Penguin Books

Allen Lane founded Penguin in 1935 as an imprint of Bodley Head Publishing House of London. He was interested in producing good quality, contemporary writing in cheap editions. The name Penguin was chosen because of the friendly, happy, eappealing (and not too scholarly) image it portrayed. A twenty-one year old Edward Young, an office junior, drew the original Penguin logo by studying the penguins at London Zoo. Penguin books were sold for sixpence, the same price as a 10 pack of cigarettes. Penguin books are colourful, colour-coded according to the genre of book. Crime books are green and white. The mysterious Affair at Styles was one of the first 10 books to be published by Penguin. By 1936, enough books had been sold to allow Lane to establish Penguin as a separate company. Lane resisted the use of cover images for some years, but eventually some of these were produced.