Postcards From Penguin : 100 Book Jackets in One Box

About the book

A collection of 100 postcards, each featuring a different and iconic Penguin book jacket. From classics to crime, here are over seventy years of quintessentially British design in one box. In 1935 Allen Lane stood on a platform at Exeter railway station, looking for a good book for the journey to London. His disappointment at the poor range of paperbacks on offer led him to found Penguin Books. The quality paperback had arrived. Declaring that 'good design is no more expensive than bad', Lane was adamant that his Penguin paperbacks should cost no more than a packet of cigarettes, but that they should always look distinctive. Ever since then, from their original - now world-famous - look featuring three bold horizontal stripes, through many different stylish, inventive and iconic cover designs, Penguin's paperback jackets have been a constantly evolving part of Britain's culture. And whether they're for classics, crime, reference or prize-winning novels, they still follow Allen Lane's original design mantra. Sometimes, you definitely should judge a book by its cover.

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Penguin Biography

Penguins (order Sphenisciformes , family Spheniscidae ) are a group of aquatic flightless birds. They live almost exclusively in the Southern Hemisphere: only one species, the Galápagos penguin, is found north of the Equator. Highly adapted for life in the water, penguins have countershaded dark and white plumage and flippers for swimming. Most penguins feed on krill, fish, squid and other forms of sea life which they catch with their bills and swallow it whole while swimming. A penguin has a spiny tongue and powerful jaws to grip slippery prey.They spend roughly half of their lives on land and the other half in the sea. The largest living species is the Emperor penguin (Aptenodytes forsteri): on average, adults are about 1.1 m (3 ft 7 in) tall and weigh 35 kg (77 lb). The smallest penguin species is the little blue penguin (Eudyptula minor), also known as the fairy penguin, which stands around 33 cm (13 in) tall and weighs 1 kg (2.2 lb). Today, larger penguins generally inhabit colder regions, and smaller penguins inhabit regions with temperate or tropical climates. Some prehistoric penguin species were enormous: as tall or heavy as an adult human. There was a great diversity of species in subantarctic regions, and at least one giant species in a region around 2,000 km south of the equator 35 mya, during the Late Eocene, a climate decidedly warmer than today.

Etymology

The word penguin first appears in literature at the end of the 16th century. When European explorers discovered what are today known as penguins in the Southern Hemisphere, they noticed their similar appearance to the great auk of the Northern Hemisphere, and named them after this bird, although they are not closely related.The etymology of the word penguin is still debated. The English word is not apparently of French, Breton or Spanish origin (the latter two are attributed to the French word pingouin), but first appears in English or Dutch.Some dictionaries suggest a derivation from Welsh pen, "head" and gwyn, "white", including the Oxford English Dictionary, the American Heritage Dictionary, the Century Dictionary and Merriam-Webster, on the basis that the name was originally applied to the great auk, either because it was found on White Head Island (Welsh: Pen Gwyn) in Newfoundland, or because it had white circles around its eyes (though the head was black). An alternative etymology links the word to Latin pinguis, which means "fat" or "oil". Support for this etymology can be found in the alternative Germanic word for penguin, fettgans or "fat-goose", and the related Dutch word vetgans. Adult male penguins are called cocks, females are hens; a group of penguins on land is a waddle, and a group of penguins in the water is a raft.

Pinguinus

Since 1871, the Latin word Pinguinus has been used in scientific classification to name the genus of the great auk (Pinguinus impennis, meaning "penguin without flight feathers"), which became extinct in the mid-19th c ... Read full biography