Pan Books

Pan books was registered as a limited company in 1944. In 1947 it started mass producing paperbacks, with Penguin as its only competitor. It was this time that Pan first used a standardised design on the spine, which consisted of white stars and ‘PAN’ above the yellow and black logo of a pan player, with the book number at the bottom in white. In 1962 they introduced a new system, with the number, PAN and logo incorporated into one picture, but they still continued to produce the earlier versions until a complete change in 1966. Pan was a serious rival to Penguin because of their attractive, colourful and eye catching covers. To begin with, Pan was based at the Book Society headquarters at 20 Headford Place, but soon moved to its own 8 Headford Place. Pan covers around 1947 had a circular logo in the middle top of the cover, with the title and author in a banner at the top, and the bottom half of the book a picture. In 1948/49 the logo moved to the top right corner of the cover. In the 1950s covers had the logo in the top right corner, and the title and author were in either a banner or curved rectangle on the top half of the cover. In the late 1950s and early 1960s, Great Pan published covers that looked very similar, but the logo in the top right corner was rectangular. In 1963 the Pan logo incorporated the word PAN next to the pan player.