The Extraordinary Flight of Book Publishing's Wingless Bird

Home , Allen Lane, Hutchinson (publisher), Pelican Books, The Bodley Head

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LOGOS The extraordinary flight of book publishing’s wingless bird

Eric de Bellaigue “Very few great enterprises like this survive their founder.” The speaker was Allen Lane, the founder of Penguin, the year before his death in 1970. Today the company that Lane named after the wingless bird has soared into the stratosphere of the publishing world. How this was achieved, against many obstacles and in the face of many setbacks, invites investigation. Eric de Bellaigue has been When Penguin Books was floated on the studying the past and forecasting Stock Exchange in April 1961, it already had the future of British book twenty-five profitable years behind it. The first ten Penguin reprints, spearheaded by André Maurois’ publishing for thirty-five years. Ariel and Ernest Hemingway’s Farewell to Arms, In this first instalment of a study came out in 1935 under the imprint of The Bodley of Penguin Books, he has Head, but with Allen Lane and his two brothers combined his financial insights underwriting the venture. In 1936, Penguin Books Limited was incorporated, The Bodley Head having with knowledge gleaned through been placed into voluntary receivership. interviews with many who played The story goes that the choice of the parts in Penguin’s history. cover price was determined by Woolworth’s slogan Subsequent instalments will bring “Nothing over sixpence”. Woolworths did indeed de Bellaigue’s account up to the stock the first ten titles, but Allen Lane attributed his selection of sixpence as equivalent to a packet present day. of cigarettes, an expenditure that imposed little strain on the average person’s decision-making pro- cesses. Penguin’s immediate success brought a rapid build-up of new titles, all of them fiction, as more and more hardback publishers came to view Penguin as a useful source of supplementary income. By the spring of 1937, more than 100 titles had been “Penguinized”. Having discovered a successful formula, Lane swiftly looked for ways to extend it. He entered the non-fiction market with the launch of Pelican Books, which included works by such writers as Clive Bell, Julian Huxley, Bernard Shaw. Also in 1937, Penguin became an original publisher when it commissioned books on

The extraordinary flight of book publishing’s wingless bird

subjects of topical interest, Geneviève Tabouis’ have to be abandoned in favour of untried titles Blackmail or War? being an early instance. Many of which are standing in the unpublished queue. these Penguin specials, which eventually ran to Publishers who used to be dubious about releasing more than 150, sold in excess of a quarter of a mil- their reprint rights are now more than anxious to get lion copies. Such sales led to a substantial alloca- titles into Penguin editions, and often have to be tion of paper during the war years, which enabled reluctantly refused admission into the list, or asked to Penguin to meet a huge demand in the armed defer their hopes for several years – by which time, forces. The war years turned out, therefore, to be a of course, the claimants will be more numerous than period of considerable development for Penguin – ever.” A group of literary hardback publishers under the continued direction of Allen Lane, it (Heinemann, Hamish Hamilton, Faber, Chatto & having been agreed among the brothers that he Windus and Michael Joseph) sought to side-step this should be the one to stay in a “reserved occupation” congestion by agreeing in 1948 to give Penguin first and manage the business. Four new series were call on all paperbound editions from their lists. launched: King Penguins, in colour and hardback; The complacency with which Penguin Puffin children’s books; Penguin Modern Painters; described its market position in 1956 is at odds with and, in 1946, the Penguin Classics, the first volume the way in which it was shortly to respond to a being E V Rieu’s translation of the Odyssey. The more competitive environment. Natural justice emphasis in the Pelican list shifted decisively from alone seemed to call for an immediate and humili- reprints to original titles. ating fall from grace. But Allen Lane did not By the mid-1950s, Penguin’s unit sales believe his own publicity. In October 1958, he had reached ten million, more than half of which wrote: “One must appreciate how much change were new titles “which in one way or another are there has been in publishing during the last ten animated by the explicit intention of providing the years. When we started Penguins we had no com- public with the varied pleasures and discoveries of petition ... The situation today is that we are, the mind”. A casual glance at the Pelican History of whether we like it or not, in a tough, highly com- Art, edited by Nikolaus Pevsner, shows that this petitive industry, and we have to fight every inch of noble objective was grounded on reality. Of the ten the way, from the facing of colossal advances if we million units, a little over half were exported, and are to keep books away from Pan, Corgi, Ace, Pan- of these, one million went to the United States. ther etc to the real struggle to retain space at the Two hundred and fifty new titles were published retail outlet.” (Quoted by J E Morpurgo in Allen each year, and the warehouse held 1,000 titles in Lane King Penguin, Hutchinson, 1979.) stock. Turnover in 1956 amounted to £1.1 million, The company’s financial performance for on which profits before tax were £123,000, a profit these years confirmed Lane’s assessment, with com- margin of 11.2%. petitive pressures visible in 1958 and 1959. The mid-1950s were a golden age for Pen- guin. They were a shining example of what the whole 1956 1957 1958 1959 1960 of British industry was being exhorted to do – bolster the country’s foreign exchange reserves through £000 exports. While other publishers were paying it the Turnover 1,100 1,150 1,264 1,436 1,965 compliment of imitation – Pan Books was launched Pre-tax profits 123 154 128 133 364 in 1946, Fontana in 1952, Panther by two Air Force Profit margins 11.2% 13.4% 10.1% 9.3% 18.5% men on their gratuities after the war – Penguin remained the towering figure. In The Penguin Story, to The year 1960, however, witnessed a dra- mark the company’s twenty-first birthday, it was matic advance, with pre-tax profits rising nearly claimed that “the struggles for admission to the three-fold and profit margins doubling. Publication Penguin list are increasingly difficult. Books which that August of Lady Chatterley’s Lover by D H have done well for two or three printings, and would Lawrence had been followed two months later by doubtless do as well in another couple of editions, Penguin being arraigned on a charge of having