Allen Lane, Pelican, Penguin and Krishna Menon
Was Allen Lane responsible for the animosity Krishna Menon
had against Britain and for that matter against other Western countries? What exactly was their relationship and for
that matter the exact involvement of Menon with the paperback empire of Allen
Lane? This had intrigued me for some time, so I got to work unearthing the
details. It was an interesting journey, to say the least.
The story actually starts in Britain, during the second
decade of the 20th century, with two high school going brothers
Richard and Allen Williams, the latter being the older one by 3 years. The
elder who had some aversion to sports, got involved in various kinds of
mischief as the younger took to cricket. They were nephews of John Lane Senior
who owned a reputed book firm named Bodley Head (named after Sir Thomas Bodley),
which had been publishing among others, Oscar Wilde since 1887.
John Lane had a falling out with his partner Elkin Mathew
and after the split, retained the name Bodley Head and moved to Piccadilly. In
1918, Allen was asked if he wanted to join his ageing 63 year old uncle in the
book business. Allen was not sure if chasing and bedding girls were his passion
or books. As the legend goes, he chose the latter and became Lane’s apprentice,
office boy and dogsbody (a person who is given boring, menial tasks to do).
There was one condition attached, that Allen had to change his surname to Lane
from Williams which he did and soon after, and the 16 year old boy was at work
at the Vigo St in London.
Richard moved to Australia to learn fruit drying and later
joined the British armed forces there. By now, it was 1921 and Allen was not
too enthusiastic with the way his life was going though he found opportunities
to hobnob with high society, cultivating relationships with a large number of high
level dignitaries and popular writers. Soon enough, he leapt up the ranks to become
a member of the Bodley Head board and not much later, the company secretary.
But matters were however, soon to go south in the publishing
scene. His uncle John Lane died of pneumonia in 1925 and in 1926, and Richard Lane
came back from Australia. Publishing and financial problems occurred one after
the other and Allen was in no end of trouble. But Allen’s desire to become big
in the book world remained paramount, Richard became an editor in the family
firm as Allen became the CEO as the third brother John joined to look after
overseas exports.
But how did Krishna Menon from Calicut land up in the midst
of these hyperactive brothers? Menon, after attending schools in Calicut,
continued at the Zamorin’s college and then the Presidency College - Madras
majoring in History and economics. Madras Law College was next, during which he
got involved with the Theosophical movement of Annie Besant. In 1924, she
sponsored his trip to Britain, for six months of further studies and to secure
a teaching diploma. That 6 month plan extended for all of 26 years after Menon
completed a teaching assignment at Hertfordshire. Menon then applied to the LSE
and as fate would dictate, met Harold Laski. Laski would go on to introduce him
to many labor party leaders in Britain as well as eminent writers and
intellectuals. Menon also started to work in right earnest for the India
league. He continued with his LSE studies obtaining a bachelors (studying at
night) and two master’s degrees (his PhD application was not accepted as he was
considered a disruptive student) and attended the Middle temple bar. Influenced
by the freedom movement, he published numerous articles and leaflets and spoke
at length at many meetings distinguishing himself as a fiery orator. He also
got involved in British domestic politics as a labor party member.
Sheila Grant Duff the eminent journalist found him an
impressive and rather frightening figure. She remarked in her memoirs that the Menon
of those days appeared as if he had stepped out of the tomb of Tutankhamen,
saturnine, emaciated and limping heavily on a tall walking stick. Other
accounts show that he also had this disconcerting habit of announcing his own
imminent death.
From here on, we start to notice an inconsistency in the
various accounts relating to Menon’s association with the Lane brothers. We will
see that Lane first admitted to a working partnership with the bookish Menon,
but later changed his stance deciding to corner all glory for himself and scoff
at Menon’s involvement in his business. Anyway let us find out how the matters actually
progressed.
Lane biographer Jeremy Lewis records – When Lane got to meet Menon, he was a penniless agitator
From 1932 to 1936, V. K. Krishna Menon worked as an editor
at the Bodley Head, launching a series called the Twentieth Century Library, which
in the words of The Times, still provides ‘an intellectual thrill’, included authors
like Eric Gill, J. A. Hobson, Noel Carrington, Norman Bentwich, Raymond W.
