Following the success of Allen Lane's hardback Penguin New Writing in 1936, the books became paperback at the end of 1940.
The First Issue featured better known authors George Orwell (Shooting an Elephant), an excerpt from Christopher Isherwood's "Berlin Diary", V.S.Pritchett's short story "Sense of Humour" and William Plomer with a short article entitled "Notes on a Visit to Ireland".
Amongst the foreign authors in this volume were Louis Guilloux (1899-1980), with a typical piece of working class realism "When I was One and Twenty Oh!", and M.R.Anand's Indian tale; "The Barber's Trade Union".
The paperback series ran until 1950, with John Lehmann as editor from start to finish.
Priced in 1940 at Sixpence (2.5p), number 20 in 1944 had the printed price on the cover of Ninepence, this had risen to One Shilling by 1945, culminating in One Shilling and Sixpence (7.5p) by the last issue in 1950.
The paperback format and price proved popular with the armed forces, a volume fitting into a battle dress pocket quite comfortably.
A number of writers of the "Proletarian" school received encouraging publicity with Jim Phelan (1895-1966) writing a number of articles.
Poetry featured in most issues, with John Cornford, Alan Ross, Laurie Lee, |Louis MacNeice, Donagh MacDonagh and Stephen Spender amongst those contributing.
A feature of the later issues was the inclusion of several pages of sepia photogravure illustrations, and, post war, colour plates as well. The slight easing on paper and ink restrictions also resulted in the Spring 1946 issue sporting a more colourful cover.
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