Penguin Books is a publisher founded in 1935 by Sir Allen Lane.^[1] Penguin revolutionised publishing in the 1930s through its high quality, inexpensive paperbacks, sold through Woolworths and other high street stores for sixpence. Penguin's success demonstrated that large audiences existed for serious books. Penguin also had a significant impact on public debate in Britain, through its books on politics, the arts, and science.^[2] Penguin Books is now the flagship imprint of the worldwide Penguin Group and is owned by Pearson PLC.^[3]

Origins[link]

The first Penguin paperbacks were published in 1936,^[4] but at first only as an imprint of Bodley Head (of Vigo Street) with the books originally distributed from the crypt of Holy Trinity Church Marylebone. Only paperback editions were published until the “King Penguin” series debuted in 1939^[5], and latterly the Pelican History of Art was undertaken: these were unsuitable as paperbacks because of the length and copious illustrations on art paper so cloth bindings were chosen instead. Penguin Books has its registered office in the City of Westminster, London, England.^[6][7]

Anecdotally Lane recounted how it was his experience of the poor quality of reading material on offer at Exeter train station that inspired him to create cheap, well designed quality books for the mass market^[8]. Though the publication of literature in paperback was then associated mainly with poor quality, lurid fiction the Penguin brand owed something to the short lived Albatross imprint of British and American reprints that briefly traded in 1932^[9]. Inexpensive paperbacks did not initially appear viable to Bodley Head, since the deliberately low price of 6d. made profitability seem unlikely. This helped Allen Lane purchase publication rights for some works more cheaply than he otherwise might have done since other publishers were convinced of the short term prospects of the business. In the face of resistance from the traditional book trade^[10] it was the purchase of 63,000 books by Woolworth^[11] that paid for the project outright, confirmed its worth and allowed Lane to establish Penguin as a separate business in 1936. By March 1936, ten months after the company's launch on 30 July 1935, one million Penguin books had been printed. This early flush of success brought expansion and the appointment of Eunice Frost, first as a secretary then as editor and ultimately as a director, who was to have a pivotal influence in shaping the company^[12].

From the outset, design was essential to the success of the Penguin brand. Eschewing the illustrated gaudiness of other paperback publishers, Penguin opted for the simple appearance of three horizontal bands, the upper and lower of which were colour coded according to which series the title belonged to; this is sometimes referred to as the horizontal grid. In the central white panel, the author and title were printed in Gill Sans and in the upper band was a cartouche with the legend "Penguin Books". The initial design was created by the then twenty-one-year-old office junior Edward Young, who also drew the first version of the Penguin logo. Series such as Penguin Specials and The Penguin Shakespeare had individual designs (by 1937 only S1 and B1-B18 had been published).

The colour schemes included: orange and white for general fiction, green and white for crime fiction, cerise and white for travel and adventure, dark blue and white for biographies, yellow and white for miscellaneous, red and white for drama; and the rarer purple and white for essays and belles lettres and grey and white for world affairs. Lane actively resisted the introduction of cover images for several years. Some recent publications of literature from that time have duplicated the original look.

From 1937 and on, the headquarters of Penguin Books was at Harmondsworth north of London and so it remained until the 1990s when a merge with Viking involved the head office moving into London (27 Wrights Lane, W8 5TZ).

War years[link]

The Second World War saw the company established as a national institution, though it had no formal role, Penguin was integral to war effort thanks in no small part to the publication of bestselling manuals Keeping Poultry and Rabbits on Scraps and Aircraft Recognition and supplying books for the services and POWs. Penguin printed some 600 titles and started nineteen new series in the six years of the war^[13] and a time of enormous increase in the demand for books^[14], consequently Penguin enjoyed a privileged place amongst its peers.

1st book Harold Nicholson Why britain is at war. Paper rationing, march 1940 quota based on usage Aug 38-39 penguin sold 9 million that year, special editions to soldiers and pows additional supplies. Moberley pool, book production war economy agreement jan 1942 - type size paper use. Aircraft recognition, Rabbit breeding best seller. Forces book club penguin monopoly. At the bottom of the final page is "FOR THE FORCES Leave this book at a Post Office when you have read it, so that men and women in the Services may enjoy it too" red cross. CEMA, ABCA bill williams preferential treatment.

Role in labour victor.

Post-war history[link]

In 1945 Penguin began what would become one of its most important branches, the Penguin Classics, with a translation of Homer's Odyssey by E. V. Rieu. Between 1947 and 1949, the German typographer Jan Tschichold redesigned 500 Penguin books, and left Penguin with a set of influential rules of design principles brought together as the Penguin Composition Rules, a four page booklet of typographic instructions for editors and compositors. Tschichold's work included the woodcut illustrated covers of the classics series (also known as the medallion series), and with Hans Schmoller, his eventual successor at Penguin, the vertical grid covers that became the standard for Penguin fiction throughout the 1950s. By this time the paperback industry in the UK had begun to grow, and Penguin found itself in competition with then fledgeling Pan Books. Many other series were published such as the Buildings of England, the Pelican History of Art and Penguin Education.

By 1960, a number of forces were to shape the direction of the company, the publication list and its graphic design. On 20 April 1961, Penguin became a publicly listed company on the London Stock Exchange; consequently, Allen Lane had a diminished role at the firm though he was to continue as Managing Director. New techniques such as phototypesetting and offset-litho printing were to replace hot metal and letterpress printing, dramatically reducing cost and permitting the printing of images and text on the same paper stock, thus paving the way for the introduction of photography and novel approaches to graphic design on paperback covers. In May 1960, Tony Godwin was appointed as editorial adviser, rapidly rising to Chief Editor from which position he sought to broaden the range of Penguin's list and keep up with new developments in graphic design. To this end, he hired Germano Facetti in January 1961, who was to decisively alter the appearance of the Penguin brand. Beginning with the crime series, Facetti canvassed the opinion of a number of designers including Romek Marber for a new look to the Penguin cover. It was Marber's suggestion of what came to be called the Marber grid along with the retention of traditional Penguin colour coding that was to replace the previous three horizontal bars design and set the pattern for the design of the company's paperbacks for the next twenty years. Facetti rolled out the new treatment across the Penguin line starting with crime, the orange fiction series, then Pelicans, Penguin Modern Classics, Penguin Specials, and Penguin Classics, giving an overall visual unity to the company's list. A somewhat different approach was taken to the Peregrine, Penguin Poets, Penguin Modern Poets, and Penguin Plays series. There were over a hundred different series published in total.

Just as Lane well judged the public's appetite for paperbacks in the 1930s, his decision to publish Lady Chatterley's Lover by D. H. Lawrence in 1960 boosted Penguin's notoriety. The novel was at the time unpublished in the United Kingdom and the predicted obscenity trial not only marked Penguin as a fearless publisher, it also helped drive the sale of at least 3.5 million copies. Penguin's victory in the case heralded the end to the censorship of books in the UK, although censorship of the written word was only finally defeated after the Inside Linda Lovelace trial of 1978.

Pearson takeover[link]

By the end of the 1960s Penguin was in financial trouble, a number of buy-out proposals were made including that of a consortium of universities or the joint ownership of Penguin by the CUP and OUP^[15], none of which came to anything. Ultimately, the company was bought out by Pearson Longman on 21 August 1970, some six weeks after the death of Allen Lane. A new emphasis on profitability emerged and, with the departure of Facetti in 1972, the defining era of Penguin book design came to an end. Later changes included the disappearance of 'Harmondsworth' as the place of publication: this was replaced by a London office address. From 1937 the headquarters of Penguin Books was at Harmondsworth west of London and so it remained until the 1990s when a merge with Viking involved the head office moving into London (27 Wrights Lane, W8 5TZ).

