Abstract
This essay argues that the history of Puffin Books is one of the democratization, popularization and canonization of literature for children through paperback publishing.
The imprint’s deliberate strategy of situating new works in a popular series that also republished what were generally regarded as established classics of high literature cleverly elevated the perception, and arguably the status, of contemporary writing for children in the cultural imagination of mid-century, post-war Britain. Puffin Books’ success in popularizing and canonizing literature for children, especially fantasy, through the democratic form of the paperback, is testament to the foundations laid by its first editors, Eleanor Graham and Kaye Webb, and founders, Allen Lane and Noel Carrington.
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Notes
- 1.
Eleanor Graham, quoted in Brian Alderson, ‘Puff puff Puffin along: Brian Alderson on the publication of the thousandth Puffin’, Times Educational Supplement, 3272 (10 March 1978): 1.
- 2.
Phil Baines, Puffin by design (London, 2010).
- 3.
Lucy Pearson, The making of modern children’s literature in Britain: publishing and criticism in the 1960s and 1970s (Farnham, 2013). It is also worth noting that Sally Gritten published a 32-page pamphlet, The Story of Puffin Books, to mark the fiftieth anniversary of the publication of the first Puffin Story Book, but there are no publication details for this work—it is assumed to be Puffin (London, 1991).
- 4.
For the democratic nature of Penguin books, and by extension Puffin Story Books, see Aidan Chambers, ‘Pick up a Penguin’, in Reading Talk (Stroud, 1995), p. 112.
- 5.
See the overview of Puffin Books on its parent company’s website, http://www.penguin.com/meet/publishers/puffin, accessed 2 April 2016.
- 6.
See the overview of Puffin Books, http://www.penguin.com/meet/publishers/puffin, accessed 2 April 2016; Webb in Kimberley Reynolds and Nicholas Tucker, ‘Interview with Kaye Webb, 7 February 1995’ in Kimberley Reynolds and Nicholas Tucker (compilers) Oral archives: a collection of informal conversations with individuals involved in creating or producing children’s literature since 1945 (London, 1998), p. 388.
- 7.
Nicholas Fisk in correspondence with Kaye Webb (12 November 1979). Seven Stories (the National Centre for Children’s Books, UK) Collection: SS, KW/07/06/11; Kennedy in correspondence with Kaye Webb (n.d.). Seven Stories Collection: SS, KW/01/02/43/17.
- 8.
See Katharine Jane Wright, ‘The Puffin phenomenon and its creator, Kaye Webb’, unpublished PhD thesis, 2011, pp. 28–29. This is the first sustained scholarly work focused solely on the relationship between Puffin Books and its second editor Kaye Webb. Due only to its extensive bibliographical content, relating to a limited number of fields, it is unlikely to be published as a monograph.
- 9.
Unless otherwise stated, all children’s titles that follow in this endnote and subsequent ones are Puffins, published at Harmondsworth: Lewis Carroll, Alice’s adventures in Wonderland (1865; 1946 [PS35]); Lewis Carroll, Through the looking-glass, and what Alice found there (1871; 1948 [PS44]); H. Rider Haggard’s King Solomon’s mines (1885; 1958 [PS111]); Robert Louis Stevenson’s A child’s garden of verses (1885; 1948 [PS22]); Anna Sewell’s Black Beauty (1877; 1954 [PS64]); Edith Nesbit’s The railway children (1906; 1960 [PS147]); and Frances Hodgson Burnett’s The secret garden (1911; 1951 [PS69]).
- 10.
Eva Garnett, The family from One End Street (1937; 1942 [PS7]); Ursula Moray Williams, Adventures of the little wooden horse (1938; 1959 [PS125]); Mary Norton, The borrowers (1952; 1958 [PS110]); C.S. Lewis, The lion, the witch and the wardrobe (1950; 1959 [PS132]).
- 11.
Ian Norrie, Mumby’s publishing and bookselling in the twentieth century, 6th edn (London, 1982).
