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SUMMER 2005: Penguin celebrates its 70 years of publishing by gifting readers 70 titles at £1.50 each selected carefully to do justice to the vast range of topics that make up their current archive. These slim books that can slip in a pocket, and read at one stretch are shaped in the format of the very first penguin edition. They remain affordable, with very original cover designs. Readers who buy the complete set £105.00 will notice the spines carrying all the shades of a rainbow, recalling the first penguin covers, where genres were recognized by their colour coding, of the tripartite horizontal grid. SUMMER 1935: as the story goes Allen Lane [1935 - 1970] a director at Bodley Head was on his return to London, having spent some time with Agatha Christie at her home in Devon. Stranded at Exeter railway station, he felt frustrated at not being able to find a ' good book' to purchase. Unable to convince his collegues at work, in venturing into paperbacks, he left his job and set up his own publishing house. Penguin was born from a desire to popularize culture. The first 10 titles were reprints of hardbacks but within four years, Penguin had attracted a great many distinguished writers for their listings.
The yellow coloured Miscellaneous titles had Francis and Vera Meynell's Weekend Books; the dark blue covers for Biography and Memoirs included Andre Maurois, Ariel and Disraeli, Sean O'Faolin De Valera, H C Armstrong Ibn Saud ; the cerise coloured Travel titles included Olive Murray Chapman across Lapland, otherwise know for her Across Cyprus; the orange coloured Fiction carried names such as Edith Wharton and Rose Macauley both visitors to Cyprus, E M Foster, Saki Tchekov, Faulkner, Chesterton and Waugh; Canon Doyle, Agatha Christie, Dorothy Sayers and H E Wells appeared in the green coloured Crime fiction and the red covers were for drama starting with Shaw and Shakespeare; "Keeping Abreast with World Events", were the Penguin Specials which included Schonfield's The Suez Canal, Elwyn Jones The Attack from Within, Buxton's You and the Refugee and Arnold Haskell Ballet. Penguin Guides began with the counties and included 3 colour maps; Illustrated Classics began with Austen, Browning and Defoe.
THE INDIAN CONNECTION: so little is
said of Krishan Menon whose input at the inception of Penguin was paramount.
Prior to his diplomatic career with India's gaining independence in 1947, he
spent much time in London, befriended Allen, and was instrumental in shaping the
Pelican list with its light blue colour bands. With titles such as Civilization
Clive Bell, Totem and Taboo, Sigmund Freud Essays in Popular Science Julian
Huxley; Medieaval People Eileen Power, Religion and the Rise of Capitalism
Tawney and A Short History of the World by H G Wells the publications drew the
attention of intellectual writers, and readers.
CYPRUS 1960: the agency for Penguin books was passed on, to the Papadopoulos Brothers at Minerva, also on Ledra Street, Nicosia. Copies filled the shelves on either side of the lengthy table that accommodated all the magazines and newspapers that were in demand. In 1960, when the publishers were acquitted of the Obsence Publications Act, a crowd began to form outside the shop, waiting for copies of D H Lawrence's Lady Chatterley's Lover. Whilst 2 million copies were sold in six weeks abroad, Cyprus received its standing order of two copies.
Individuals collect Penguins for the cover design. A current exhibition, at the London Victoria and Albert Museum displays, works of numerous book designers and typographers Penguin by Design: A Cover Story 1935-2005, CY£17.33. As a booksseller, I am grateful for the small revolution that Allen Lane created in the thirties, "converting book-borrowers, into book-buyers" (the bookseller 22 May 1935) |
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bookshop@moufflon.com.cy with
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M o u f f l o n B o o k s h o p 
Penguin
& Pelican editions arrived on the island within the first year of their
appearance. It is common to come
across copies of first editions, with the rubber stamp of the distributors
Mouradian Brothers, British Store, Ledra Street, Nicosia. 