In the company's tradition of courting controversy, Penguin published Deborah Lipstadt's book Denying the Holocaust which accused David Irving of Holocaust denial. Irving sued Lipstadt and Penguin for libel in 1998 but lost in a widely publicised trial. Other controversial titles published by Penguin include Siné′s Massacre, Spycatcher and The Satanic Verses.

In 2006, Penguin attempted to involve the public in collaboratively writing a novel on a wiki platform. They named this project A Million Penguins. On 7 March 2007, the Penguin Books UK blog announced that the project had come to an end.^[16]

Imprints and series[link]

Penguin Classics[link]

Consonant with Penguin`s corporate mission to bring canonical literature to the mass market the company first ventured into publishing the classics in May 1938 with the issue of Penguin Illustrated Classics<sup>[17]</sup>. The savings from the author`s rights on these royalty free titles were instead invested in commissioning woodcut engravings from Robert Gibbings and his circle emanating from the Central School of Arts and Crafts. The books were distinct from the rest of the Penguin marque in their use of a vertical grid (anticipating Tschichold`s innovation of 1951) and albertus typeface. The series was not a financial success and the list ceased after just ten volumes the same year it began. Penguin returned to classics with the printing of E. V. Rieu`s translation of Homer`s Odyssey in 1946, which went on to sell three million copies^[18].

Pengin's commercial motivation was, as ever, populist; rending the classics in an approachable modern English was therefore a difficult task whose execution did not always satisfy the critics^[19]. Dr Rieu said of his work that "I have done my best to make Homer easy reading for those who are unfamiliar with the Greek world"^[20]. He was joined in 1959 by Betty Radice who was first his assistant then, after his retirement in 1964, she assumed the role of joint editor with Robert Baldick. As the publisher's focus changed from the needs of the marketplace to those of the classroom the criticism became more acute, Thomas Gould wrote of the series "most of the philosophical volumes in the Penguin series are bad - some very bad indeed. Since Plato and Aristotle are the most read philosophers in the world today, and since some of these Penguin translations are favourites among professional philosophers in several countries, this amounts to a minor crisis in the history of philosophy"^[21].

The imprint publishes hundreds of classics from the Greeks and Romans to Victorian Literature to modern classics. For nearly twenty years, variously coloured borders to the front and back covers indicated the original language. The second period of design meant largely black covers with a colour illustration on the front. In 2002, Penguin announced it was redesigning its entire catalogue, merging the original Classics list (known in the trade as "Black Classics") with what had been the old Penguin Twentieth-Century Classics list, though the silver covers for the latter have so far been retained for most of the titles. Previously this line had been called 'Penguin Modern Classics' with a pale green livery.

The redesign — featuring a colourful painting on the cover, with black background and orange lettering — was well received. However, the quality of the paperbacks themselves seemed to decrease: the spines were more likely to fold and bend. The paperbacks are also printed on non-acid-free pulp paper which, by some accounts, tends to yellow and brown within a couple of years.^[22]

The text page design was also overhauled to follow a more closely prescribed template, allowing for faster copyediting and typesetting, but reducing the options for individual design variations suggested by a text's structure or historical context (for example, in the choice of text typeface). Prior to 2002 the text page typography of each book in the Classics series had been overseen by a team of in-house designers; this department was closed in 2003 as part of the production costs rationalisation of the Classics list, and any design work is now done by editors and outside suppliers.

Pelican books[link]

Lane expanded the business in 1937 with the publication of George Bernard Shaw's The Intelligent Woman's Guide to Socialism and Capitalism under the Pelican Books imprint, an imprint designed to educate the reading public rather than entertain. Recognising his own limitations Lane appointed V. K. Krishna Menon as the first commissioning edition of the series, supported by an advisory panel consisting of Peter Chalmers Mitchell, H. L. Bales and W. E. Williams. Several thousand Pelicans were published over the next half-century and brought high quality accounts of the current state of knowledge in many fields, often written by authors of specialised academic books.^[23] (The Pelican series, in decline for several years, was finally discontinued in 1984.)

Aircraft Recognition (S82) by R. A. Saville-Sneath, was a best seller. In 1940, the children's imprint Puffin Books began with a series of non-fiction picture books; the first work of children's fiction published under the imprint was Barbara Euphan Todd's Worzel Gummidge the following year. Another series which began in wartime was the Penguin Poets: the first volume was a selection of Tennyson's poems (D1) in 1941. Later examples are The Penguin Book of Modern American Verse (D22), 1954, and The Penguin Book of Restoration Verse (D108), 1968. J. M. Cohen's Comic and Curious Verse appeared in three volumes over a number of years.

Penguin Specials[link]

In November 1937 Penguin inaugurated a new series of short, polemical books under the rubric of Penguin Specials with the publication of Edgar Mowrer`s Germany Puts the Clock Back. Their purpose was to offer in-depth analysis of current affairs that would counter the perceived bias of the newspapers in addition to being the company`s response to the popularity of Gollancz`s Left Book Club. Whereas the Left Book Club was avowedly pro-Soviet, Penguin and Lane expressed no political preference as their editorial policy, though the widespread belief was that the series was left-leaning<sup>[24]</sup> since the editor was the communist Peter Lehmann and it`s authors were, with a few exceptions,^[25] men of the left. Speed of publication and delivery (a turnaround of weeks rather than months) were essential to the topicality and therefore success of the Specials, Genevieve Tabouis`s anti-appeasement tract Blackmail or War sold over 200,000 copies for example. However even this immediacy did not prevent them being overtaken by events: Shiela Grant Duff's Europe and the Czechs only made it onto the bookstands on the day of the Munich agreement, but nevertheless went on to be a bestseller. Thirty-five Penguin Specials were published before the outbreak of war, including two novels Hasek`s Good Soldier Schweik and Bottome`s The Mortal Storm;they collectively made a significant contribution to the public debate of the time, with many of the more controversial titles being the subject of leading articles in the Press.

After a hiatus between 1945 and 1949 the Penguin Specials continued after the war under the editorship of first Tom Maschler, then after 1961 Tony Godwin. The first title in the revived series was William Gallacher`s The Case for Communism.<sup>[26]</sup> Godwin initiated the `What`s Wrong with Britiain` series of Specials in the run up to the 1964 election, which constituted a platform for the New Left`s brand of cultural analysis that characterised the leftist political radicalism of the sixties. Indeed Penguin Books contributed to the funds that set up Richard Hoggart and Stuart Hall's Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies at Birmingham University in 1964.<sup>[27]</sup> This brief period of revival for Penguin Specials in contributing to the national dialogue was not sustained after the departure of Godwin in 1967, and with the rise in television journalism the Specials series declined in significance through the seventies and eighties. The last Special was published in 1988 with Keith Thompson`s Under siege: racism and violence in Britain today.^[28]

Puffin[link]

See main article Puffin Books

Noel Carrington, an editor at Country Life magazine, first approached Lane with the idea of publishing low cost, illustrated non-fiction children's books in 1938. Inspired by the Editions Père Castor books drawn by Rojan and the technique of auto lithography used in the poster art of the time, Carrington's suggestion for what was to become the Puffin Picture Book series was adopted by Penguin in 1940 when, as Lane saw it, evacuated city children would need books on farming and natural history to help adjust to the country^[29]. The first four titles appeared in December 1940; War on Land, War at Sea, War in the Air and On the Farm, and a further nine the following year. Despite Lane's intention to publish twelve a year paper and staff shortages meant only thirteen were issued in the first two years of the series. The Picture Books' 120 titles resulted in 260 variants altogether, the last number 116 Paxton Chadwick's Life Histories, was issued hors série in 1996 by the Penguin Collector's Society.

