Albatross Books
Information about Albatross Books
Albatross Books was a German publishing house based in Hamburg that produced the first modern mass market paperback books.
Albatross was founded in 1932 by John Holyrod-Reece, Max Wegner and Kurt Enoch. The name was chosen because "Albatross' is the same word in many European languages. Based on the example of Tauchnitz, a Leipzig publishing firm that had been producing inexpensive and paperbound English-language reprints for a continental market, Albatross set about to streamline and modernize the paperback format.
Produced in a new standardized size (181 x 111 mm) that approximated an esthetically pleasing ratio called the Golden Mean, using new sans-serif fonts developed by Stanley Morison among others, color-coding its offerings by genre (green for travel, orange for fiction, etc.), and prominently featuring an albatross as a logo, the series was so successful that Albatross soon purchased Tauchnitz, giving itself an instant 100-year heritage.
The oncoming war brought the Albatross experiment to an end. Allen Lane adopted the look-and-feel of Albatross editions closely, copying most of its innovations, for the first Penguin Books. Lane later hired co-founder Kurt Enoch to manage Penguin's American branch.
Albatross was founded in 1932 by John Holyrod-Reece, Max Wegner and Kurt Enoch. The name was chosen because "Albatross' is the same word in many European languages. Based on the example of Tauchnitz, a Leipzig publishing firm that had been producing inexpensive and paperbound English-language reprints for a continental market, Albatross set about to streamline and modernize the paperback format.
Produced in a new standardized size (181 x 111 mm) that approximated an esthetically pleasing ratio called the Golden Mean, using new sans-serif fonts developed by Stanley Morison among others, color-coding its offerings by genre (green for travel, orange for fiction, etc.), and prominently featuring an albatross as a logo, the series was so successful that Albatross soon purchased Tauchnitz, giving itself an instant 100-year heritage.
The oncoming war brought the Albatross experiment to an end. Allen Lane adopted the look-and-feel of Albatross editions closely, copying most of its innovations, for the first Penguin Books. Lane later hired co-founder Kurt Enoch to manage Penguin's American branch.
External links
- The Third Paperback Revolution - By Hyde Park Books of Boise, Idaho.
Freie und Hansestadt Hamburg
Free and Hanseatic City of Hamburg
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Time zone CET/CEST (UTC+1/+2)
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Free and Hanseatic City of Hamburg
Flag Coat of arms
Details
Location
Coordinates
Time zone CET/CEST (UTC+1/+2)
Administration
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Tauchnitz was the name of a family of German printers and publishers. Karl Christoph Traugott Tauchnitz (1761-1836), born at Grossbardau near Grimma, Saxony, established a printing business in Leipzig in 1796 and a publishing house in 1798.
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Leipzig
St Thomas' Church in the evening.
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St Thomas' Church in the evening.
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Golden mean may refer to:
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- Doctrine of the Golden Mean ((Chinese: 中庸; pinyin: Zhōng Yóng), a chapter in Li Ji, one of the Four Books of Confucianism
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Stanley Morison (6 May 1889, Wanstead, Essex – 11 October 1967, London) was an English typographer, designer and historian of printing.
Self-taught, having left school after his father abandoned his family, Morison became an editorial assistant on Imprint
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Self-taught, having left school after his father abandoned his family, Morison became an editorial assistant on Imprint
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Sir Allen Lane (21 September 1902 – 7 July 1970) (born Allen Lane Williams), was a British publisher who founded Penguin Books, bringing high quality, paperback fiction and non-fiction to a mass market.
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Penguin Books is a British publisher founded in 1935 by Allen Lane. Lane's idea was to provide quality writing cheaply, for the same price as a pack of cigarettes. He also wanted them to be sold not only in bookshops but in railway stations, general stores and corner shops.
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