The first penguin paperbacks—including titles by Ernest Hemingway, Agatha Christie, and André Maurois—were published on this day in 1935. At six pence each, they were the same price as a box of cigarettes and much cheaper than hardcovers. Mass-producing paperbacks popularized literature for a new class and fundamentally changed the printing industry. Below is a select visual history of the Penguin paperback.
1946: Homer's The Odyssey, translated by E.V. Rieu
1953: The Body in the Library, by Agatha Christie
1962: 1984, by George Orwell
1962: War of the Worlds, by H.G. Wells
1963: Pavilion of Women, by Pearl S. Buck
1965: The Snows of Kilimanjaro, by Ernest Hemingway
1969: The Old Man And The Sea, by Ernest Hemingway
1971: To Have And Have Not, by Ernest Hemingway
1986: The Great Gatsby, by F. Scott Fitzgerald
1993: Of Mice And Men, by John Steinbeck
2013: Come Along With Me, by Shirley Jackson