Puffin is Penguin's children's imprint, founded in 1940. Most Puffins are paperback reprints of books first published elsewhere, so check the copyright page; only Puffin originals such as Stig of the Dump are true firsts.
Puffin is a publisher based in London, founded in 1940. We track 436 editions it published between 1942 and 2025, 92 of them first editions across 420 books. How Puffin marked its first editions is set out below, with a checker for the year on your title page.
About Puffin
Puffin is the children's list of Penguin Books. The idea came from a 1939 meeting between Noel Carrington and Penguin's founder Allen Lane, and the imprint dates from 2 April 1940. It belongs today to Penguin Random House.
Carrington's first series, Puffin Picture Books, was mostly illustrated non-fiction, shaped by early twentieth-century Russian picture books and by France's Père Castor series of the 1930s; War on Land opened the run. Story books arrived in 1941, led by Barbara Euphan Todd's Worzel Gummidge, under the first editor, Eleanor Graham, who kept the list going through wartime paper rationing. A large part of the early fiction consisted of paperback rights acquired from other houses, for example Ballet Shoes and The Family from One End Street.
Kaye Webb became editor in 1961, and by 1969 the list had 1,213 titles in print. In 1967 she started the Puffin Club and its magazine Puffin Post. Besides reprints of established favourites, the list now carried original books such as Clive King's Stig of the Dump (1963). Picture Puffins for younger readers came in the late 1960s, and the 1980s added the Fighting Fantasy gamebooks, the Puffin Plus teenage line and film tie-ins.
Holding a copy? The first edition checker shows Puffin's practice for the year on your title page.
Identification
How to identify Puffin first editions
What to look for
1940s to 1950s
Most Puffin Story Books were paperback reprints of children's books already issued by another publisher, whose paperback rights Puffin had bought. A Puffin copy of such a title is not the first edition: look for the earlier hardback from the original house.
1960s to 1970s
From the 1960s Puffin also published original titles. Stig of the Dump (1963) is one, and for books of this kind the Puffin paperback is the first edition.
For any other title, read the copyright page for an earlier publisher and date. If one appears, the Puffin is a later edition.
1980s to 1990s
Where a Puffin has a number line on the copyright page, the lowest number present is the printing, whatever order the numbers run in. A first printing shows a 1.
A 1 in the line of a Puffin reprint of another house's book shows only the first Puffin printing, a "first thus", not the true first edition.
From 2000
The number line rule still applies.
Many Puffin bestsellers began as hardbacks from another imprint. Artemis Fowl came out in 2001 as a Viking hardback in Britain and a Miramax hardback in America, and the Puffin paperback followed in 2002, so the Puffin is a later edition.
1940s to 1950s - Most Puffin Story Books were paperback reprints of children's books already issued by another publisher, whose paperback rights Puffin had bought. A Puffin copy of such a title is not the first edition: look for the earlier hardback from the original house. 1960s to 1970s - From the 1960s Puffin also published original titles. Stig of the Dump (1963) is one, and for books of this
How many Puffin books does MyVolumes track?
We track 436 editions published by Puffin, 92 of them first editions, across 420 books.
