How the Paperback Novel Changed Popular Literature

Classic writers reached the masses when Penguin paperbacks began publishing great novels for the cost of a pack of cigarettes

  • By Anne Trubek
  • Smithsonian.com, March 31, 2010, Subscribe
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Sir Allen Lane Penguin Books
Using his own capital, Allen Lane started the Penguin publishing house. His plan was to sell quality books for the price of a pack of cigarettes. (Central Press / Getty Images)

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The story about the first Penguin paperbacks may be apocryphal, but it is a good one. In 1935, Allen Lane, chairman of the eminent British publishing house Bodley Head, spent a weekend in the country with Agatha Christie. Bodley Head, like many other publishers, was faring poorly during the Depression, and Lane was worrying about how to keep the business afloat. While he was in Exeter station waiting for his train back to London, he browsed shops looking for something good to read. He struck out. All he could find were trendy magazines and junky pulp fiction. And then he had a “Eureka!” moment: What if quality books were available at places like train stations and sold for reasonable prices—the price of a pack of cigarettes, say?

Lane went back to Bodley Head and proposed a new imprint to do just that. Bodley Head did not want to finance his endeavor, so Lane used his own capital. He called his new house Penguin, apparently upon the suggestion of a secretary, and sent a young colleague to the zoo to sketch the bird. He then acquired the rights to ten reprints of serious literary titles and went knocking on non-bookstore doors. When Woolworth’s placed an order for 63,500 copies, Lane realized he had a viable financial model.

Lane’s paperbacks were cheap. They cost two and a half pence, the same as ten cigarettes, the publisher touted. Volume was key to profitability; Penguin had to sell 17,000 copies of each book to break even.

The first ten Penguin titles, including The Mysterious Affair at Styles by Agatha Christie, A Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway and The Unpleasantness at the Bellona Club by Dorothy Sayers, were wildly successful, and after just one year in existence, Penguin had sold over three million copies.

Penguin’s graphic design played a large part in the company’s success. Unlike other publishers, whose covers emphasized the title and author of the book, Penguin emphasized the brand. The covers contained simple, clean fonts, color-coding (orange for fiction, dark blue for biography) and that cute, recognizable bird. The look helped gain headlines. The Sunday Referee declared “the production is magnificent” and novelist J. B. Priestley raved about the “perfect marvels of beauty and cheapness.” Other publishing houses followed Penguin’s lead; one, Hutchinson, launched a line called Toucan Books.

With its quality fare and fine design, Penguin revolutionized paperback publishing, but these were not the first soft-cover books. The Venetian printer and publisher Aldus Manutius had tried unsuccessfully to publish some in the 16th century, and dime novels, or “penny dreadfuls” –lurid romances published in double columns and considered trashy by the respectable houses, were sold in Britain before the Penguins. Until Penguin, quality books, and books whose ink did not stain one's hands, were available only in hardcover.

In 1937, Penguin expanded, adding a nonfiction imprint called Pelican, and publishing original titles. Pelican’s first original nonfiction title was George Bernard Shaw’s The Intelligent Woman’s Guide to Socialism, Capitalism, Sovietism & Fascism. It also published left-leaning Penguin Specials such as Why Britain Is at War and What Hitler Wants that sold widely. As these titles reveal, Penguin played a role in politics as well as in literature and design, and its left-leaning stance figured into Britain’s war and postwar efforts. After the Labour Party came to office in 1945, one of the party leaders declared that the accessibility of left-leaning reading during the war helped his party succeed: “After the WEA [Workers’ Educational Association] it was Lane and his Penguins which did most to get us into office at the end of the war.” The ousted Conservative Party opened an exhibition on the unfortunate spread of Socialism and included photographs of those responsible, including one of Lane.