- 12.
Pearson, Making of modern children’s literature in Britain, p. 1.
- 13.
See Pearson, Making of modern children’s literature in Britain; John Rowe Townsend, Written for children: an outline of English children’s literature (London, 1965), p. 151.
- 14.
Lewis Carroll, Alice’s adventures in Wonderland and through the looking glass (1865, 1871; 1962 [PS169]).
- 15.
Clive King, Stig of the dump (1963 [PS196]); Richard Adams, Watership Down (1972; 1973 [PS601])—first published in hardback by Rex Collings on the advice of Webb.
- 16.
J.R.R. Tolkien, The hobbit (1937; 1961 [PS161]).
- 17.
For Graham on Tolkien’s writing being ‘too violent’, see Wright, ‘Puffin phenomenon’, p. 48; although it was Webb who chose to publish The hobbit when she took over as editor in 1961, it was actually an interim editor, Margaret Clarke, who convinced Puffin to secure the paperback rights for it—see Jeremy Lewis, Penguin special: the life and times of Allen Lane (Harmondsworth, 2005), p. 377.
- 18.
Keith O’Sullivan, ‘The hobbit, the tale, children’s literature and the critics’ in Peter Hunt (ed.), J.R.R. Tolkien (Basingstoke, 2013), p. 20.
- 19.
Patchen Mortimer, ‘Tolkien and modernism’, Tolkien Studies, 2 (2005): 121.
- 20.
For the marginalization of children’s publishing imprints and editors, including Webb to some degree, see Pearson, Making of modern children’s literature in Britain, pp. 77–81.
- 21.
Kimberley Reynolds, ‘Publishing practices and the practicalities of publishing’ in Kimberley Reynolds and Nicholas Tucker (eds), Children’s book publishing in Britain since 1945 (Aldershot, 1998), p. 27.
- 22.
Tony Godwin to Kaye Webb (3 February 1961), Seven Stories Collection: SS, KW/07/01/01.
- 23.
Frank Eyre, British children’s books in the twentieth century (London, 1971), p. 33.
- 24.
Eleanor Graham to Sir Allen Lane (5 December 1960). Penguin Archive, University of Bristol: DM 1819/1/2.
- 25.
Kaye Webb, ‘Sidelights: Kaye Webb revised text, September 1991’, draft of article (September 1991). Seven Stories Collection: SS, KW/15/32, f.8.
- 26.
Kaye Webb, ‘A red letter day for children (or the rewarding road to the 1000th Puffin)’, draft of article (c.1997). Seven Stories Collection: SS, KW/07/01/05/09/03.
- 27.
Nadia Crandall, ‘The UK children’s book business 1995–2004: a strategic analysis’, New Review of Children’s Literature and Librarianship, 12:1 (2006): 9.
- 28.
Pearson, Making of modern children’s literature in Britain, p. 2.
- 29.
Pearson, Making of modern children’s literature in Britain, pp. 89–90; Edward Blishen (ed.), The thorny paradise (Harmondsworth, 1975); F.J. Harvey Darton, Children’s books in England (Cambridge, 1932); Margaret Meek, Aidan Warlow and Griselda Barton (eds), The cool web: the pattern of children’s reading (London, 1977).
- 30.
Kaye Webb, ‘Speech notes’, draft (c.1986). Seven Stories Collection: SS, KW/07/04/08/17.
- 31.
See Wright, ‘Puffin phenomenon’, pp. 327–415.
- 32.
See Crandall, ‘UK children’s book business’, pp. 1–18; Bob Dixon, Catching them young: sex, race and class in children’s fiction, vol. 1 (London, 1977).
- 33.
Susan Cooper, Over sea, under stone (1965; 1968 [PS362]); Philippa Pearce, Tom’s midnight garden (1958; 1976 [PS893]).
- 34.
Pearson, Making of modern children’s literature in Britain, p. 10.
- 35.
