Allen Lane, born in Gloucestershire, England in 1902, became his publisher uncle's apprentice at respected firm The Bodley Head in 1919. Six years later, he was the managing editor of the company, and the resources afforded to him by his position gave him significant headroom for experimentation.
In Lane's time, paperbacks bore little resemblance to the various works of today; rather, they were cheap, low-quality moneymakers, exemplified in modern memory by the dime novels of Buffalo Bill and gaudy romances whose covers were adorned with scantily clad secretaries. Over time, paperbacks and hardcovers developed a disparity of content, which led to two problems:
Lane found himself confronted by the second issue at a train station on a trip from Devon to London. (His business there was a weekend with Agatha Christie, a writer for the Bodley Head and a friend of his.) Frustrated by a lack of choice, he happened upon the idea of publishing the types of novels he published with the Head in paperback form.
Such was the stigma against paperbacks at the time that the heads of the Head thought it was a foolish idea. But, while unconvinced, they decided to allow Lane to pursue the idea as a side venture. Lane developed a new brand, Penguin Books, and launched the imprint's first editions with a 63,500-book run purchased by Woolworth's in 1935. (Legend has it that the buyer who represented Woolworth's also disliked the idea, but that his wife's interest in the idea convinced him to go through with the idea.)
Perhaps needless to say, plenty of readers fell in love with the idea, and the interest was such that Lane made Penguin books into a full-fledged separate venture. Over time, he expanded the brand with spinoffs such as Pelican, line of nonfiction books, and Puffin Story Books, which changed the face of the children's literature.
In developing the first line of Penguin books, Lane wanted to contrast dramatically with other paperbacks, knowing that most readers would pass over a shelf of paperbacks that bore the usual action portraits of novels' characters. Actual penguins from the London Zoo functioned as models for Ed Young, who painted the now-famous logo. The different colors of the novels denoted different genres.
https://www.historytoday.com/richard-cavendish/first-penguin-paperbacks
https://www.britannica.com/biography/Allen-Lane
This was a very interesting article. I enjoyed that you noted how the hardcover books were associated with wealth and that the paperback books had a somewhat negative connotation. I liked that it was easy to read, like a story, but with such strong historical value as Penguin books is very big today.
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