During World War II, Penguins, which were small enough to be stowed in the pocket of a uniform, were carried by soldiers, and they were chosen for the Services Central and the Forces Book Clubs. In 1940, Lane launched an imprint for youngsters, Puffin Picture Books, which children facing evacuation could carry with them to their new, uncertain homes. During the times of paper rationing, Penguin fared better than its competitors, and the books’ simple design allowed Penguin to easily accommodate the typographic restrictions. Author and professor Richard Hoggart, who served in the war, noted that the books “became a signal: if the back trouser pocket bulged in that way that usually indicated a reader.” They were also carried in the bag in which gas masks were carried and above the left knee of battle dress.

The United States adopted the Penguin model in 1938 with the creation of Pocket Books. The first Pocket Book title was The Good Earth by Pearl Buck, and it was sold in Macy’s. Unlike Penguin, Pocket Books were lavishly illustrated with bright covers. Other U.S. paperback companies followed Pocket’s lead, and like Penguin, the books were carried by soldiers. One soldier, who had been shot and was waiting in a foxhole for help, “spent the hours before help came reading Willa Cather’s Death Comes for the Archbishop, the Saturday Evening Post reported in 1945. “He grabbed it the day before under the delusion that it was a murder mystery, but he discovered, to his amazement, that he liked it anyway.” Avon, Dell, Ace and Harlequin published genre fiction and new literary titles, including novels by Henry Miller and John Steinbeck.

Allen Lane stated that he “believed in the existence…of a vast reading public for intelligent books at a low price, and staked everything on it.” Seventy-five years later, we find ourselves in a situation not unlike Lane’s in 1935. Publishers are facing plummeting sales, and many are attempting to launch new models, chasing the dream to be the next Penguin. New e-readers have been unveiled recently, including the iPad, Kindle and Nook. Digital editions are cheaper than paperbacks—you can buy the latest literary fiction for $9.99—but they come with a hefty start-up price. The basic iPad costs $499, and the two versions of the Kindle are priced at $259 and $489. Not exactly the price of a pack of cigarettes—or, to use a healthier analogy, a pack of gum.

Correction: The original version of this story incorrectly stated the cost of Penguin paperbacks. It was two and a half pence, not six pence.


The story about the first Penguin paperbacks may be apocryphal, but it is a good one. In 1935, Allen Lane, chairman of the eminent British publishing house Bodley Head, spent a weekend in the country with Agatha Christie. Bodley Head, like many other publishers, was faring poorly during the Depression, and Lane was worrying about how to keep the business afloat. While he was in Exeter station waiting for his train back to London, he browsed shops looking for something good to read. He struck out. All he could find were trendy magazines and junky pulp fiction. And then he had a “Eureka!” moment: What if quality books were available at places like train stations and sold for reasonable prices—the price of a pack of cigarettes, say?

Lane went back to Bodley Head and proposed a new imprint to do just that. Bodley Head did not want to finance his endeavor, so Lane used his own capital. He called his new house Penguin, apparently upon the suggestion of a secretary, and sent a young colleague to the zoo to sketch the bird. He then acquired the rights to ten reprints of serious literary titles and went knocking on non-bookstore doors. When Woolworth’s placed an order for 63,500 copies, Lane realized he had a viable financial model.

Lane’s paperbacks were cheap. They cost two and a half pence, the same as ten cigarettes, the publisher touted. Volume was key to profitability; Penguin had to sell 17,000 copies of each book to break even.

The first ten Penguin titles, including The Mysterious Affair at Styles by Agatha Christie, A Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway and The Unpleasantness at the Bellona Club by Dorothy Sayers, were wildly successful, and after just one year in existence, Penguin had sold over three million copies.

Penguin’s graphic design played a large part in the company’s success. Unlike other publishers, whose covers emphasized the title and author of the book, Penguin emphasized the brand. The covers contained simple, clean fonts, color-coding (orange for fiction, dark blue for biography) and that cute, recognizable bird. The look helped gain headlines. The Sunday Referee declared “the production is magnificent” and novelist J. B. Priestley raved about the “perfect marvels of beauty and cheapness.” Other publishing houses followed Penguin’s lead; one, Hutchinson, launched a line called Toucan Books.

