{"id":32793,"date":"2025-07-30T06:18:04","date_gmt":"2025-07-30T06:18:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/32793\/"},"modified":"2025-07-30T06:18:04","modified_gmt":"2025-07-30T06:18:04","slug":"inside-penguin-books-northamptonshire-archive","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/32793\/","title":{"rendered":"Inside Penguin Books&#8217; Northamptonshire archive"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.bbc.co.uk\/programmes\/articles\/3M67Kx1nm3wqSj7J7VwZRXv\/spine-tingling-80-years-of-penguin-paperbacks\" class=\"ssrcss-f6h2dj-InlineLink e1kn3p7n0\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Penguin Books began life in 1934<\/a> when its founder, Allen Lane, was stranded at Exeter station with nothing to read.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">At the time, hardbacks were hugely expensive and paperbacks widely dismissed as cheap, trashy &#8220;pulp fiction&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Lane&#8217;s idea? To sell great literature at cheap prices.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">And so, in 1935, Penguin Books was born.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Its initial catalogue of 10 books, priced at just sixpence each, included a reprint of Agatha Christie&#8217;s The Mysterious Affair at Styles.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">The logo? A black and white penguin sketched at London Zoo after Lane&#8217;s secretary suggested the bird as the company&#8217;s name.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Within a year, three million Penguin books had been sold and a publishing revolution was born.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Penguin Books began life in 1934 when its founder, Allen Lane, was stranded at Exeter station with nothing&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":32794,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[30],"tags":[457,96,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-32793","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-books","8":"tag-books","9":"tag-entertainment","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom","12":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32793","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=32793"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32793\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/32794"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=32793"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=32793"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=32793"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}