Postgate, Naomi Mitchison, H. L. Beales, J. H. Drieberg, Theodore
Komisarjevsky, David Glass, M. A. Abrahams, Ralph Fox and Winifred Holtby. He
also edited another list named Topical Books working for Walter Hutchinson at Selwyn
Blount which listed authors like Michael Foot, George Lansbury and Ellen
Wilkinson.
It was during the Bodley Head phase and with Duff’s support that
Menon’s path crossed with somebody who was to become a great player in world
affairs and Independent India’s first prime minister, Jawaharlal Nehru (they
had casual meetings twice before). Nehru had just completed his autobiography
while in a British jail and was looking to get it published in Britain.
In November 1935 Nehru met Menon the then Secretary of the India League in London and found him to be able and earnest, but with the virtues and failings of an intellectual. Menon was highly thought of in left-wing labor circles of London and Menon, assisted by Duff, took care of much of Nehru’s arrangements during that visit.
Nehru had originally planned to get his book published by
Unwin based on CF Andrew’s recommendation, but was very unhappy with the protracted
discussions, the amount of editing done and the meagre terms offered. Menon dissuaded
him from working with Unwin and persuaded Lane at Bodley Head to publish it. Stanley
Wolpert explains that Lane quickly agreed to publish Nehru after meeting him in
1935 over a lunch and after reading the draft over a week’s period. Nehru was
quite wary about presentation of his book for publication and had a lengthy correspondence
with Menon before it came out to a resounding success.
Late in 1935, Bodley Head went into liquidation, and the
following year it was bought by a consortium of the publishers George Allen
& Unwin Ltd, Jonathan Cape, and J. M. Dent. Nehru who had not been paid his
royalty in full, was recommended by Menon and others to sue Lane and the new
owners, but he did not and finally a part of the remaining royalties as per
British bankruptcy law (a solatium) was eventually paid by Unwin. Unwin says
that he was originally a little wary about publishing Nehru’s book as he was
not sure if the British Government would approve it, but later noted the irony
saying that his deal would have proved better, financially.
In the literary world, the market was getting tough and book
prices were falling, Seven shillings and sixpence for a hardbound was too much
for most people. With a new business plan of mass publishing of 20,000 copies
per book to break even, the Lane’s decided on publishing a set of reprints as
paperbacks priced at 6 pennies per book and to build a stock of 200,000 books. After toying with names like Dolphin Books
and Porpoise Books, the team settled on Penguin Books and a young Bodley Head
artist called Edward Young was sent off to London Zoo to sketch the birds and
came up with the engaging logo. Ten out-of-copyright novels, short stories, and
poetry collections were released simultaneously and sold at the low cost of six
pence each, which is the equivalent of around $1 to $2 in modern currency.
By 1936, Penguin was incorporated on its own. There were
three types of Penguin’s: novels, in orange and white jackets; detective
stories, in green and white; and popular biographies, in blue and white. Booksellers
were initially alarmed, and the brothers struggled to get an order for 70,000
copies against the budget of 200,000.
After a slow and agonizing start, buyers soon got to like
what they saw and the order books swelled. In no time, sales soared and a Penguin
got sold every 10 seconds. The brothers stockpiled books in the crypt of the
nearby Holy Trinity church to deal with the deliveries! Within a year they had
sold 6 million books and new authors were added to the list. George Orwell wryly
commented, "The Penguin Books are splendid value for sixpence, so splendid
that if other publishers had any sense they would combine against them and
suppress them." George Bernard Shaw said, "If a book is any good, the
cheaper the better." The successful brothers purchased a yacht. Allen’s
book empire foundations had been laid.
It was in 1936 that Lane got the idea of starting the
non-fiction Pelican series. Menon suggested that not only do the Lane’s do
reprints, but also publish original works of famous authors. Krishna Menon
lined up an impressive number of contacts, not only in the political but also
in the educational world with his contacts. He was the one who introduced some
of his influential acquaintances and friends to the Lanes.
Among these were the broadcaster and secretary of the
British Institute of Adult Education, W. E. Williams, and H. L. Beales, LSE
faculty member. They agreed that the books envisioned by Krishna Menon would be
useful, promising their support. This is how the Pelican series came into
existence. Krishna Menon became its general editor. The first title released
was GB Shaw’s Intelligent Woman’s guide to socialism, capitalism, Sovietism and
fascism, with Menon’s support. According to Madhavan Kutty, Shaw’s book never
left Menon’s side till his death.
