Signet

About Signet

Signet is the American paperback imprint of New American Library (NAL) in New York, set up in 1948 when Kurt Enoch and Victor Weybright split Penguin's American business from the British parent, and now part of Penguin Random House.

At NAL, Signet carried fiction while the Mentor label took non-fiction and academic titles. Weybright kept close control of titles and cover art, and painted covers, especially those of James Avati, became the look of the list; the firm fought censors in the early 1950s, and by the late 1950s it was the largest paperback publisher in the United States. By 1956 NAL reported sales of over three million copies of its Signet edition of James Jones's From Here to Eternity. From 1963 NAL also published Ian Fleming's James Bond novels.

Signet issued paperback originals too. Stephen King's first Richard Bachman novel, Rage, appeared as a Signet paperback in September 1977 at $1.50, and The Long Walk followed in July 1979. Times Mirror bought NAL in 1960, Odyssey Partners and Ira J. Hechler acquired it in 1983, NAL bought E. P. Dutton in 1985, and Penguin took NAL back in 1986 to 1987. NAL, and with it Signet, is now an imprint of Penguin Random House.

How to spot a Signet first edition

• The first printing of King's Signet original Rage (1977, $1.50) carries a September 1977 first printing statement on the copyright page and the number line "1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9".