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Penguin turns 80 offering 80p classics as party favours

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Penguin publishing house is blowing out their candles and gifting the collection titled Little Black Classics to their party guests.

Altogether, 80 works of classic fiction, essays, drama and history are set to retail for just 80p to mark the 80th anniversary of Penguin Books.

Little Black Classics is due to be released on February 26 with titles such as The Great Fire of London by Samuel Pepys, The Communist Manifesto by Karl Marx, The Beautifull Cassandra by Jane Austen and The Wife of Bath by Geoffrey Chaucer.

Penguin, was set up by Allen Lane in 1935 after he took a trip to visit Agatha Christie in Devon; Lane was said to have been stood on the station platform perusing the magazines and reprints of Victorian novels and realised that “good quality fiction” was not conveniently available to all.

After a trip to London Zoo to research the brand name, Penguin was born.

You can see the full list of bargain books on the website, Little Black Classics, which was designed by Mathieu Triay. The site encourages users to navigate the collection by manoeuvring a little penguin around the screen or shaking their smartphones.

The announcement was welcomed by readers all over: we spoke to one UAL student who felt that the move will make “reading more easily available to everyone, especially those on a student budget.”

The collection will be available for purchase in Foyles or online at Amazon.

 

Image by Observista via Flickr 

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