As Lengyl records - The
early titles of the Pelicans reflected Krishna Menon's eclectic tastes. They
included a reprint of one of his favorite books by Elie Halevy, A History of
the English People; Julian Huxley's Essays in Popular Science; Vision and
Design, by the English painter and critic Roger Eliot Fry; Social Life in the
Insect World, by Jean-Henri Fabre, the French entomologist; The Mysterious
Universe, by Sir James Jeans; Literary Taste, by Arnold Bennett; and
Civilization, by Clive Bell, the art and literary critic. Subsequent volumes
included works by Harold Laski, Krishna Menon's idol; the unbelievably prolific
H. G. Wells; Harold Nicolson, famed as a diplomat and author; Sir Norman Angell,
Nobel Prize laureate; and Wickham Steed.
By this time the Axis
powers were throwing their weight around in the world Hitler's Germany,
Mussolini's Italy, and the war lords' Japan. Krishna Menon waged his own cold
war against them as the editor of the Pelicans. He published reprints of
Blackmail or War?, by the "French Cassandra," Genevieve Tabouis, and
Edgar Ansel Mowrer's Germany Puts the Clock Back.
Towards the fall of 1938, we see turbulence in the
relationship between Lane and Menon and both seem to be complaining about each
other. Lane arguing that Menon had not updated him on the progress with second
list of books and Menon stating that Lane had not updated him on contractual
negotiations with the authors. Lengyl opines – The unbusinesslike Krishna Menon
had no contract with the businesslike Lanes, and so their cooperation faded
into a dense cloud of misunderstandings.
There was perhaps another matter troubling Lane, as the
British government had by that time started tracking Menon and labeled him as a
communist sympathizer. We get a hint of it from Ethel Mannin’s later outburst
to Lane that two of Lane’s editors John Lehmann and Krishna Menon ‘were
communist’ and therefore Lane was also one by association. Perhaps the
businessman in Lane was alarmed, even though he was also considered to be often
leaning to the left.
What happened next was a confrontation in a Soho restaurant.
Lewis narrates the event that took place, thus – The truth of the matter was that Lane, mercurial and easily bored found
the austere and unconvivial Menon a far from kindred spirit and was happy to
freeze him out. Menon lectured him for an hour in a Soho restaurant and Lane
who could neither hear nor understand what Menon was trying to say, finally
lost patience and called him a bottleneck, at which Menon stormed out in a rage.
Menon, ill, undernourished and overworked, felt bruised and isolated. As
Morpurgo emphasizes, there was no overt act of dismissal, instead he was
eliminated by being ignored, his note unanswered, his editorial suggestions
disdained.
As Menon was still continuing to spar with the Lane’s
through his lawyer complaining about delays in replies and Lane’s inaction, Lane
himself went away on a pleasure tour to India while his attorney Dick formally
terminated Menon’s relationship with Pelican, paying him just GBP 125. Ironically
Menon’s lawyer walked away with that money and characteristically, Menon
forgave him stating that the man after all, had a wife and child, so perhaps
had a greater need for the money. Lane on the other hand hobnobbed with Nehru
in Delhi, spent a lot of money meeting bigwigs and maharajas and professed (or
appeared to) shock at the bad conditions in India. Williams, the person Menon
had brought in, took the ‘Allen’s favorite ‘position from then on and soon
enough he and Lane became thick friends.
Thus ended the relationship between Lane and Menon. They did
not part friends and Lane remained one among Menon’s bitter enemies. While Lane
always remembered Menon with great animosity, Menon graduated to higher ground
stating years later that he was always the first to read every Pelican
released, even after leaving the firm. In the case of Lane, it was not so, Tony
Godwin states that the mere mention of Menon’s name made Lane’s voice seethe
with venom and that it gave him goose pimples just to see ‘that amount of
animosity’ in another! Perhaps there was more to the enmity, we may find out
some day….
When Lane visited India in 1938, he discovered that the
Pelicans outsold Penguins in India, understanding that escapist literature was
not fodder for the poor Indian student and he preferred to spend it on solid
books which would help him secure a better life. Did Menon know this small
fact? Perhaps not, but it would have gladdened him, for that was his always
mission.