Patricia Lynch, Strangers at the Fair (1945; 1949 [PS55]); Patricia Lynch, The Grey Goose of Kilnevin (1939; 1951 [PS51]); Ciara Boylan and Ciara Gallagher, ‘Libraries and collections’, National Collection of Children’s Books (Ireland), https://nccb.tcd.ie/libraries-collections, accessed 2 April 2016.
- 36.
See Townsend, Written for children: an outline of English children’s literature, p. 151.
- 37.
For children as inherently imaginative, see Matthew Grenby, Children’s literature (Edinburgh, 2008); for constructions of a Romantic ‘quintessential child’, see Judith A. Plotz, Romanticism and the vocation of childhood (Basingstoke, 2001); for residual traces of a Romantic ‘quintessential child’ in contemporary Irish children’s literature, see Keith O’Sullivan, ‘“Binding with briars”: romanticizing the child’ in Valerie Coghlan and Keith O’Sullivan (eds), Irish children’s literature and culture: new perspectives on contemporary writing (New York and London, 2011), pp. 99–114.
- 38.
John Stephens, Language and ideology in children’s fiction (London and New York, 1992), pp. 241–42.
- 39.
See Robert Leeson, ‘Children’s books and politics, Books for Keeps, 25 (1984): 5.
- 40.
Stephens, Language and ideology, p. 7; Jules Zanger, ‘Heroic fantasy and social reality: ex nihilo nihil fit’ in Roger C. Schlobin (ed.), The aesthetics of fantasy literature and art (Notre Dame, IN, 1982), pp. 226–36.
- 41.
There are 1,042 books in the Church of Ireland College of Education’s (CICE) Bartlett Puffin (Story Book) Collection. Presented to CICE in 2003 by Canon John Bartlett and his daughter Penny, the collection is named after Jan Bartlett, the canon’s wife, who collected 778 of the titles, with the college library acquiring the other 264 titles over the course of the intervening years. Story books in the Puffin series are numbered, and the titles held in CICE’s collection run from PS1, Todd’s Worzel Gummidge, or the scarecrow of Scatterbrook (1935; 1941), to PS1199, Uttley’s Fairy tales (1975; 1979), with few interruptions—although the collection holds reissues up to 1989, ending with a second edition of Charlotte Hough’s 1968 Three little funny ones. The collection at CICE contains a substantial number of first editions from this pioneering children’s paperback imprint and represents one of the most complete lists of Puffin Story Books, within this temporal range, in libraries in Ireland or Britain. Due to CICE’s incorporation into Dublin City University in October 2016, the Bartlett Puffin (Story Book) Collection was, at the time of this volume’s preparation, in the process of being transferred to DCU Library.
- 42.
For further information on the 282 titles, see Wright, ‘Puffin phenomenon’, pp. 327–415.
- 43.
For further information on the twenty-six titles, see Wright, ‘Puffin phenomenon’, pp. 327–415.
- 44.
Elizabeth Enright, Thimble summer (1938; 1955 [PS89]); Mary Norton, The borrowers (1952; 1958 [PS110]); E. Nesbit, Five children and it (1902; 1959 [PS128]); BB (nom de plume of Denys Watkins-Pitchford), The little grey men (1942; 1962 [PS160]).
- 45.
For further information on the 263 titles and the thirty-two that were awarded Carnegie and/or Newbery distinctions, see Wright, ‘Puffin phenomenon’, pp. 327–415.
- 46.
Tom Shippey, ‘Tolkien as a post-war writer’ in Patricia Reynolds and Glen H. GoodKnight (eds), Proceedings of the J.R.R. Tolkien Centenary Conference (Altadena, 1995), pp. 84–93; Charles Butler, Four British fantasists: place and culture in the children’s fantasies of Penelope Lively, Alan Garner, Diana Wynne Jones, and Susan Cooper (Lanham, MY, 2006).
- 47.
Andrew Sanders, The short Oxford history of English literature (1994; Oxford, 1996), p. 577.
