story.
Still, I enjoyed finding out more about the other publishers behind this series. In a couple of cases (Woolf and Lawrence), their books were effectively self-published. In many others, you do wonder if the books would ever have seen the light of day but for a publisher of modest means willing to take a punt on a singular work or talent.
As that’s the territory where most publishers still operate (scampering like ants around the great feet of the majors), that’s what interests me most.
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[...] Is Penguin trying to rewrite history with it’s Popular Penguins program? Publishing Perspectives ponders potential possibilities. You may have heard of it. Last year, in celebration of its 75th anniversary, Penguin launched a series of books dubbed “Popular Penguins” in Australia, New Zealand and India. Priced at just AU$9.95, they are a series of classic titles which are priced cheaper than a pack of cigarettes, the original notion when the very idea of a Penguin paperback was launched in the last century. [...]