Researching Penguin: A Far From Random House Conference Dates
The inaugural Penguin Research Network Conference Researching Penguin: A Far From Random House will run 17-18 May 17-18, 2023, at the University of Bristol.
The Penguin Researchers Network group was established in 2019 by the scholarly community of Penguin archive users and Penguin book historians and is based at the University of Bristol’s Special Collections which houses a major part of the Penguin archive. The Network aims to:
- support shared research initiatives
- explore ways for academia to collaborate with the Penguin Collectors Society in publicising Penguin’s historical significance to the wider community
- promote Penguin-related publications
- share new Penguin-archival discoveries and material
- support and encourage postgraduate and postdoctoral researchers to navigate and use the archive
The conference will bring together researchers and scholarly enthusiasts of Penguin Books to present papers across a wide range of Penguin-themed topics. These include:
* Leah Tether (University of Bristol) on Penguin Classics: Repackaging Medieval French Texts for the British Paperback Market, c. 1960–2000
* Geraint Evans (Swansea University) on Agatha Christie and the Mystery of the Vanishing Penguin
* Katharine Reeve (Anglia Ruskin University) on Interference?: Editorial Decision-Making and Puffin Picturebooks 1939–1960
* David Trigg (Independent Researcher) on Full Bleed: Ben Nicholson and The Penguin Modern Painters
* Elizabeth Bobo (University of Louisiana at Lafayette) on Tonson House Pocket Books: Historical Analogue for Penguin Classics
* Ben Fried (IES, London) on The Rise of Penguin India and the Publication of A Suitable Boy
* Vike Plock (University of Exeter) on ‘Penguins Must Use the Strachey Version’: Curating the Pelican Freud Library
* Gillian Neale (IES, London): Pursuing the Penguin: Charting the Earliest of the British Publishing Industry’s Challenges to Penguin’s Supremacy in the Paperback Market
* Muireann Maguire (University of Exeter) on ‘Importing Something Alien’: The Very Visible Penguin Translators
* Samantha Rayner (UCL)on Penguin Books and Penguin Bookselling: A ‘Quiet Radicalism’
Penguin Collectors Society Talk
* Cathy McAteer (University of Exeter) on One-Hit, None-Hit Wonders: The Rise and Fall of a Penguin Russian Classics Translator
* Jie Deng (Hubei University of Arts and Science) on Reimagining Chinese Literature: Exploring the Book Covers of Chinese Classics
The conference will also be available to online attendees. For more details and how to book click here.