- 48.
Raymond Williams, The country and the city (London, 1973); Tony Watkins, ‘Cultural studies, new historicism and children’s literature’ in Peter Hunt (ed.), Literature for children: contemporary criticism (1992; London and New York, 2003), p. 183.
- 49.
Pertti J. Anttenon, Tradition through modernity: postmodernism and the nation-state in folklore scholarship (Helsinki: Finnish Literature Society, 2005), p. 59.
- 50.
Shippey, ‘Tolkien as a post-war writer’, p. 86.
- 51.
C.S. Lewis, The last battle (1956; 1964 [PS205])—the final instalment of the seven-book Chronicles of Narnia series published between 1950 and 1956 (all held in the Bartlett Puffin Collection); Ursula K. Le Guin, A wizard of Earthsea (1968; 1971 [PS477]), p. 165—the first in a cycle of six books simply referred to as the Earthsea Cycle (the first three books, which were published by Puffin between 1971 and 1974, are held in the Bartlett Puffin Collection); Susan Cooper, The dark is rising (1973; 1976 [PS799]), p. 165—the second book in a sequence of five, published between 1965 and 1977 (all held in the Bartlett Puffin Collection).
- 52.
Margaret Mahy, The bus under the leaves (1974; 1976 [PS721]); Helen Cresswell, The night watchmen (1969; 1976 [PS851]); Diana Wynne Jones, Charmed life (1977; 1979 [PS1057]).
- 53.
William Mayne, A game of dark (1971; 1974 [PS668]); Virginia Woolf, A room of one’s own (New York, 1957), p. 14.
- 54.
John Masefield, The midnight folk (1927; 1963 [PS187]); Lucy M. Boston, The children of Green Knowe (1954; 1975 [PS789]).
- 55.
Kaye Webb, ‘Australian Broadcasting Commission. Guest of honour Kaye Webb’, typescript of broadcast (11 July 1971). Seven Stories Collection: SS, KW/07/01/04/03/12 f.2.
- 56.
For more on self-coherent narratives, see John Clute and John Grant (eds), The encyclopedia of fantasy (New York, 1997); for an application of psychological realism, see Philip Pullman, ‘Thoughts on form’ (R. Rosen, interviewer), The Oxonian Review, 9:7 (June 1997), http://www.oxonianreview.org/wp/thoughts-on-form, accessed 2 April 2016.
Selected Bibliography
Alderson, Brian, ‘Puff puff Puffin along: Brian Alderson on the publication of the thousandth Puffin’, Times Educational Supplement, 3272 (10 March 1978): 1.
Anttenon, Pertti J., Tradition through modernity: postmodernism and the nation-state in folklore scholarship (Helsinki: Finnish Literature Society, 2005).
Baines, Phil, Puffin by design: 70 years of imagination 1940‒2010 (London: Penguin, 2010).
Blishen, Edward (ed.), The thorny paradise: writers on writing for children (Harmondsworth: Kestrel, 1975).
Boylan, Ciara and Ciara Gallagher, ‘Libraries and collections’, National Collection of Children’s Books (Ireland), https://nccb.tcd.ie/libraries-collections, accessed 2 April 2016.
Butler, Charles, Four British fantasists: place and culture in the children’s fantasies of Penelope Lively, Alan Garner, Diana Wynne Jones, and Susan Cooper (Lanham, MY: Children’s Literature Association and Scarecrow Press, 2006).
Chambers, Aidan, ‘Pick up a Penguin’ in Reading talk (Stroud: Thimble Press, 1995), pp. 99–112.
Clute, John and John Grant (eds), The encyclopedia of fantasy (New York: St Martin’s Press, 1997).
Crandall, Nadia, ‘The UK children’s book business 1995–2004: a strategic analysis’, New Review of Children’s Literature and Librarianship, 12:1 (2006): 1–18.
Darton, F.J. Harvey, Children’s books in England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1932).