Inexpensive paperback children's fiction did not exist at the time Penguin sought to expand their list into this new market. To this end Eleanor Graham was appointed in 1941 as the first editor of the Puffin Story Books series^[30], a venture made particularly difficult due to the resistance of publishers and librarians in releasing the rights of their children's books. The first five titles, Worzel Gummidge, Cornish Adventure, The Cuckoo Clock, Garram the Hunter and Smokey were published in the three horizontal stripes company livery of the rest of the Penguin output, a practice abandoned after the ninth volume when full-bleed colour illustrated covers were introduced, a fact that heralded the much greater design freedom of the Puffin series over the rest of Penguin's books. Graham retired in 1961 and was replaced by Kaye Webb who presided over the department for 18 years in a period that saw greatly increased competition in the children's market as well as a greater sophistication in production and marketing. One innovation of Webb's was the creation of the PuffinClub in 1967 and its quarterly magazine the Puffin Post, which at its height had 200,000 members. The Puffin authors' list added Arthur Ransome, Roald Dahl and Ursula le Guin during Webb' editorship and saw the creation the Peacock series of teenage fiction.

The Buildings of England[link]

Main article Pevsner Architectural Guides

Nikolaus Pevsner first proposed a series of volumes amounting to a county by county survey of the monuments of England in ten or more books to both the Cambridge University Press and Routledge before the war, however for various reason his plan came to nothing^[31]. It was only through his involvement with Penguin that he was in a position to make a similar suggestion to Allen Lane and be accepted. Pevsner described the project of the Buildings of England as an attempt to fill the gap in English publishing for those multi-volume survey of national art familiar on the continent. In particular Georg Dehio's Handbuch der deutschen Kunstdenkmaler, a topographical inventory of Germany's important historic buildings which was published in five volumes between 1905 and 1912^[32]. Though Pevsner's ambition for the series was to educate and inform the general public on the subtleties of English architectural history, the immediate commercial imperative was competition with the Shell Guides edited by John Betjeman of which thirteen had been published by 1939^[33]. With Lane's agreement in 1945 Pevsner began work personally touring the county that was to be the subject of observation aided by notes drawn up by researchers. The first volume, Cornwall, appeared in 1951, and went on to produce 46 architectural guidebooks between then and 1974 of which he wrote thirty-two alone and ten with assistance. As early as 1954 the series was in commercial difficulty and required sponsorship to continue, a grant from the Leverhulme Trust amongst other sources^[34] secured its completion. The series continued after Pevsner's death in 1983, financed in part by the Pevsner Books Trust and published by Yale University Press.

Pevsner's approach was of Kunstgesichte quite distinct from the antiquarian interest of local and family history typical of English county histories. Consequently there is little mention of monumental brasses, bells, tracery, the relationship of the building to the landscape^[35]. Nor is there much discussion on building techniques, nor industrial architecture, nor on Art Deco buildings, omissions which his critics hold have led to those subjects undervaluation and neglect^[36]. Nevertheless Pevsner's synoptic study brought rigorous architectural history to an appreciative mass audience, and in particular he enlarged the perception of the Victorian achievement in architecture..

Magazine publishing[link]

Wartime paper rationing, which had resulted in a generous allocation to Penguin, also forced the reduction in space for book reviews and advertising in the newspapers and was partly the cause of the folding of several literary journals, consequently left a gap in the magazine market that Lane hoped to fill. In january 1941the first issue of Penguin New Writing appeared and instantly dominated the market with 80,000 copies sold compared to its closest rival, Cyril Connolly`s Horizon, which mustered 3,500 sales in its first edition. Penguin New Writing`s editor Peter Lehmann was instrumental in introducing the British public to such new writers as Lawrence Durrell, Saul Bellow and James Michie. Yet despite popular and critical success further rationing and, after 1945 declining sales, led monthly publication to become quarterly until the journal finally closed in autumn 1950 after 40 issues.

Though New Writing was the most durable of Penguin`s periodicals it wasn`t the publisher`s only foray into journalism with Russian Review and Transatlantic begun during the war, and Penguin Film Review, Penguin Music Magazine, New Biology, Penguin Parade, Penguin Hansard and Penguin Science News having brief runs after.

Popular Penguins[link]

Penguin's Australian subsidiary released the Popular Penguins series late in 2008. The series has its own website.^[37] It was intended to include 50 titles, many of which duplicate those on the Penguin Celebrations list but this was reduced to 49 titles as one of the 50, Hegemony or Survival by Noam Chomsky,^[38] had to be withdrawn after its initial release as Penguin discovered they no longer held the rights to it.

Popular Penguins are presented as a return to Lane's original ethos – good books at affordable prices. They have been published with a cover price of $AUD9.95, less than half of the average price of a paperback novel in Australia at the time of release.

Popular Penguins are presented in a more 'authentic' interpretation of the Penguin Grid than that of the Celebrations series. They are correct size, when compared to an original 'grid-era' Penguin, and they use Eric Gill's typefaces in a more or less exact match for Jan Tschichold's 'tidying' of Edward Young's original three panel cover design. The covers are also printed on a card stock which mirrors the look and feel of 1940s and 50s Penguin covers. On the other hand, all of the Popular Penguins series are in Penguin Orange, and not colour coded in the manner of the original designs and the 'Celebrations' titles.

In July 2009 another 50 Popular Penguins were released onto the Australian and New Zealand markets.^[39] A further 10 titles written by New Zealand authors were released in March 2010.^[40] Another 75 titles were released in Australia in July 2010 to mark Penguin's 75th anniversary.^[41]

Pelican History of Art[link]

Allen Lane approached Nikolaus Pevsner in 1945 for a series of illustrated books that would match the success of the King Penguins. Pevsner recalled his response “Allen said, `You have done the King Penguins now and we are going on with them, but if you had your way, what else would you do?` I had my answer ready - and the answer was very formidable, because I outlined both The Pelican History of Art and The Buildings of England on the spot, each about 40 to 50 volumes. Allen said, `Yes, we can do both,` and that was the end of the meeting.”^[42] Pevsner`s industry quickly bore fruit with the first contracts signed by 1946 for John Summerson`s Architecture in Britain, Anthony Blunt`s Art and Architecture in France, and Rudolph Wittkower`s Italian art and architecture, the first title Painting in Britain, 1530-1790 by Ellis Waterhouse was issued in 1953. By 1955 Pevsner produced a prospectus for the series announcing the publication of four new volumes and a plan for the rest of the series totalling forty-seven titles. The ambition of the series exceeded previously published multi-volume histories of art such as André Michel`s Histoire de l`art (17 vols, 1905-28), the Propyläen Kunstgeschichte (25 vols, 1923-35). Forty-one volumes were published by the time Pevsner retired from editing in 1977, his work was continued by his editorial assistant on the Buildings of England Judy Nairn and the medievalist Peter Lasko. Yale University Press acquired the series in 1992 when 45 titles had been completed, they subsequentently published 21 vols, mostly revisions of existing editions.^[43]

For Penguin the series was a departure from their commercial mainstay of paperbacks as the histories of art were the first large format, illustrated hardback books they had produced.^[44] Despite their relatively high price they were a financial success, yet for Pevsner they were intended primarily as graduate level texts in what was, for the English speaking world, the newly emerging academic discipline of art history.^[45] Nevertheless the series was criticised from within the academy for its evident biases. Many of its authors were German émigrés, consequently there was a methodological preference for the kunstwissenschaft practiced in Vienna and Berlin between the wars; a formalism that ignored the social context of art.^[46] Moreover the weight given to some subjects seemed disproportionate to some critics, with seven of its forty-seven volumes dedicated to English art, a “tributary of the main European current” as the Burlington Magazine observed.^[47] Though the 1955 plan was never fully executed - the volumes on Greek painting and sculpture, quattrocento painting and cinquecento sculpture were not written - the Pelican History remains one of the most comprehensive surveys of world art published.

