Comments on: Books and Birds

Question: Books and Birds

bubukaba — Wed, 08 Feb 2006 13:26:39 -0800

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.

By: penchant

penchant — Wed, 08 Feb 2006 13:34:30 -0800

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.

By: bubukaba

bubukaba — Wed, 08 Feb 2006 13:36:35 -0800

I know that much, I'm a first year there/here!

By: muddylemon

muddylemon — Wed, 08 Feb 2006 13:37:22 -0800

birds are pretty?

By: winston

winston — Wed, 08 Feb 2006 13:44:57 -0800

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.)

By: JekPorkins

JekPorkins — Wed, 08 Feb 2006 13:48:29 -0800

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)

By: fidelity

fidelity — Wed, 08 Feb 2006 13:48:43 -0800

I think muddylemon has it right.

The feather/quill/pen thing may be contributing.

By: winston

winston — Wed, 08 Feb 2006 13:49:27 -0800

And Pelican is a UK imprint of Penguin Group.

By: holgate

holgate — Wed, 08 Feb 2006 13:49:50 -0800

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.)

By: winston

winston — Wed, 08 Feb 2006 13:51:18 -0800

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.

By: lampoil

lampoil — Wed, 08 Feb 2006 13:51:35 -0800

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.

By: muddylemon

muddylemon — Wed, 08 Feb 2006 13:53:02 -0800

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.

By: penchant

penchant — Wed, 08 Feb 2006 13:54:20 -0800

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.

By: blue_beetle

blue_beetle — Wed, 08 Feb 2006 14:08:56 -0800

A bit of history on the Penguin name.

By: jjg

jjg — Wed, 08 Feb 2006 14:26:08 -0800

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

By: small_ruminant

small_ruminant — Wed, 08 Feb 2006 14:55:51 -0800

Cygnet?

(maybe it's a pun)

By: mediareport

mediareport — Wed, 08 Feb 2006 15:30:59 -0800

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.

By: mediareport

mediareport — Wed, 08 Feb 2006 15:42:04 -0800

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.

By: _sirmissalot_

_sirmissalot_ — Wed, 08 Feb 2006 17:16:25 -0800

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

Another birdish publisher: Scarecrow Press.

By: edgeways

edgeways — Wed, 08 Feb 2006 18:05:03 -0800

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."

By: theora55

theora55 — Wed, 08 Feb 2006 19:20:42 -0800

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.

By: IndigoJones

IndigoJones — Thu, 09 Feb 2006 04:58:31 -0800

Aldus Manutius used fish. I've always assumed that the whole animal thing goes back to him.

By: lampoil

lampoil — Sat, 11 Feb 2006 22:36:43 -0800

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.