Penguin Books
Penguin Books is one of the world's most influential and recognized publishing imprints, founded in 1935 by Allen Lane in the United Kingdom. Lane established Penguin with the revolutionary idea of making quality literature available to a mass readership at affordable prices, initially selling paperback editions for the price of a packet of cigarettes at Woolworths and railway station kiosks. The distinctive banded cover design — orange for fiction, green for crime, and blue for biography — became one of the most iconic visual identities in publishing history. Penguin's early list included works by Agatha Christie, Ernest Hemingway, and André Maurois, and the imprint quickly transformed the British publishing landscape by demonstrating that serious literature could find a popular mass market audience.
Over the following decades Penguin expanded significantly, establishing Penguin Books Inc. in the United States in 1939 and developing a range of sub-imprints including Pelican Books (nonfiction), Puffin Books (children's literature), and Penguin Classics. In 1970 Penguin was acquired by Pearson PLC, under whose ownership it grew into a major international publishing group. In 2013 Penguin merged with Random House to form Penguin Random House, currently the world's largest trade book publisher, under the ownership of Bertelsmann. Penguin Books continues to operate today as an imprint within Penguin Random House, based in London and New York.