Other series[link]

Other series include: Penguin Modern Painters, Shakespeare, new Shakespeare, music scores, poetry, handbooks, crime, peregrines, modern poets, play, sci-fi, education, university titles, library of physical sciences, modern European poets, cookery, new king penguins, reference, originals, penguin 60s, essentials, great ideas, ptarmigan, guides, kestrel, and dolphin.

See also[link]

• Penguin Collectors Society

References[link]

Further reading[link]

External links[link]

• Official web sites
  • Penguin Group
  • Company history at Penguin UK

• Other
  • Penguin Archive University of Bristol Library Special Collections
  • Penguin Archive Project University of Bristol
  • The Art of Penguin Science Fiction The history and cover art of science fiction published by Penguin Books from 1935 to the present day
  • Penguin book covers
  • Penguin Cerise Travel Celebrating Penguin Books' early 'Travel and Adventure' series
  • Foley Collection — articles and extensive lists
  • History of the Penguin Archive by Toby Clements, The Telegraph, 19 February 2009

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This article's plot summary may be too long or excessively detailed. Please help improve it by removing unnecessary details and making it more concise. (December 2011)

The Penguin is a fictional character, a DC Comics supervillain who is one of Batman's oldest, most persistent enemies. The Penguin was introduced by artist Bob Kane and writer Bill Finger, making his debut in Detective Comics #58 (December 1941).

The Penguin is a short, rotund man known for his love of birds and his specialized high-tech umbrellas. A mobster and thief, he fancies himself a "gentleman of crime"; his nightclub business provides a cover for more low-key criminal activity, which Batman tolerates as a source of criminal underworld information. According to co-creator Bob Kane, the character was inspired from the then advertising mascot of Kool cigarettes — a penguin with a top hat and cane. Bill Finger also thought the image of high-society gentlemen in tuxedos was reminiscent of emperor penguins.^[1]

Burgess Meredith portrayed the Penguin in the 1960s Batman television series, perhaps the most well-known incarnation of the character. Danny DeVito played a darker, more grotesque version of the Penguin in the 1992 film Batman Returns. Subsequent Batman animated series have featured the Penguin in depictions that alternate between deformed outcast and high-profile aristocrat. The former interpretation has also appeared in comics, most notably in the miniseries Batman: The Long Halloween and its sequel Dark Victory. He only appears for a minor cameo at the end of the Long Halloween, and has no lines. He plays a slightly more notable role in Dark Victory — this incarnation also included elements of Meredith's interpretation.

Paradoxically, the Penguin has repeatedly been named among the worst^[2][3] and best^[4][5] Batman villains over the years.

Unlike most of Batman's rogues gallery, the Penguin is in control of his own actions and perfectly sane, features that serve to maintain a unique relationship with Batman. This has extended into the current characterization of the Penguin ceasing his direct involvement in crime, instead running a nightclub that is popular with the underworld; on one occasion he temporarily returned to active crime for the thrill of it, aware that Batman would learn about his actions but also secure in the knowledge that the Dark Knight couldn't testify in court without revealing his identity. As such, he is an excellent source of information on crime, so Batman grudgingly tolerates his operations so long as the Penguin agrees to be one of his informants. However, the entrepreneurial Penguin is often fencing stolen property or arranging early furloughs for incarcerated former criminal associates — for a hefty fee, of course — on the side.

Fictional character biography[link]

Born Oswald Chesterfield Cobblepot, the Penguin was bullied as a child for his short stature, weight, and beak-like nose. In some media, his fingers are fused together, resulting in flipper-like hands. Several stories relate that he was forced as a child to always carry an umbrella by his overprotective mother, due to his father dying of pneumonia after being drenched in a downpour. His mother owns several pet birds, and Cobblepot lavishes them with attention, considering them his only friends. In some versions, Cobblepot turns to crime after his mother dies and the birds are repossessed to pay his mother's debts; in others, he is an outcast in his rich, high society family, and their rejection drives him to become a criminal. In keeping with his family's tradition of wealth, the Penguin lives a life of crime, yet executes it with his class and style. In keeping with his pretensions of being a refined gentleman, he also prefers to wear formal wear such as a top hat, monocle, and tuxedo during his jobs.

The Penguin's alias first came from a childhood taunt, leveled by bullies who teased him because of his grotesque appearance and love of birds.^[6] In an early origin account, when Cobblepot first attempted to join a crime boss' gang, he was again belittled as a "penguin" and mocked for his umbrella before being literally kicked from the crime den. Outraged at being rejected even by criminals, he resolved to make "the Penguin" a name to fear and the umbrella a fearsome weapon. Clad in what became his customary formal garb, he returned to the den and killed the crime boss with "the world's first .45 caliber umbrella", then claimed leadership of the now terrified criminals. Some later stories suggest that he tried to abandon the nickname, which he hates, but it has been permanently brought into popularity by his high-profile criminal career.

[edit] Pre-Crisis

Originally known by no other name than his alias, the Penguin first appeared in Gotham City as a skilled thief, sneaking a priceless painting out of the museum by hiding the rolled-up canvas in the handle of his umbrella. The Penguin would later use the canvas as proof of his intellect to a local mob, which he was quickly allowed to join. With the Penguin's help, the mob pulls off a string of ingenious heists, but the mob's leader and the Penguin himself eventually have a falling-out, leading the latter to kill the former with a rifle built into his umbrella. The Penguin then became leader of the mob, and attempted to remove Batman from the picture by framing the Caped Crusader for theft. The Penguin's plans were eventually thwarted, but the bandit himself was able to escape Batman's clutches - one of the first criminals during the Golden Age of Comic Books to do so.^[7]

The Penguin would prove a persistent nemesis for the Dynamic Duo throughout of the Golden and Silver Ages, pulling off ploy after ploy such as teaming up with The Joker,^[8] attempting to extort money from a shipping company by pretending to flash-freeze a member of its board of directors,^[9] and even participating in Hugo Strange's auction of Batman's secret identity.^[10]

The Penguin's last appearance, fittingly, was the last appearance of the Earth-One Batman. After he and a multitude of Batman's enemies were broken out of Arkham Asylum and Blackgate Prison by Ra's al Ghul, the Penguin would be amongst those that accepted the offer of the immortal terrorist and carried out his plans to kidnap Batman's friends and allies. The Penguin, along with the Joker, Mad Hatter, Cavalier, Deadshot, and Killer Moth, laid siege to the Gotham City Police Headquarters, but were infuriated when the Joker sabotaged their attempt at holding Commissioner Gordon for ransom. As a result, a standoff ensued, with the Joker on one side, and the Penguin and Mad Hatter on the other. The Joker quickly subdued both with a burst of laughing gas from one of his many gadgets.^[11]

