Penguin

Connections

Connections Author name Excerpt
Anthologization Malorie Blackman
MB contributed a novella, The Ripple Effect, to Doctor Who: 11 Doctors, 11 Stories, a Penguin Books anthology intended to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the science fiction television programme Doctor Who with...
Anthologization Medbh McGuckian
MMG has been invited to contribute poems to many anthologies. Early in her career, her work was included in the influential Contemporary British Poetry, edited by Blake Morrison and Andrew Motion and published by...
Literary responses Germaine Greer
Greer professed herself deeply anxious about the reviews.
Wallace, Christine. Germaine Greer: Untamed Shrew. Richard Cohen Books, 1999.
193
The Penguin paperback edition, however, quoted on its cover Anita Brookner in the Observer calling this a brave book,Anthony Storr in the Independent describing it...
Literary responses Anna Kavan
Jonathan Lethem revisited Ice in the New York Times fifty years after it appeared, in advance of its anniversary re-issue as a Penguin classic. His notice opened arrestingly: Anna Kavan's Ice is book like the...
Literary responses Patricia Highsmith
Despite positive reviews by Lorna Sage in The Observer Review and Geoffrey Elborn in Guardian Weekly, Brooks Peters in Out says that the novel was not well received in England. However, the year...
Literary responses Rose Macaulay
The book did well in Britain (the Times Literary Supplement called it in many respects a brilliant piece of work),
Lefanu, Sarah. Rose Macaulay. Virago, 2003.
197
but it sank with scarcely a ripple in the USA.
Macaulay, Rose. Letters to a Friend from Rose Macaulay 1950-1952. Babington Smith, ConstanceEditor , Fontana, 1968.
64
RM
Literary responses Germaine Greer
A female gynaecologist mentioned in the book as uncaring and insensitive successfully sued Greer for damages.
Wallace, Christine. Germaine Greer: Untamed Shrew. Richard Cohen Books, 1999.
265-6
The Penguin paperback which followed the year after publication came garlanded with praise from British feminist writers: Wendy Cope
Material Conditions of Writing Naomi Alderman
NA titled her second novel The Lessons. It was published by Penguin after a long old slog, which involved cutting 50,000 words,
Alderman, Naomi. Naomi Alderman. Novels and Games.
the entire original opening.
Shackle, Samira. “The Lessons (review)”. The New Statesman, No. 4997, p. 55.
139.4997 (19 April 2010): 55
Material Conditions of Writing Una Marson
In the 1950s, UM struggled with a long, semi-autobiographical work entitled Everyday Life in Jamaica to be published by Knopf , but this was never completed. In 1964, the year before she died, she received...
Occupation Noel Streatfeild
In her professional career, NS gradually came to accept the role of writer for children as a more prominent part of her identity than that of writer for adults. She answered letters from children who...
Occupation Carol Ann Duffy
As a schoolgirl CAD had a Saturday job sweeping the floor at a local hairdresser's. Her pay each week bought her ten cigarettes, a bottle of wine, and a Penguin collection of some modern poet.
Wroe, Nicholas. “A life in writing”. The Guardian, p. Review 11.
11
Occupation Kamila Shamsie
In 2017 both KS and Penelope Lively were approached by Penguin to select under-appreciated works for inclusion in a series of forgotten classics by female British authors in recognition of the centenary passing of Representation...
Author summary Patricia Highsmith
PH , writing from the mid-twentieth century, first in the USA and then in Europe and England, produced short stories and novels, the majority of them variously classifiable as thrillers or suspense fiction, a...
Publishing Monica Dickens
It had a Penguin edition the following year.
Publishing Mary Renault
When MR received her copy of The Persian Boy, she was startled to discover that she had been summarily transferred to Allen Lane , the hardback division of Penguin . After the death of...

Timeline

30 July 1935
Penguin Books issued its first ten titles: sixpenny paperbacks with a characteristic penguin logo.
1937
The two-year-old Penguin Books launched its Pelican imprint: a non-fiction series (mostly history, sociology, economics, or politics) which, unlike Penguin fiction, were new works not reprints.
1941
Puffin , a subsidiary of Penguin designed to publish (initially) picture books for children in paperback, issued its first four titles.
1949
Hans Schmoller succeeded Jan Tschichold as designer at Penguin , preserving unchanged the policy of uniform cover design.
1951
Nikolaus Pevsner published the first three titles in his Buildings of England series, an immensely knowledgeable gazetteer, county by county, of historic and other noteworthy structures.
29 July 1959
The Obscene Publications Act (England), 1959, replacing a predecessor of 1857, substantially modified its elements; it newly provided the defence of public good (which was held to include literary merit), and the use...
1963
E. P. Thompson published his influential historyThe Making of the English Working Class.
1972
Designer Richard Hollis produced a revolutionary look for John Berger 's Ways of Seeing in Penguin paperback: the work's text begins on the cover, incorporating (as pages do throughout the book) a cover-like visual.
1974
Erin Pizzey published with Penguin her book on marital violence, Scream Quietly or the Neighbours Will Hear.
May 1978
Virago Press issued its first Virago Modern Classics, a historically important series most though not all of which were novels.
1979
The cover of M. M. Kaye 's The Far Pavilions in Penguin paperback (the year after its original publication) shocked Penguin's established constituency with its picture of a couple (the man with bare torso) kissing.
By 20 June 2000
Jane Nissen , a former editor at Penguin , published the first four titles by Jane Nissen Books , reprints of much-loved children's books of the twentieth century.
8 June 2005
An exhibition at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London entitled Penguin by Design: A Cover Story 1935-2005 provided useful insight into its immediate topic, but also into twentieth-century book design in general.
By the end of July 2010
Sales of the three novels in the Millennium series by the Swedish writer Stieg Larsson (of which the first was published in England on 10 January 2008) broke records with worldwide sales estimated at between...
Early November 2012
A merger was proposed between the publishers Penguin and Random House , that would create a mega-company with worldwide revenues of 4.1 billion dollars US.
Sabbagh, Dan. “Amazon fears underlie books merger”. Guardian Weekly, p. 17.