With its quality fare and fine design, Penguin revolutionized paperback publishing, but these were not the first soft-cover books. The Venetian printer and publisher Aldus Manutius had tried unsuccessfully to publish some in the 16th century, and dime novels, or “penny dreadfuls” –lurid romances published in double columns and considered trashy by the respectable houses, were sold in Britain before the Penguins. Until Penguin, quality books, and books whose ink did not stain one's hands, were available only in hardcover.

In 1937, Penguin expanded, adding a nonfiction imprint called Pelican, and publishing original titles. Pelican’s first original nonfiction title was George Bernard Shaw’s The Intelligent Woman’s Guide to Socialism, Capitalism, Sovietism & Fascism. It also published left-leaning Penguin Specials such as Why Britain Is at War and What Hitler Wants that sold widely. As these titles reveal, Penguin played a role in politics as well as in literature and design, and its left-leaning stance figured into Britain’s war and postwar efforts. After the Labour Party came to office in 1945, one of the party leaders declared that the accessibility of left-leaning reading during the war helped his party succeed: “After the WEA [Workers’ Educational Association] it was Lane and his Penguins which did most to get us into office at the end of the war.” The ousted Conservative Party opened an exhibition on the unfortunate spread of Socialism and included photographs of those responsible, including one of Lane.

During World War II, Penguins, which were small enough to be stowed in the pocket of a uniform, were carried by soldiers, and they were chosen for the Services Central and the Forces Book Clubs. In 1940, Lane launched an imprint for youngsters, Puffin Picture Books, which children facing evacuation could carry with them to their new, uncertain homes. During the times of paper rationing, Penguin fared better than its competitors, and the books’ simple design allowed Penguin to easily accommodate the typographic restrictions. Author and professor Richard Hoggart, who served in the war, noted that the books “became a signal: if the back trouser pocket bulged in that way that usually indicated a reader.” They were also carried in the bag in which gas masks were carried and above the left knee of battle dress.

The United States adopted the Penguin model in 1938 with the creation of Pocket Books. The first Pocket Book title was The Good Earth by Pearl Buck, and it was sold in Macy’s. Unlike Penguin, Pocket Books were lavishly illustrated with bright covers. Other U.S. paperback companies followed Pocket’s lead, and like Penguin, the books were carried by soldiers. One soldier, who had been shot and was waiting in a foxhole for help, “spent the hours before help came reading Willa Cather’s Death Comes for the Archbishop, the Saturday Evening Post reported in 1945. “He grabbed it the day before under the delusion that it was a murder mystery, but he discovered, to his amazement, that he liked it anyway.” Avon, Dell, Ace and Harlequin published genre fiction and new literary titles, including novels by Henry Miller and John Steinbeck.

Allen Lane stated that he “believed in the existence…of a vast reading public for intelligent books at a low price, and staked everything on it.” Seventy-five years later, we find ourselves in a situation not unlike Lane’s in 1935. Publishers are facing plummeting sales, and many are attempting to launch new models, chasing the dream to be the next Penguin. New e-readers have been unveiled recently, including the iPad, Kindle and Nook. Digital editions are cheaper than paperbacks—you can buy the latest literary fiction for $9.99—but they come with a hefty start-up price. The basic iPad costs $499, and the two versions of the Kindle are priced at $259 and $489. Not exactly the price of a pack of cigarettes—or, to use a healthier analogy, a pack of gum.

Correction: The original version of this story incorrectly stated the cost of Penguin paperbacks. It was two and a half pence, not six pence.

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Comments (23)

It was Richard J. Walsh, publisher of John Day Company and Asia Magazine that introduced the use of paperback novels in the United States. The first book introduced was The Good Earth by Nobel and Pulitzer Prize recipient Pearl S. Buck, who was married to Walsh. Donna Carcaci Rhodes Curator Pearl S.Buck National Historic Landmark Home

Posted by Donna Carcaci Rhodes on July 11,2012 | 08:09 AM

Great article Ms. Trubeck - second or third piece this week that I've read with your byline but no trace of you on FB, Twitter or LinkedIn. Some readers missed part of the point, to inspire dialogue and curiosity. I am reminded by my editors and media outlets that using Wikipedia as a source is unacceptable. Have never understood the urge to nitpick in this way. If more people paid for their reading material the organizations creating and sharing it would be able to afford fact checkers, a position that was obliterated over the years. Criticism of the type on this comment page gets my hackles up and gives me the urge to scream, "Get a life people." Keep writing Anne!