[edit] Post-Crisis

Following the Crisis rebooting the history of the DC Universe, the Penguin was relegated to little more than cameo appearances, until writer Alan Grant (who had earlier penned the Penguin origin story "The Killing Peck") and artist Norm Breyfogle brought the classic villain back, deadlier than ever. Within the era of the Tim Drake Robin, the Penguin formed a brief partnership with the macabre criminal and hypnotist Mortimer Kadaver, who helped him fake his own death as a ploy to strike at an unsuspecting Gotham. Penguin would later gun down Kadaver, after plugging his own ears with toilet paper so that the hypnotist no longer had any power over him.^[12]

After Batman foiled this particular endeavor, the Penguin embarked on one of his grandest schemes, in the three-part story "The Penguin Affair". After finding Harold Allnut on a lonely street, being physically and verbally abused by two gang members, the Penguin takes the technologically-gifted hunchback in, showing him kindness in exchange for the hunchback's services. Eventually, Harold builds a gadget with which the Penguin can control enormous flocks of birds from miles away, which Penguin utilizes to destroy radio communications in Gotham and crash a passenger plane. This endeavor, too, was foiled by Batman, and Harold would later be taken under Batman's wing as his mechanic.

The Penguin would later resurface during Jean Paul Valley's tenure as Batman, being one of the few to have deduced that Valley is not the original Batman. To confirm this theory, he kidnaps Sarah Essen Gordon, places her in a death-trap set to go off at midnight, and turns himself in, utilizing the opportunity to mock Commissioner Gordon as midnight approaches. An increasingly infuriated Gordon is nearly driven to throw Cobblepot off of the police headquarters roof, before Valley shows up in the nick of time with a rescued Sarah. As Valley leaves, he comments that "There's nothing the Penguin can throw at me that I haven't encountered before." - a sentiment with which the Penguin reluctantly agrees, having finally accepted his fear that he has become passé as a villain.^[13]

Subsequently, Cobblepot turns his attentions to a new modus operandi, operating as a white-collar criminal running a restaurant and casino known as the Iceberg Lounge under the front of a legitimate businessman.^[14] Though he has been arrested for criminal activities several times during the course of his "reformation", he has always managed to secure a release from prison, thanks to high-priced lawyers.

During the storyline "No Man's Land," when Gotham City is nearly leveled by an earthquake, Cobblepot stays behind when the US government shuts down and blockades the city. He becomes one of the major players in the mostly-abandoned and lawless city, using his connections to profit by trading the money that nobody else in Gotham can use for goods via his outer-Gotham contacts. One of these connections is discovered to be Lex Luthor and his company, LexCorp.

The Penguin is swept up in the events of Infinite Crisis. In the limited series' seventh issue, he is briefly seen as part of the Battle of Metropolis, a multi-character brawl started by the Secret Society of Super Villains. The Penguin, along with several other villains, are bowled over by the surprise appearance of Bart Allen.

One Year Later while the Penguin is away from Gotham City, the Great White Shark and Tally Man kill many of the villains who worked for him, and frame the reformed Harvey Dent. Great White had planned to take over Gotham's criminal syndicate and weaken all his competition, the Penguin included. Upon his return to Gotham, the Penguin continues to claim that he has gone "straight" and reopens the Iceberg Lounge nightclub, selling overpriced Penguin merchandise. He urges the Riddler to avoid crime, as it is more lucrative in their current, non-criminal lifestyle.

The Penguin is also featured as a prominent figure in the new Gotham Underground tie-in to the series Countdown. He is "hired" by Batman as an informant, using his criminal contacts to give Batman an edge over Gotham's criminals. He is also in a gang war with Tobias Whale and Intergang — a war that he ultimiately loses along with his privileged position, due to having lost Batman's support after his mysterious disappearance, and Intergang taking advantage by the return of the Apokoliptan Gods. He will appear in Battle for the Cowl: The Underground, which will show the effects of Batman's disappearance on his enemies.

The Penguin's mob has been absorbed by Black Mask II and his actions controlled. The Penguin, with the aid of Mad Hatter abducted Batman, brainwashing him to assassinate the Black Mask.

During the events of Brightest Day, the Birds of Prey discover the Penguin beaten and stabbed at the feet of a new villainess calling herself the White Canary.^[15] The Birds rescue the Penguin, and flee to the Iceberg Lounge. While recovering, the Penguin expresses an attraction to Dove.^[16] Eventually, the Penguin reveals that his injury was a ruse, and that he is working with White Canary in exchange for valuable computer files on the superhero community. He betrays the Birds, and seriously injures both Lady Blackhawk and Hawk before being defeated by the Huntress.^[17] Huntress then tapes up the Penguin with the intention of taking him with her, only to be informed by Oracle that she has to let him go due to a police manhunt for the Birds being underway. Enraged at the Penguin's traitorous actions, Huntress considers killing him with her crossbow, but ultimately leaves him bound and gagged in an alleyway, with the promise that she'll be back to exact her vengeance on him at a later date.^[18]

The Penguin is eventually attacked by the Secret Six, who kill many of his guards when they ambush him at his mansion. Bane informs Penguin that he needs information on Batman's partners, as he plans on killing Red Robin, Batgirl, Catwoman and Azrael.^[19] The Penguin soon betrays the team's location, which results in the Justice League, Teen Titans, Birds of Prey, Justice Society and various other heroes hunting down and capturing the criminals.^[20]

Around this same time, a new supervillain named the Architect sets a bomb in the Iceberg Lounge as revenge for crimes committed by Cobblepot's ancestor. Though Blackbat and Robin are able to evacuate the Penguin and everyone else in the building, the Lounge is destroyed in the ensuing explosion.^[21]

In The New 52, Penguin is seen as a client of Raju who is sent to where Dollmaker is and to offer up a trade for Batman in exchange that Dollmaker receives a payment in gold.^[22] While in his Iceberg Casino, Penguin does a surveillance on a disguised Charlotte Rivers and tells his henchwoman Lark to make sure Ms. Rivers gets a story to die for.^[23]

Powers and abilities[link]

The Penguin is a master criminal strategist; he uses his considerable intellect to gain wealth and power through less than legal means. Driven entirely by self-interest, the Penguin often relies on cunning, wit, and intimidation to exploit his surroundings for profit and advance his own schemes. He usually plans crimes, but does not often commit them himself. Although fighting and hard work is mostly pushed over to his henchmen, he himself is not above taking aggressive lethal actions on his own, especially when provoked. The Penguin, in spite of his appearance, is a dangerous hand to hand combatant with enough self-taught talents in judo and fisticuffs to overwhelm attackers many times his size and physical bearing.

The Penguin always carries an umbrella due to an obsessive attitude his mother had toward doing so. The umbrellas usually contain weapons such as machine guns, sword tips, missiles, lasers, flame-throwers, and acid spraying devices. He usually carries an umbrella with the function to transform its top into a series of spinning blades. This can be used as a mini helicopter or as an offensive weapon; he often uses its function as a helicopter to escape a threatening situation. He also owns an umbrella that has a spiral pattern on the top with which he can hypnotize enemies.

