I’d never thought much about the history of paperbacks till I encountered a brief discussion in this novel, which I’m currently listening to. After poking around the Internet, I put together this concise.
- In the early sixteenth century The Venetian printer Aldus Manutius (c. 1452-1515) published portable editions of classics called libelli portatiles.
2. Cheap popular fiction, known as dime novels in the U.S. and story papers or penny dreadfuls in Britain, arrived on the scene in the 1860s. The paper and ink were not high quality and the content was also considered trashy.
Dime novels featuring heroes like Buffalo Bill and Nick Carter were very popular in the U.S. during the Civil War.
(You may be surprised to learn that even well-known writers like Louisa May Alcott, Robert Louis Stevenson, and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow wrote for this format at one time or another.)
3. In the 1890s pulp magazines (similar in style and content) became more popular than dime novels.
4. The story goes that in 1935 Allen Lane, chairman of Bodley Head publishing house, was on his way home from visiting Agatha Christie when he came up with the idea of publishing quality books that could be sold in train stations for the price of a pack of cigarettes. Bodley Head declined to finance Lane’s scheme so he started his own publishing house, Penguin.
Penguin paperbacks, with their simple colour-coded covers and good quality paper, type, and ink, were sold for sixpence (2 1/2p in today’s British currency). They were inexpensive because the print runs were so large. Thankfully Lane’s gamble paid off as Penguin sold 3 million books in its first full year.
For the curious, here are the first ten title printed by Penguin:
- The Mysterious Affair at Styles by Agatha Christie
- Madame Claire by Susan Ertz
- A Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway
- Poets Pub by Eric Linklater
- Carnival by Compton Mackenzie
- Ariel by Andre Maurois
- Twenty-Five by Beverly Nichols
- The Unpleasantness at the Bellona Club by Dorothy Sayers
- Gone to Earth by Mary Webb
- William by E.H. Young
5. In 1938 Pocket Books was founded in the U.S. and its first book, The Good Earth by Pearl S. Buck, was sold in Macy’s. In contrast to the simplicity of Penguin’s paperbacks, Pocket Books featured colourful eye-catching covers and illustrations.
6. As in the Civil War, paperbacks were popular with soldiers during World War II. Armed Services Editions (ASE) paperbacks were even distributed in the American military.
7. By the late 1940s mass-market paperbacks were published by many new imprints, besides Penguin and Pocket Books. However, they were still reprints of hardcover books.
8. The Paperback Original (PBO) emerged in 1949 with Gold Medal, an imprint of Fawcett. In the 1950s Ace, Dell, Harlequin, and other imprints joined the PBO market.
Sources
- “How the Paperback Novel Changed Popular Literature” by Anne Trubek via Smithsonian Magazine
- “A Short History of Paperbacks” by Oliver Corlett via IOBA Standard
- “A Tribute to the Printer Aldus Manutius, and the Roots of the Paperback” by Jennifer Schuessler via The New York Times
- “The Evolution of the Book” via SFBook Reviews
I didn’t know half of it 🙂