Browse through any second-hand bookshop in Pakistan, and it will not be long before one comes across a Penguin paperback. What­ever one’s reading preference, be it modern science fiction or classical architecture, there is likely to be a useful Penguin volume available. Without the existence of Penguins, the possibility of reading diverse literatures in Pakistan would be greatly curtailed. For it is only in Penguin that one is likely to find here the Mencius or Gregory of Tours’ History of the Franks. Editions of such works by other publishers are, of course, extant, but they turn up in Pakistan rarely. The prevalence of relatively inexpensive Pen­guins allows those with limited resources to read hundreds of works which would otherwise be unavailable.

The ubiquity of paperbacks makes it difficult, therefore, to comprehend how recent a development this is. For it was only 80 years ago that publisher Allen Lane, unable to find interesting reading material at an English railway station, decided to publish cheap and accessible paperbacks of contemporary quality writing, to be sold not only in daunting bookshops, but at train stations, newsagents, and other outlets. Lane bought the rights to reprint ten works in paperback form, accepted his secretary’s “dignified but flippant” suggestion of a company name, and Penguin was born. Beginning its operations in a mice-infested church crypt, the new venture was predicted to fail, but Penguin proved the naysayers wrong, and it was not long before the company began publishing works of its own and created imprints such as Pelican and Puffin for non-fiction and children’s books. Publishers and booksellers alike resented the successful new enterprise, fearing that paperbacks would damage the market for more expensive hardbacks.

George Orwell believed that while cheap books would be good for readers, it would be a disaster for authors, publishers, and booksellers. The publisher Stanley Unwin had a similar view, and quoted John Ruskin: “no book is worth anything which is not worth much”. Yet, others defended Penguin’s efforts to expand reading beyond a restricted class and promote serious reading. The Daily Worker in 1939 compared the arrival of the cheap book with the invention of printing, adding: “Slowly the best of modern literature will be coming into the hands of any man who wants it, and in the process man himself is going to be changed.”

On 80 years of the publication of Penguin paperback books, that started with the mission of providing important works at an affordable price

The mission of Penguin to provide to the general public important works at an affordable price was enhanced with the development of the Penguin Classics range in 1946. This series, which currently includes well over 1000 titles, presents many of the great works of world literature and philosophy. But here Penguin have occasionally stumbled somewhat. While an argument can be made for converting epic poems into prose (as Penguin did with its initial translations of The Odyssey and the Aeneid), the rationale behind publishing significant works in an abridged and rearranged format (such as the Quran translated by N.J. Dawood) is questionable. Fortunately, Penguin regularly revises its reprints, so newer versions of its titles often include updates, corrections, and expansions; the most current edition of the Dawood translation of the Quran, for instance, presents the Surahs in their traditional order. However, one still awaits unabridged editions of a number of Penguin Classics: the Baburnama, Arthashastra, and histories of Polybius and Livy all deserve better treatments.

Still, the fact that Penguins are aimed at the general reader does not necessitate that they are always inferior to more scholarly editions. In fact, several Penguins are superior to other options on the market: Penguin’s edition of Edward Gibbon’s The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire is the most textually accurate version in print, and its publication of Malcolm Lyons’ translation of The Arabian Nights is the most complete. Modern Penguins often include a plethora of useful textual apparatus such as introductions, glossaries, bibliographies, notes, and maps; this textual matter is often written by respected scholars: Rosemary Edmonds’ translation of Ivan Turgenev’s Fathers and Sons includes a lecture by Isaiah Berlin, and the Modern Classic edition of Rudyard Kipling’s Kim was edited, annotated, and introduced by Edward Said.

Initially a publisher of small and cheap paperbacks, Penguin has had to evolve, and now offers hardbacks, boxed sets, deluxe editions, and e-Books, many of which cannot be classified as ‘cheap’. The three-volume Arabian Nights and Gibbon sets, for example, carry a recommended retail price of £60 each. And its competitors in the area of classics (The Folio Society, Modern Library, Oxford University Press, etc.), while not possessing as diverse a range, often produce publications of comparable or superior quality.

While Penguin was not the first publisher to produce paperbacks, it caused a revolution in their design, printing, and distribution. Today, the launch of a paperback edition following an initial hardback release is routine, and publishing a book direct to paperback not uncommon. But the company’s impact went far beyond the industry, and Penguin has been credited with influencing literary, cultural, and even political trends. There are numerous clubs and archives dedicated to cataloguing and detailing the thousands of Penguin titles that have been published over the decades. Finding them in good condition is difficult, however, and some of the early ones are becoming collectibles.

Over the years, Penguin has been embroiled in controversial publishing decisions. It was put on trial by the British government in 1960 for its unexpurgated publication of D.H. Lawrence’s Lady Chatterley’s Lover. In the 1980s the company’s American subsidiary Viking Press was attacked over the release of Spycatcher (the revelatory memoirs of former MI5 officer Peter Wright), not to mention Salman Rushdie’s The Satanic Verses. At various times, Penguin has even been accused of promoting Marxism. Most recently, the publisher was criticised over its decision in 2013 to include the singer Morrisey’s Autobiography into its Classics range. Unfortunately, the idea that a new and unread book could sit alongside time-honoured works by Michel de Montaigne and Mozi did not, for some reason, strike the editors as preposterous, and it will be a long time before their judgement can be trusted again. Any publisher must necessarily keep a watchful eye on company profits, but this seeming capitulation to commercialism is in stark contrast to the policies of several decades ago, when Penguin resisted altering its sober cover designs to compete with the more lurid ones of other publishers. The writer and educator Gilbert Highet once stated: “Not one of the Penguin books has a cover which emphasises the fact that human beings are mammals. On the contrary, they treat us as intellectuals.” Or, as Allen Lane once said, “A book is not a tin of beans”.

The writer is an antiquarian.