THE CHEYNEY PENGUINS

The first Penguin paperbacks appeared in the summer of 1935 and were a mix of biography, crime writing and novels. Genres were indicated by the colour of the bands on the cover: biography dark blue, crime green and fiction orange. All the titles were by contemporary writers and, in 1935, cost just sixpence, the same price as a packet of cigarettes.

Edward Young’s design for the first ten covers proved to be more than just a sensible response to the demand for cheap, effective layout. The combination of Gill Sans Bold, broad colour bands and convenient size was to become the formula which Penguin would keep for its fiction titles until the early fifties.

In 1949 Penguin published five Cheyney titles, previously published by William Collins, numbered 720-724.