Posted by Dindy Yokel on April 5,2011 | 04:29 PM

As a writer, my hope is that people continue to read, no matter what format. I, personally, prefer real books. Some of my friends now own and love the electronic "book," which is convenient and easy to carry. However, to me, nothing else is like holding a real, page-turning book, that smells and feels like the paper it is. I order from amazon or B & N, at least twice a month...both hard cover and paperback. I never buy used books, for I know what goes into the writing of them; and I want those writers to get every royalty they have earned. That doesn't mean I havaen't been to used book stores and bought them up by the dozens in the past! I love books and reading, and I really enjoyed this article.

Posted by Barbara Elliott Carpenter on June 16,2010 | 07:32 PM

I buy old Penguins if they're in decent shape. I acquired several from the 1930's and 1940's that had commercials on the back covers or in the end pages. I posted some of these old ads here: http://praymont.blogspot.com/2009/12/ads-in-old-penguins.html

Posted by Paul Raymont on June 4,2010 | 03:24 AM

I enjoyed this article very much and learned a lot that I did not know. I am an avid reader and have been since a child. I love technology but have not invested in an e-reader because I feel it is too antiseptic. I love the feel of the book in my hands, the paper, turning the pages, it is as much a part of the experience as the story and I am not willing to forgo the luxury of that experience.

Posted by Deanna Morgan on April 22,2010 | 02:47 PM

A longtime haunter of used book stores, I well knew the look and feel of the original Penguins, Pelicans and Puffins, and once owned a 1946 edition of Christie's "Murder in Mesopotamia."

Thank you, Anne T, for the references ("Anne, with an 'e'...").

Posted by Shir-El on April 15,2010 | 04:09 PM

So many "techies" and others that do little reading for pleasure and information seldom know what they miss by not having a good paperback book on hand. NY Times Books today had an essay on the earliest e-reader made by a man named Bob Brown and done in the early part of the 20th Century. It ended up looking like an early form of microfilm to be read which I'm sure many of you being educated in the 50's were required to use for reference books that were not on hand because of cost and space. With my arthritis in my thumbs I have a much better hold onto a paperback than an e-book reader. I also use book holders that stand on all odd surfaces except slippery ones. Then I don't have to hold anything. Just turn the pages. Books as we know them aren't going any where soon. The kindles and other e-readers will just be an asset for some that prefer them--at least part of the time. Enjoy your good paperback!!!

Posted by Patricia Wilson on April 11,2010 | 02:40 AM

When I delivered some used paperbacks to a VA hospital and asked for some help, I said, "Can you help me get some pocket books out of the car?" The reply stunned me: "Men or women's?"

My helper was playing a word game with "purses," and it took me the better part of a minute to catch on.

Posted by Fred Bender on April 9,2010 | 07:11 PM

great info - i enjoy reading about "reading" my husband toward the very end of WWII and after WW2 always enjoyed having a paperback in his pocket just like the soldiers...

Posted by Nancy Russo on April 9,2010 | 06:56 PM

How is six pence "two and a half pounds"?
There were 240 pennies to the pound.

Posted by M Clement Hall on April 9,2010 | 05:22 PM

An elegantly written article. Some correctionThe first Penguin Books were published under the imprint of Penguin The Bodley Head and had paper-covers. Think of a paperback with a dust cover.
The idea of the name Penguin did not come from a secretary.
If you look up Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albatross_Books
"Albatross Books was a German publishing house based in Hamburg that produced the first modern mass market paperback books."
Allen Lane was quite open about where the name came from.
Wikipedia goes on:
"The oncoming war brought the Albatross experiment to an end. Allen Lane adopted the look-and-feel of Albatross editions closely, copying most of its innovations, for the first Penguin Books. Lane later hired co-founder Kurt Enoch to manage Penguin's American branch."
This quite quickly became the New American Library.
On a personal note Kurt Enoch was my boss (I ran the New English Library) and my mentor.
It is difficult to lay too much stress on:
Allen Lane adopted the look-and-feel of Albatross editions closely, copying most of its innovations, for the first Penguin Books.
Allen Lane, who was a pleasant cove and much interested in personal relations happily admitted that. He never denied it.
The article is elegantly written and apart from those minor errors -- some of them the folklore of literature -- pretty much spot on.
But, I promise you, all current belief to the contrary, Allen Lane did not invent paperbacks.
Baron Tauchnitz did. And called them Albatross. Honest.

