Penguin Books
Penguin Books Limited is a British publishing house. It was co-founded in 1935 by Allen Lane with his brothers Richard and John,[3] as a line of the publishers The Bodley Head, only becoming a separate company the following year.[4] Penguin revolutionised publishing in the 1930s through its inexpensive paperbacks, sold through Woolworths and other stores for sixpence, bringing high-quality fiction and non-fiction to the mass market.[5] Its success showed that large audiences existed for serious books. It also affected modern British popular culture significantly through its books concerning politics, the arts, and science.[6]
Parent company
Penguin Random House (as of 1 July 2013)[1]
Active
1935
- Allen Lane
- Richard Lane
- John Lane
United Kingdom
City of Westminster, London, England
United Kingdom, Ireland, India, United States, Australia, Canada, New Zealand, South Africa, Spanish-speaking world, Brazil, Germany, Portugal
€3.4 billion [2]
10,000[2]
Penguin Books is now an imprint of the worldwide Penguin Random House, a conglomerate formed in 2013 by its merger with American publisher Random House, a subsidiary of German media conglomerate Bertelsmann.[7] Formerly, Penguin Group was wholly owned by British Pearson plc, the global media company which also owned the Financial Times.[8] When Penguin Random House was formed, Pearson had a 47% stake in the new company, which was reduced to 25% in July 2017. Since April 2020, Penguin Random House has been a wholly owned subsidiary of Bertelsmann. It is one of the largest English-language publishers known as the Big Five, along with Holtzbrinck/Macmillan, Hachette, HarperCollins and Simon & Schuster.[9]
Penguin Books has its registered office in the City of Westminster, London, England.[10][11]
Official websites
Other