Other versions[link]

This article may require copy editing for grammar, style, cohesion, tone, or spelling. You can assist by editing it. (June 2011)

[edit] Joker

A more realistic Penguin (referred to mockingly as "Abner"^[24] by Joker) appears in Joker, a graphic novel by Brian Azzarello and Lee Bermejo. This incarnation of the Penguin handles most of Joker's personal investments in the story, as well as dealing with incoming revenue from boxing matches. He is portrayed as almost bald, wearing a white suit and operating the Iceberg Lounge.

Elseworlds[link]

In the Elseworlds story Batman: Crimson Mist, the third part in a trilogy where Batman becomes a vampire, Penguin is the first of many criminals to be killed by the vampiric Batman after he surrenders to his vampiric instincts. Batman brutally tears Penguin's throat out as he drinks his blood and subsequently decapitates his enemy to ensure that he cannot return as a vampire.

[edit] Flashpoint

In the alternate timeline of Flashpoint, Oswald Cobblepot did not become the Penguin. Instead, he works as the security chief of Wayne Casinos, providing information about his clients and the criminal underworld to this world's Batman, Thomas Wayne.^[25]

In other media[link]

Television[link]

• The Penguin was played by Burgess Meredith in 19 episodes of the Batman television series of the 1960s. A largely campy interpretation, Meredith's performance is perhaps best remembered through his signature laugh, meant to mimic the squawk of a penguin. One cause of the laugh was the smoke from the cigarettes the character always smoked, which irritated Meredith's throat and made him cough, as he had already quit smoking in real life. The Penguin's thugs wear black bowler hats, with dark clothing adorned with names of various animals of prey; these are either birds ("Hawk") or fish ("Shark"). His prison cell {PG1} is in the "Supervillains" section, next to that of the Joker, the Riddler, Catwoman, Egghead and King Tut. Penguin can be clever when he chooses to be—he once brainwashed Alfred into being a spy for him and also tricked Batman into planning crimes for Penguin as well. However, he seems to suffer from a short term memory loss—in two episodes he had trouble recognizing an undercover Alfred and Bruce Wayne. Once when he tried to get back into Prison—as part of a larger plot-he is enraged when Batman puts Penguin into a common jail cell. In one episode, he claims to have been an actor. In the film, he commands a nuclear submarine that the criminals are using as part of their plot and which resembles a Penguin.

• Burgess Meredith made a brief cameo appearance as the Penguin in the 1968 episode of The Monkees titled "The Monkees Blow Their Minds." Years after his death, his memorable Penguin portrayal would become a staple of late-night comedians as well as Internet users, who lampooned various politicians with his likeness.

• The Penguin is a major enemy in Filmation's The Adventures of Batman animated series, which ran from 1968 to 1969, and then ran as Batman with Robin the Boy Wonder, without Superman or Superboy segments. He is voiced by Ted Knight, along with other male Batman enemies.

• Along with the Joker, the Penguin was one of the villains from the episodes of The New Scooby-Doo Movies, "The Dynamic Scooby-Doo Affair" and "The Caped Crusader Caper" that were later combined on the "Scooby-Doo Meets Batman and Robin" DVD. He was reprised by Ted Knight. Here, he put on various disguises, including as a dryad.

• In Filmation's series The New Adventures of Batman, the Penguin is voiced by Lennie Weinrib. He frequently rolls his 'r's and laughs in a similar manner to Meredith's portrayal. He appears in four episodes: "Reading, Writing and Wronging," "Birds of a Feather Fool Around Together" and "Have an Evil Day, Parts 1 and 2."

• The Penguin appeared in The Super Powers Team: Galactic Guardians episode "The Case of the Stolen Powers" voiced by Robert Morse. He is shown in prison as a cellmate of Felix Faust. He gains Superman's superpowers by accident when Felix Faust tries to get them for himself. Ironically, Batman is not featured in the episode.

• When Batman: The Animated Series debuted in 1992, Penguin was voiced by Academy Award-winner Paul Williams. Due to the close relation in time between Batman Returns and the animated series, the film version's physically freakish depiction of the character was adapted for the animated series, but he retained the traditional refined mannerisms and personality of his comic counterpart. His most prominent appearances include the episodes "Almost Got 'Im" and "Birds of a Feather". He is the only villain, other than the Joker, not to be given an origin story.

• Paul Williams reprised his role as the Penguin in the 1997 follow-up to the original animated series, The New Batman Adventures, the Penguin returned to an appearance more like his traditional comic book look. He also assumed a role similar to the one in the comic books: a "legitimate" businessman and mob boss who runs a night club called the "Iceberg Lounge."

• While the Penguin doesn't appear in Justice League Unlimited, his club the Iceberg Lounge made a cameo appearance at the beginning of the episode "This Little Piggy".

• The character has also appeared on The Batman, voiced by Tom Kenny. In this continuity, the Penguin is primarily concerned with reestablishing the Cobblepot family name in society by stealing from the citizens of Gotham to rebuild his wealth. While he shares the comic incarnation's love for birds and aristocratic look, this Penguin retained a deformed appearance more similar to the Batman Returns incarnation, with orange hair instead of black and more sharp, pointy teeth. Unlike in the previous animated series, the Penguin in this incarnation is not a "gentleman", but a rude, selfish villain. His speech is often peppered with confused squawks. When captured, he is placed in Arkham Asylum, instead of Gotham State Penitentiary like the comics and DCAU Penguin. He is sometimes aided by two henchwomen, a masked pair called the Kabuki Twins. (Although their names have never been mentioned in the show, the first The Batman comic book, which starred the Penguin, he reveals their names to be Gale and Peri.) In addition, it is clear that he also knows some form of martial arts, and is athletic enough to engage in hand-to-hand combat with Batman, dodging and parrying with his various trick umbrellas. He also seems to be in a rivalry with the Joker (and, to a lesser extent, the Riddler) for the title of Gotham's most dangerous criminal. This Penguin also regards Bruce Wayne as a personal enemy and has held him hostage on multiple occasions (though he is unaware of Wayne's alter ego). In one episode, he even infiltrates Wayne Manor, though does not discover the Batcave. He also has a grudge against Wayne's butler Alfred Pennyworth, due to the Pennyworths having left the service of the Cobblepots generations ago (Alfred claimed it was because of the Cobblepots' obnoxiousness). Unused concept art from the show indicates that a more classic version of the Penguin was considered for the show.^[26]

• In the animated cartoon series Krypto the Superdog, Penguin's pet birds are recurring foes of Krypto and Ace the Bat-Hound. Although Penguin is referenced in this series, he never makes an appearance in any episode.

• The Penguin is featured in The Brave and the Bold voiced by Stephen Root. In "Legends of the Dark Mite!", he appears in Bat-Mite's fantasy. In "Aquaman's Outrageous Adventure!", Batman ends up dealing with Penguin's crime spree. When Batman is captured and placed in a deadly drinking bird trap, Aquaman comes to his rescue and gets shocked by Penguin. Penguin reveals that his umbrella drones will spread a paralytic gas all over Gotham City. Aquaman manages to make contact with some crabs to free the family as Penguin sics his minions on Batman and the Aquaman family. Batman redirects the umbrella drones into the ocean and then pursues Penguin. Upon catching up to Penguin at his submarine, Batman manages to jam Penguin's umbrella with his cape and defeat him. He then cameos in "Chill of the Night!" as one of the villains at a weapons auction held by Joe Chill. The Penguin has a quick cameo in the teaser for "The Last Patrol!" and also appears in "Night of the Batmen!" fighting Aquaman in a Batman costume, only to be defeated later on.

