The Poor Woman's Library

The Writer's Alamanc tells us that today is the anniversary of Penguin's first paperback editions. Apparently, publisher Allen Lane was looking for something to read on the train and found only magazines and Victorian novel reprints. At the time, quality books were thought to deserve only quality bindings, which made them expensive to acquire and not very portable, either.

Lane remedied that by publishing Agatha Christie and Ernest Hemingway paperbacks in the summer of 1935; the books cost the same as a pack of cigarettes. The publisher then expanded into other titles (classics, nonfiction and children's literature genres) and had soon sold more than 3 million copies.

I have a few Penguin classics in my collection; more to the point, I have a lot of paperbacks. Long ago I had to make a decision: I would either buy a lot of paperbacks or not very many hardcovers. I chose the former, figuring that what's important is the content of the books, not their durability. It's what you might call a poor woman's library. But when I take down one of the volumes, and read the words on the (perhaps now yellowing) page, I couldn't feel richer.