Penguin Books is the London paperback publisher founded by Allen Lane in 1935; it launched Pelican, Puffin and Penguin Classics and is now part of Penguin Random House, owned by Bertelsmann.
Penguin is a publisher active from 1938. We track 84 editions it published between 1938 and 2025, 36 of them first editions across 84 books. How Penguin marked its first editions is set out below, with a checker for the year on your title page.
About Penguin
Penguin Books is a British publisher founded in London in 1935 by Allen Lane, with his brothers Richard and John, to sell good books as cheap paperbacks at sixpence each.
It began as an imprint of The Bodley Head and became a separate company in 1936. Its first stock was handled from the crypt of Holy Trinity Church, Marylebone, and in 1937 it moved to Harmondsworth, Middlesex. Lane added Pelican Books for non-fiction in 1937, opening with George Bernard Shaw's The Intelligent Woman's Guide to Socialism and Capitalism, and the Puffin children's list in 1940. Penguin Classics followed in the mid 1940s, opening with E. V. Rieu's translation of Homer's Odyssey.
In 1960 Penguin published the unexpurgated Lady Chatterley's Lover and was acquitted in the obscenity case R v Penguin Books Ltd. Pearson bought the company in August 1970, weeks after Lane's death. Penguin merged with Random House in 2013 to form Penguin Random House, which Bertelsmann has owned outright since April 2020.
Holding a copy? The first edition checker shows Penguin's practice for the year on your title page.
Identification
How to identify Penguin first editions
What to look for
A Penguin first printing is identified from the imprint details on the reverse of the title page (the title verso), not from a "first edition" statement.
How to read it
Look for the line "First published in Penguin Books" (or "Published in Penguin Books") with a year. Later impressions are recorded on the same page, as dated reprint lines on older books and as a printing number line on later ones, so a copy showing reprint dates or a number line without 1 is not a first printing.
The original paperback price is a useful check: the first Penguins sold at sixpence (6d).
Traps
Many Penguins reprinted books first issued in hardback by other houses, so the verso can show an earlier date and publisher as well as the Penguin one; the Penguin date is the one that matters for a Penguin first.
A Penguin first printing is identified from the imprint details on the reverse of the title page (the title verso), not from a "first edition" statement. How to read it - Look for the line "First published in Penguin Books" (or "Published in Penguin Books") with a year. Later impressions are recorded on the same page, as dated reprint lines on older books and as a printing number line on later one
How many Penguin books does MyVolumes track?
We track 84 editions published by Penguin, 36 of them first editions, across 84 books.