Film[link]

• Burgess Meredith reprised his role as the Penguin in the 1966 film Batman alongside several other villains from the television show.

• In Batman Returns, the Penguin was portrayed by Danny DeVito, as one the main antagonists alongside Catwoman. Director Tim Burton, inspired by the film The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, re-imagined the character not as an eloquent gentleman of crime, but a former freak show performer with a homicidal grudge against the aristocrats of Gotham City. While this Penguin retained a number of trademarks, such as a variety of trick umbrellas and the use of a monocle, he was given a huge visual makeover. Where the comic version had varied between a balding head of short cropped hair and varying degrees of thinning, this Penguin was still bald at the top but with his remaining length of hair long and stringy. His hands were now flippers, with a thumb and index finger, and the remaining three fingers fused together. An unidentified thick, dark green bile-like liquid sometimes trickled from his nose and mouth. Instead of a tuxedo, he wore a more gothic, Victorian-style outfit, with a jabot as opposed to a bow tie. Other instances show him in black boots, a dickey, and something akin to a child's blanket sleeper, or the old long john-style underwear of the 1800s (also known as a union suit). However, Burton's design maintained the top hat seen in the comics, along with a monocle and a cigarette in some scenes. In the film, the Penguin is born disfigured, and his wealthy parents throw him into Gotham's sewers. The child survives, floating down Gotham's sewers and under the city zoo, where he is taken in by a group of penguins and later joins a circus freak show as the 'Incredible Bird Boy'. While researching the Penguin, Batman speculates that the Penguin was responsible for the disappearance (and implied murder) of several children during his time in the circus freak show. Penguin and Catwoman — who he is attracted to — later attempt to frame Batman for murder while the former runs for mayor, aided by corrupt industrialist Max Schreck. When Catwoman rejects his advances he tries to kill her. During one of the Penguin's speeches, Batman reveals a recording he made of the villain ranting about his true plans for Gotham after Penguin took the remote control of the Batmobile to make it appear as though Batman was going on a rampage. Enraged, the Penguin sends his clowns to kidnap all of Gotham's first-born children, planning to drown them in the sewers. When Batman foils his plot and returns the children to their parents (leaving a note for the Penguin informing him), the Penguin snaps and orders his legions of penguins (armed with missiles) to completely obliterate Gotham. After a battle above ground, the fight ensues into the sewers and the Penguin's lair. Batman and the Penguin fight their own battle until the Penguin falls through a skylight and into the contaminated waters below. He later emerges from the pool ready to kill Batman, but has been mortally injured by his fall and Shreck's toxic waste (which has been released into the sewers). He draws an umbrella from his collection, but accidentally draws a harmless toy, "the cute one." He then collapses onto the concrete and dies. An honor guard of penguins emerges to drag his remains into the water, where he sinks to the bottom in a cloud of his own blood.

• He also appeared in Batman: Mystery of the Batwoman as the primary antagonist, this time voiced by David Ogden Stiers. The plot involves Penguin and Carlton Duquesne in an illegal arms deal with the President of Kasnia. Of the three Batwomen, Penguin shares a personal history with Dr. Roxanne Ballantine as he was the one who framed her fiancée years ago which led him into prison in order to find evidences that would get his sentence commuted.

• Tom Kenny reprises his role of Penguin in the animated movie The Batman vs. Dracula. In the movie, he accidentally resurrects Count Dracula with his blood in the Gotham cemetery. Dracula then hypnotizes the Penguin to work for him. He is later released from the spell upon Dracula's death and accused of the vampire's crimes, and is thus returned to Arkham.

Video games[link]

• The Penguin has appeared as a boss in several Batman video games, including Batman: The Caped Crusader, the various video game adaptations of the movie Batman Returns, Batman: The Animated Series and Adventures of Batman & Robin for the Super NES.

• At one point he was planned to appear as a boss in The Adventures of Batman & Robin for the Sega CD, in which he would try to kidnap Summer Gleeson. The Penguin was cut from the game because it was tight on villains, but the storyboards for his animated cutscene are displayed in Paul Dini's book, Batman Animated.

• The Penguin is the chief antagonist of an online flash game, Batman: The Cobblebot Caper, which is modeled after The Batman animated series. His ultimate plan is to construct a giant mechanical phoenix which he intends to use as a war machine against Gotham City.

• The Penguin appears in Lego Batman: The Videogame,^[27] as one of the leaders of the Arkham breakout. His plan is to use mind-controlled penguins to wreak havok in Gotham. To this end, he employs Catwoman, Bane, Killer Croc and Man-Bat. He has the ability to call out robotic penguins from under his top hat. He can also use his umbrella both as a gliding apparatus and a rifle. Despite having his comic book appearance he has some ideas and characteristics of Danny DeVito's Penguin (e.g. taking over Gotham with a penguin army, having a liking for raw fish, and working with Catwoman). Unlike other versions of Penguin, he is not characterized as fat in the game.

• While the Penguin is not featured as actual character in Batman: Arkham Asylum, as a key character in Batman's universe he is referenced numerous times. An asylum security guard notes that he has witnessed the attempted smuggling of sharpened umbrellas into Arkham on at least one occasion before, a reference to the character. Additionally, an Iceberg Lounge advertisement can be seen in the Intensive Treatment wards, while a collection of trick umbrellas and top hats (apparently confiscated from Penguin upon his admittance to the facility) may be observed on display in the old Arkham Mansion.

• Penguin appears in DC Universe Online, voiced by David Jennison. Following Bane's defeat, there is a cutscene featuring Penguin stating his anger at the competition from the Falcone Crime Family, Bane, Two-Face, Mad Hatter, Hush, Killer Croc, Catwoman, and Joker due to all the chaos but being a cunning crook he plans on tricking them on wiping each other out then take Gotham for himself. The players discover that a hacked kiosk contained a message from Two-Face stating that Penguin's smuggling operation in Gotham's old subway tunnels. Penguin is served by Cryo Pengbots, Louie Sluggers, Machine Gun Tommies, Nickie Blades, Pengbots, Pyro Pengbots, Tammy Two Guns, and a Pengbot Maximus.

• Penguin appears as one of the villains in Batman: Arkham City,^[28] voiced by Nolan North in a Cockney accent.^[29] The Penguin is redesigned without the penguin-like mannerisms such as the waddle or the squawk-like laugh, and lacks his well-known top hat, although he maintains his trademark monocle (here crudely depicted as the remains of a glass bottle that was shoved into his eye socket during a bar fight), trick umbrellas, and a beak-like nose. He also appears to have some sort of speaker device implanted in his throat, or possibly a breathing device he requires due to his smoking. Apparently, Cobblepot became trapped in the open-air prison perimeter of Arkham City after refusing to vacate his residence at the Iceberg Lounge (which was condemned as part of the new project). The villain went on to establish himself as a warlord in the new criminal underworld by placing his new Iceberg Lounge in the Cryus Pinkney National History Institute. He kept Solomon Grundy under the Lounge as a "pet" he fed his disloyal minions to, and as a last resort during his fight with Batman. A shark named "Tiny" is another one of his "pets" where it was swimming in a watery area of Penguin's hideout.

