I recently tumbled an article (via boingboing) called “How the Paperback Novel Changed Popular Literature” that told the story of how Penguin started publishing cheap, little, iconic books in the 1930s and (almost) singlehandedly reignited a popular interest in reading by producing novels that could be had for the price of a pack of cigarettes and could fit in your pocket.

Allen Lane [Penguin's founder] stated that he “believed in the existence…of a vast reading public for intelligent books at a low price, and staked everything on it.”

The article makes special mention of the role the publisher’s brand played in the success of their paperbacks. The colour-coded covers, clear, bold typeface, and, let’s face it, adorable logo made it a lot less odious to delve into classic and contemporary literature and in their first year of existence, Penguin sold over three million copies of their first ten titles.

Now, this is all very interesting to me personally because my first encounter with Penguin books had nothing at all to do with their early branding (as nice as it was). No, from a very young age, I was exposed to a much different style of Penguin paperback, specifically their Classic and Modern Classic lines. These novels (unlike the earlier colourful versions) had very muted branding and featured covers filled with some related example of fine art (usually a painting, but sculptures and drawings as well). I’ve always been struck by the strange relationship between the art on the cover and the story inside these Penguin books, so I started scanning the few that I had in the hopes of building some kind of archive that could be shared with other Penguin lovers.

Everyone seems to have some of these Penguin editions lying around. If you’ve got any, email me if you’d like to add them, or just holler in the comments.