Dixon, Bob, Catching them young: sex, race and class in children’s fiction, vol. 1 (London: Pluto Press, 1977).
Eyre, Frank, British children’s books in the twentieth century (London: Longman, 1971).
Grenby, Matthew, Children’s literature (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2008).
Leeson, Robert, ‘Children’s books and politics’, Books for Keeps, 25 (1984): 5.
Lewis, Jeremy, Penguin special: the life and times of Allen Lane (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 2005).
Meek, Margaret, Aidan Warlow and Griselda Barton (eds), The cool web: the pattern of children’s reading (London: Bodley Head, 1977).
Mortimer, Patchen, ‘Tolkien and modernism’, Tolkien Studies, 2 (2005): 113–29.
Norrie, Ian, Mumby’s publishing and bookselling in the twentieth century, 6th edn (London: Bell & Hyman, 1982).
O’Sullivan, Keith, ‘“Binding with briars”: romanticizing the child’ in Valerie Coghlan and Keith O’Sullivan (eds), Irish children’s literature and culture: new perspectives on contemporary writing (New York and London: Routledge, 2011), pp. 99–114.
———, ‘The hobbit, the tale, children’s literature and the critics’ in Peter Hunt (ed.), J.R.R. Tolkien: The Hobbit and the Lord of the Rings (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013), pp. 16–31.
Pearson, Lucy, The making of modern children’s literature in Britain: publishing and criticism in the 1960s and 1970s. Ashgate Studies in Childhood, 1700 to the Present series (Farnham: Ashgate Publishing, 2013).
Plotz, Judith A., Romanticism and the vocation of childhood (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2001).
Pullman, Philip, ‘Thoughts on form’ (R. Rosen, interviewer), The Oxonian Review, 9:7(June 1997), http://www.oxonianreview.org/wp/thoughts-on-form, accessed 2 April 2016.
Reynolds, Kimberley, ‘Publishing practices and the practicalities of publishing’ in Kimberley Reynolds and Nicholas Tucker (eds), Children’s book publishing in Britain since 1945 (Aldershot: Scolar Press, 1998), pp. 20–41.
Reynolds, Kimberley and Nicholas Tucker, ‘Interview with Kaye Webb, 7 February 1995’ in Kimberley Reynolds and Nicholas Tucker (compilers), Oral archives: a collection of informal conversations with individuals involved in creating or producing children’s literature since 1945 (London: Roehampton University, 1998), pp. 366–88.
Sanders, Andrew, The short Oxford history of English literature (1994; Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996).
Shippey, Tom, ‘Tolkien as a post-war writer’ in Patricia Reynolds and Glen H. GoodKnight (eds), Proceedings of the J.R.R. Tolkien Centenary Conference (Altadena, CA: Mythopoeic Press, 1995), pp. 84–93.
Stephens, John, Language and ideology in children’s fiction (London and New York: Longman, 1992).
Townsend, John Rowe, Written for children: an outline of English children’s literature (London: Garnet Miller, 1965).
Watkins, Tony, ‘Cultural studies, new historicism and children’s literature’ in Peter Hunt (ed.), Literature for children: contemporary criticism (1992; London and New York: Routledge, 2003), pp. 173–95.
Williams, Raymond, The country and the city (London: Chatto and Windus, 1973).
Wright, Katharine Jane, ‘The Puffin phenomenon and its creator, Kaye Webb’, unpublished PhD thesis (Newcastle University, 2011), pp. 1–418.
Zanger, Jules, ‘Heroic fantasy and social reality: ex nihilo nihil fit’ in Roger C. Schlobin (ed.), The aesthetics of fantasy literature and art (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1982), pp. 226–36.
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O’Sullivan, K. (2017). The Puffin Story Books Phenomenon: Popularization, Canonization and Fantasy, 1941‒1979. In: O'Sullivan, K., Whyte, P. (eds) Children's Literature Collections. Critical Approaches to Children's Literature. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-59757-1_12
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