Penguin Special

The seventieth anniversary of Penguin Books is a timely moment to look back not only on the life of its energetic founder but also on a publishing world that was founded more on great personalities than budgetary restrictions.

Lewis’s lively biography paints a picture of a man who was willing to take risks in order to succeed (and get his own way) but hated the changes that a new generation of 1960s editors brought to his company; who was prone to acts of extraordinary generosity, but paid his staff minimal wages; who would offer people jobs out of the blue and then just as suddenly get rid of them; and whose affability contrasted with an essential and very English reluctance to allow people to get close to him.

It is well known that Lane set up Penguin paperbacks in 1935 in order to make good writing available to one and all at the cost of a packet of ten cigarettes. What may be less well known is that this proved to be a timely piece of inspiration, given that the family firm of The Bodley Head was heading for financial disaster. Lane and his two brothers John and Richard (Dick) used their own money to set up the business, persuading other publishers – mostly against their better judgment - to sub-lease the rights in some of their hardback titles. Bookshops’ interest in the new, elegantly designed books was minimal at first, but thanks to a large order from Woolworth’s and the enthusiasm of the public, sales were immediate and the future of the company assured.

Looking back from the perspective of a book world saturated in paperbacks, it seems funny to think that publishers were so sceptical about Lane’s idea. They were worried that his sixpence books would make their own hardbacks look overpriced and that authors would receive lower royalties. Moreover, perhaps, they were suspicious of the nattily-dressed and unbookish Lane and his mission to popularise the best writing (while making himself wealthy in the process).

Neverthess, the following decades saw the rapid growth of the company both in the UK and abroad. Lane had a gift for ideas, preferring hunches and long, booze-soaked lunches to paperwork and administration; he was also – particularly in the early days - brilliant at employing the best people, be they editors or designers.

Lane’s energy never let him down until the last few years of his life, and he continued to exert his mercurial control of his company until his death in 1970. His many successes at Penguin were tempered by political in-fighting and a loss in direction, particularly during the 1960s, as well as a souring of relations in his personal life, but the celebrations for his fifty years in the book trade were long and enthusiastic.

Lewis gives us a good idea of Lane the Man, but concentrates more on Lane the Publisher, which amounts almost to the same thing. His biography, full of gossip and personalities, chronicles the waning days of London’s independent, ‘gentlemanly’ publishing trade and shows just how quickly it all changed.

Fewer than thirty years after founding Penguin, Lane – the modernising scourge of the old guard – was in danger of becoming out of touch himself, but he never succumbed. As Lewis points out, nothing illustrates this more clearly than Lane’s choice of James Joyce’s Ulysses as the 1,000th Penguin, published on 23 April 1969, almost 33 years after The Bodley Head hardback edition and 50 years to the day since he joined the family firm.

Reviewed by James Smith, Booktrust website editor