Lane’s biographer Stuart Kells on the other hand believes
that Menon famously came to dislike anybody who reminded him of Allen, after
this event: and that included English publishers, Englishmen, English speakers,
Europeans and whites. Anyway as Lane’s fortunes surged, so did Menon’s. After the
event, Menon wanted to start a publishing house and printing press at Calicut
as well as a Malayalam newspaper according to Janaki Ram, but the idea never
took off. He of course, went on to become the Indian High commissioner in
London, a confidante of Nehru, a cabinet minister and all that…
Lane did well for a time, his decision to publish Lady
Chatterley's Lover brought him acclaim and riches, as well as paving the way
for a permissive society. On 1st July 2013 Penguin and Random House officially
united to create Penguin Random House, the world's first truly global trade
book publisher. The penguin series flourished and the Pelican series continued
on till 1990 after which it was disbanded. It was revitalized, to take flight
again in 2014.
References
Penguin and the Lane Brothers: The Untold Story of a
Publishing Revolution - Stuart Kells
Allen lane – King Penguin – J E Morpurgo
An eventful chapter in Anglo US Publishing history – Victor Wheybright
Ayahs, Lascars and Princes: The Story of Indians in Britain
1700-1947 - Rozina Visram
The Business of Books: How International Conglomerates Took
Over Publishing - André Schiffrin
Penguin Special: The Life and Times of Allen Lane - Jeremy
Lewis
Krishna Menon - Emil Lengyel
A History of Cultural Studies - John Hartley
Nehru – A tryst with destiny – Stanley Wolpert
Notes
- The spin of Lane dreaming up the Penguin idea - The story goes that in 1934 Lane was returning by train from a weekend visit to Agatha Christie in Devon. He found himself on the platform of Exeter station and was not able to find any book worth reading. While travelling back to London he had the idea of producing good quality literature which could be cheap enough for a larger public to be able to buy, and could, perhaps be sold from a vending machine. He thought sixpence (the cost of a packet of ten cigarettes at the time) would be the right price at which to pitch the books. He broached this subject to his brothers and they agreed. This is a corporate story which people who have studied and written about tend to disbelieve since lane was not much of a reader. As they say the lie uttered often becomes a truth, for Lane many years later, when scoffing at Menon mentions vaguely of seeing a girl at Exeter or San Pancras station asking for Pelican books instead of using the term Penguin and that was how Pelicans were born!
- R K Laxman states in 2004 - Particular mention here must be made of Morarji Desai and V.K. Krishna Menon for sparing no effort to help me gain some modest success and popularity in my career – That was a surprise I got during all this research.
- Menon and Freudian slip – The 1938 Pelican book advertisement on Freud’s book Psychopathology of Everyday life asks – Why do you forget things you ought to remember? Make slips of the tongue, of the pen? Do things you didn’t mean?.. It was perhaps this advertisement that brought in the usage Freudian slip to everyday conversation. One could attribute it to Pelican, Allen Lane or…for that matter Krishna Menon…You decide
- Wheybright who later suffered in similar fashion under Lane, recounts an event when Menon came rushing into the crypt stating that he had secured GB Shaw’s approval in publishing Shaw’s book as a Penguin. Lane who had a brainwave of starting the Pelican series after hearing the aforesaid woman’s mis-remark, decided to publish Shaw’s book as a Pelican instead (after arguments with Menon who said it may not be quite sound legally).
- It is also believed that Lane fought with Menon after Menon tricked him into publishing EM Forster’s ‘Passage to India’. But that does not sound right for ‘A Passage to India’ was published on 4 June 1924 by the British imprint Edward Arnold, and then on 14 August in New York by Harcourt, Brace and Co. Even if indeed a Penguin classics reprint was made in the late 30’s or early 40’s, the content of the book was well known to the public already!
Afterword
Who achieved greatness, Menon or Lane?
Krishna Menon, the idealist, fared badly in the fickle public’s
eyes– as the Times obituary said – A remarkable but unlikeable man who worked
untiringly all his life for his country, yet never received a nation’s
gratitude.
Allen Lane – Like most great leaders, Allen was a myth
maker. Many of his myths were about himself, some were almost true, some close
to being downright lies, and not a few half-truths made entirely because he had
come to believe them. (JE Morpurgo- The King and I - Blackwoods magazine 1979).
Pics
Allen lane – courtesy Guardian UK, most others Wikipedia and Google images…thanks
to the photographers and with due acknowledgment
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