Long before Penguin Classics became a familiar sight on bookshelves, Allen Lane had a simple, almost radical belief: good books should not be reserved for people who could afford them. After finding little worth reading at Exeter St Davids railway station in 1934, Lane envisioned high-quality books that could be sold cheaply and widely. In 1935, he founded Penguin Books with his brothers, Richard and John, launching paperbacks priced at sixpence, that’s roughly the cost of a packet of cigarettes.
A decade later, that democratic philosophy found its literary expression in Penguin Classics. The series launched in 1946 with E. V. Rieu’s translation of Homer’s The Odyssey. Rieu became the first editor of the series, helping establish an ambitious mission: bring the great works of world literature into accessible, readable editions. The gamble paid off. The Odyssey went on to sell more than a million copies, and the collection has since grown to nearly 3,000 works spanning more than two and a half millennia.
Today, Penguin Classics is perhaps best known for making literary history feel tangible. From Homer and Sophocles to Dostoevsky, Jane Austen and beyond, its catalogue crosses centuries, languages and cultures. Its distinctive covers have also become objects of design appreciation, particularly after typographer Jan Tschichold established Penguin’s influential visual system in the 1940s.
And then there is Alan.
The familiar penguin mascot affectionately known as Alan has accompanied Penguin for decades, evolving from a modest black-and-white emblem into one of publishing’s most recognisable symbols. The original penguin was suggested by Allen Lane’s secretary, Joan Coles, as a “dignified but flippant” symbol; 21-year-old office junior Edward Young was sent to London Zoo to sketch the bird.
These qualities are what makes Penguin Classics so enduring until this day. It treats literature as both cultural heritage and everyday pleasure, something worthy of reverence, but never so distant that an ordinary reader cannot pick it up.
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