Gareth Powell

Posted by Gareth Powell on April 9,2010 | 12:08 PM

In the third paragraph: "They cost sixpence, or two and a half pounds,..." ???????

Posted by db on April 8,2010 | 06:33 PM

One interesting thing that is not discussed is the effect on the authors-paperback books opened up new royalties for them - often at very high levels - and ata time when the European Market for British and American writers disappeared.
It is an interesting contrast to today when increasingly the problem is finding places that will pay for content especially as all of the public domain material comes on line for free (as well as all the material that is not public domain!)
Apple, Google and the other delivery systems may survive but writing as a living to the extent it ever did May not

Posted by George Hagenauer on April 8,2010 | 03:23 PM

The $$ barriers to entry will come down over time, and because people can use their phones and other devices they already own, this problem is fading quickly. Thanks for the history lesson, BTW!

Posted by Toby Heidel on April 7,2010 | 11:08 AM

Such an insightful reading, best wishes Pablo

Posted by jjk on April 6,2010 | 06:19 PM

I've always been fond of my Penguin books, keeping those assigned to me throughout the years. It seems they've moved away from the color coding, though.

Posted by Allan A on April 6,2010 | 11:39 AM

Hey Cab, there are tons of free books ready for e-readers on the web. You don't even need an e-reader, really; my iTouch has over two hundred free books on it, it fits in my pocket, and it was relatively cheap compared to something specialized for reading. I use the Stanza app, which is also free, and allows me to change the font size at will.

If you're interested in free books - and i don't just mean boring classics - try Project Gutenberg's science fiction bookshelf, or their mysteries, or horror - there's tons of stuff out there on Gutenberg that's both good fun and costs nothing.

There are also free books on Baen's website, on feedbooks, on Random House Free E-Reads - there's plenty out there.

Posted by Anne T on April 6,2010 | 09:42 AM

Cab: That'd be your local library :)

Posted by Cat on April 6,2010 | 03:17 AM

It is an interesting piece, but one minor correction, the sixpence of pre-decimal times equals the contemporary two and a half pence, not two and a half pounds.

Posted by Gareth Evans on April 5,2010 | 10:24 PM

I love reading, and I love books, but new books are just too expensive. I can only afford used books. Paying 20-30$ for a book is just outrageous (I'm from Canada). I bet there are many people who don't read books solely because of price, not because they don't like books. I wish there was a solution that didn't involve e-readers (although it looks like e-books aren't going to be much cheaper anyways.)

Posted by Cab Smith on April 5,2010 | 02:43 PM

Lois Lane would have no need to read The Smithsonian wearing elbow-length bright plastic dish-washing gloves:

This well written article is so very interesting for anyone who remembers their first experiences being magically pulled deep into another world simply by flipping open the pages of a paperback. As far as the improvement of no ink-stained hands, it has always struck me as unfortunate that daily newspapers apparently have never been able to find the inexpensive technology for this. For some reason, I always think of some young businesswoman, immaculately attired in a light-colored suit, wanting to read a newspaper on the edge of some outdoor cafe table, but having to decide whether she wants to collect ink grime on her fingertips and suit sleeves. Of course she would have no such problem reading the clean and green Smithsonian, which I do at any time--in both online and hard-copy formats.

Posted by tma_sierrahills on April 3,2010 | 11:14 AM

Loved this article...found it so interesting!<3

Posted by holly c on April 3,2010 | 04:31 AM



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