Books and Birds

February 8, 2006 1:26 PM

Why are there so many book publishers that have birds in their names or their logos? Is there a historical explanation? Is there any explanation?

The ones I thought of off the top of my head were Bantam, Penguin, Pelican, Puffin, and Signet (which might not be one, but it's a homophone of "cygnet").

I looked at various lists of publishers on Wikipedia and found three more, Osprey Publishing, Black Sparrow Books, and Catbird Press.

Then I looked at my bookshelf and noticed that Norton Critical Editions have a bird in their logo, and the NTC Publishing Group has a hawk (or something) in their logo.

I could be looking for an explaination where there isn't one, but I've been obsessed with this question for the past week.

posted by bubukaba to media & arts (22 comments total)

This doesn't really answer the whole question, but the reason that the University of Chicago Press' logo has a phoenix is because that's the school's mascot.
posted by penchant at 1:34 PM on February 8, 2006

I know that much, I'm a first year there/here!
posted by bubukaba at 1:36 PM on February 8, 2006

birds are pretty?
posted by muddylemon at 1:37 PM on February 8, 2006

Penguin Group has a lot of different brand names (including Penguin, Puffin, and Signet), many of which are bird names. (But Bantam is part of Random House. Not sure about the others.)
posted by winston at 1:44 PM on February 8, 2006

And the phoenix is Univ. of Chicago's mascot because it's the symbol of Chicago, which is on account of Chicago's having "risen from the ashes" of the Chicago fire.

But I doubt that all publishers' bird connections are so deeply engrained in the history of their respective cities.

(sorry 'bout the derail)
posted by JekPorkins at 1:48 PM on February 8, 2006

I think muddylemon has it right.

The feather/quill/pen thing may be contributing.
posted by fidelity at 1:48 PM on February 8, 2006

And Pelican is a UK imprint of Penguin Group.
posted by winston at 1:49 PM on February 8, 2006

It pretty much dates back to the Albatross Library, one of the first important paperback imprints; Allen Lane used this series as inspiration for the look and feel of the first Penguins (and Penguin begat Puffin and Pelican).

(In general terms, the association of publishers with logos dates back to when booksellers sold their wares from shops marked with easily-identifiable signs: a crown, an anchor, a star, etc.)
posted by holgate at 1:49 PM on February 8, 2006

Anyway, as I read it, Bantam, Penguin, Pelican, Puffin, and Signet are the names that initially raised this question for you. Four of the five are from the same company.
posted by winston at 1:51 PM on February 8, 2006

Puffin and Signet are offshoots of Penguin.

Bantam was acquired by RH--it wasn't always so.

The logo for Norton is a bird, too.

An open book looks kind of like a bird.
posted by lampoil at 1:51 PM on February 8, 2006

Ballantine Books was established in l952 by the legendary paperback pioneers Ian and Betty Ballantine. As an undergraduate at Columbia University in the l930s, Ian had written a paper extolling the future of paperbound books; together with his wife, he went on to found the reprint houses Penguin USA (1939) and Bantam Books (1945.)

So apparently that guy likes birds.
posted by muddylemon at 1:53 PM on February 8, 2006

Further U of C derail: the phoenix is also an allusion to the fact that the current University of Chicago is actually the second school to be named as such -- the first (and completely unrelated) failed to survive.

Okay, I'm done.
posted by penchant at 1:54 PM on February 8, 2006

A bit of history on the Penguin name.
posted by blue_beetle at 2:08 PM on February 8, 2006

Signet is a real word that has nothing to do with birds.
posted by jjg at 2:26 PM on February 8, 2006

Cygnet?

(maybe it's a pun)
posted by small_ruminant at 2:55 PM on February 8, 2006

You left out Cardinal, a 1950 spinoff of Pocket Books.

So apparently that guy [Ballantine] likes birds.

Ballantine didn't start the Penguin line, he was simply chosen (as a young graduate student; see the wonderful animated timeline) by Penguin UK to start the US version. His use of the Bantam rooster as the emblem of his new company, however, may well have been a competitive poke; according to this site, Ballantine left Penguin "after being accused of perpetrating vulgarity by Penguin's founder."

Signet is a real word that has nothing to do with birds.

Yeah, and when you add Pocket Books' kangaroo, Dell, Avon, Crest, Pyramid, Ballantine, Ace, Anchor, Mentor, Berkley and lots of others, birds don't really figure in all *that* much in paperback history outside of the Penguin line.
posted by mediareport at 3:30 PM on February 8, 2006

More on the tension between Ballantine and Penguin owner Allen Lane here. And this page mentions that the Pocket Book kangaroo was a deliberate "echo" of the Albatross and Penguin logos, which seems likely for Cardinal and Bantam as well.
posted by mediareport at 3:42 PM on February 8, 2006

I've always thought Random House was a weird name for a publisher, if you think about it.

Another birdish publisher: Scarecrow Press.
posted by _sirmissalot_ at 5:16 PM on February 8, 2006

The only think I can think of is the idea of the knowledge-bird... er, I managed to find a very small reference as follows,
"As Socrates remarks, these ignorance-birds can be confused with knowledge-birds in just the same way as knowledge-birds can be confused with each other."
posted by edgeways at 6:05 PM on February 8, 2006

Penguin and its flock were all related, so it was a theme, which is somewhat unusual. Signet started, as Bantam did, as a publisher of mass market books, what used to be racksized paperbacks sold at newsstands. Looks like they are now owned by Penguin. By far and away, most publishing companies are named for people. My favorite is Borzoi Books, so named because Alfred A. Knopf had borzoi dogs.
posted by theora55 at 7:20 PM on February 8, 2006

Aldus Manutius used fish. I've always assumed that the whole animal thing goes back to him.
posted by IndigoJones at 4:58 AM on February 9, 2006

I've always thought Random House was a weird name for a publisher, if you think about it.

"I've got the name for our publishing operation. We just said we were going to publish a few books on the side at random. Let's call it Random House." --Bennet Cerf, founder of Random House. From his memoir, At Random.
posted by lampoil at 10:36 PM on February 11, 2006