Today in 1935, the first ten Penguin Books, paperback reprints of titles previously published as hardbacks, were issued by publisher Allen Lane.
All the titles featured the Penguin brand image, a standardized cover design and cost only sixpence each. In the face of resistance from the traditional book publishers, the purchase of 63,000 books by Woolworths Group paid for the project outright, confirmed its worth, and allowed Lane to establish Penguin as a separate business in 1936.
Within the first ten months, one million Penguin books had been printed.
In 2005, Toby Clements wrote about Allen Lane in The Telegraph: “Instead of going to university, he joined his uncle at the publisher Bodley Head in London, and perhaps this truncated education – unusual among gentleman publishers of the day – made him impatient with the staid world of pre-war publishing. He was certainly attracted to publishing’s riskier ventures.”