Toys[link]

• The Lego Batman line includes one particular set, The Batcave: The Penguin and Mr. Freeze's Invasion, which features the Penguin. He appears as a minifigure in the set, with short, unbending legs, the classic top hat and monocle and a purple pin-stripe suit, but lacks the familiar pointy nose. The Penguin rides in a submarine reminiscent of the one in the 1960s TV series and is assisted by miniature penguin robots. The set also includes a depiction of the Batcave.

• He also appears in the Batman Lego promotional video. He is the final villain to be caught (after Two-Face, Mr. Freeze and the Joker).

• The Penguin was also featured in the 1980's Super Powers Collection toy-line, featuring various DC Comics villains and heroes. The Penguin's appearance was much like that of the time, with a blue coat and top-hat. The Penguin had "umbrella action" where his legs could be squeezed together, triggering his arm (holding an umbrella) to move up and down. - (This figure sculpt was later used for the Batman Returns figure line, with a new black paint application).

• There have been various toys of The Penguin for cartoon series, from the sophisticated aristocrat to the deformed outcast style.

• Recently the Penguin was made into a toy by Funko who made small 3.75" figures with large heads, and also soft toy version of The Penguin. The Penguin figure looked much like the Burgess Meredith style from the 1960s, along with the comic book look. The figure featured an umbrella accessory but the plush did not.

Parodies[link]

• The Penguin appears in the Saturday Night Live segment "Superman's Funeral." When he makes his trademark "Penguin Cackle," Batman angrily tells him to stop laughing, to which Penguin replies, "I'm not laughing. This is also how I cry." In that appearance, Penguin was portrayed by Robert Smigel.

• In Yin Yang Yo!, the villain called the Puffin is a parody of the Penguin. His dressy appearance is based on Penguin although characters in the show stop talking before the connection is made and before lawsuits can be filed.

• Episode 241 of "This American Life" on National Public Radio, "20 Acts in 60 Minutes," contains a short story that gives an alternate origin of Penguin's powers and rivalry with Batman. In this story, Penguin and Mary Poppins meet at a dinner party by a friend who thinks that their ability to fly or float using umbrellas will bring them together. Unfortunately, the two have nothing in common, and Mary Poppins soon leaves with another dinner guest, one who wears a conspicuous black cape.

• The Penguin appears in the Robot Chicken episode "Drippy Pony" voiced by Seth Green. In a segment that parodies Penguin in the style of the popular documentary film March of the Penguins, it shows the life of the Penguin. Tom Kane provides a narrative style similar to that of Morgan Freeman in the English-language version of March of the Penguins. He appears in another sketch from a later episode, where his umbrella was accidentally switched with that of an old woman.

Politics[link]

The character of the Penguin, particularly as portrayed by Burgess Meredith, has often been used as a theme to mock public figures that supposedly resemble him. Jon Stewart, host of The Daily Show, has made numerous references comparing former Vice President Dick Cheney with the Penguin, including a laugh similar to the one heard in the 1960s Batman series.^[30] In a similar manner, Stephen Colbert, host of The Colbert Report, called Franklin D. Roosevelt a criminal and told his audience to "ask Batman" "if they don’t believe him", showing a picture of Meredith as the Penguin next to one of the former President, in which he looks like him.^[31] Cheney was mocked in a similar capacity on Late Night with Conan O'Brien, while The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson chose to imitate John McCain with Meredith's Penguin laugh.

In August 2006, The Wall Street Journal found out that a Republican-led PR firm, DCI Group, was behind a YouTube video making fun of Al Gore's film An Inconvenient Truth. The video portrayed Gore as the Penguin, apparently as depicted in Batman: The Animated Series, using one of his trick umbrellas to hypnotize a flock of penguins into believing in the existence of global warming.^[32]

In October 2008, an internet meme surfaced when YouTube users posted videos that compared John McCain with the Penguin. Most of the meme focused on a scene from the 1960s series episode "Dizzoner the Penguin" in which the Penguin and Batman debated as opponents for mayor of Gotham City, suggesting similarities between their debate and the debates between McCain and Barack Obama during the 2008 US Presidential election.^[33]

See also[link]

• List of Batman Family enemies

References[link]

External links[link]

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: The Penguin

• The Origin of the Penguin at DCComics.com
• Penguin on DC Database, an external wiki, a DC Comics wiki

David Bellos is an English-born translator and biographer. Bellos currently teaches French and Comparative literature at Princeton University in the United States.^[1] He is also director of Princeton's Program in Translation and Intercultural Communication.

Bellos' research topics have included Balzac and Georges Perec. Bellos published an award-winning translation of Perec's most famous novel, Life A User's Manual in 1987. He won the first Man Booker International Prize for translation in 2005 for his translations of works by Albanian author Ismail Kadare, despite not speaking Albanian; the translations were done from previous French translations.^[2]

Bellos has written a number of award-winning literary biographies and an introduction to translation studies, Is That a Fish in Your Ear? Translation and The Meaning of Everything (2011).^[3]

He appears in The Magnificent Tati, a documentary about the filmmaker Jacques Tati.^[4]

Publications[link]

Translations[link]

• Georges Perec: Life A User's Manual, 1987 (French-American Foundation's translation prize); new edition, 2008
• Georges Perec: W, or the Memory of Childhood, 1988
• Georges Perec: Things: A Story of the Sixties, 1990
• Georges Perec: 53 Days, 1992
• Ismail Kadare: The Pyramid, 1995
• Ismail Kadare:The File on H, 1996
• Georges Ifrah: A Universal History of Numbers, 2000
• Ismail Kadare: Spring Flowers, Spring Frost, 2001
• Fred Vargas: Have Mercy On Us All, 2003
• Fred Vargas: Seeking Whom He May Devour, 2004
• Ismail Kadare: The Successor, 2005
• Ismail Kadare: Agamemnon's Daughter, 2006
• Ismail Kadare: The Siege, 2008
• Hélène Berr: Journal, 2008
• Georges Perec: Thoughts of Sorts, 2009
• Romain Gary: Hocus Bogus, 2010
• Georges Perec: The Art and Craft of Approaching Your Head of Department to Submit a Request for a Raise, 2011

Biographies[link]

• Georges Perec. A Life in Words, 1993. (Prix Goncourt de la biographie). French edition, 1994
• Jacques Tati. His Life and Art, 1999. French edition, 2002
• Romain Gary. A Tall Story, Harvill Secker, November 2010

Other books[link]

• Balzac Criticism in France, 1850–1900. The Making of a Reputation. Oxford, 1976
• Bellos, David. Honoré de Balzac: Old Goriot (Landmarks of World Literature). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987. ISBN 0-521-31634-0.
• Is That a Fish in Your Ear? Translation and the Meaning of Everything, 2011. French translation by Daniel Loayza as Le poisson & le bananier, Flammarion, 2012.

References[link]

1. ^ David Bellos at Princeton University
2. ^ "The Englishing of Ismail Kadare" by David Bellos, complete review Quarterly, vol. VI, issue 2 – May 2005
3. ^ Is That A Fish In Your Ear?: Translation and the Meaning of Everything at Janklow & Nesbit
4. ^ The Magnificent Tati at the Internet Movie Database

External links[link]

• David Bellos: Linguistic Diversity is Language on YouTube
• "I, Translator" by David Bellos, The New York Times (20 March 2010)
• Review of Georges Perec: A Life in Words by Alice Kaplan
• David Bellos at the Internet Movie Database
• Review by Michael Hoffmann of Is That a Fish in Your Ear?, The Guardian (22 September 2011)

This biography article of a United Kingdom academic is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it. v t e

Steven Arthur Pinker
Steven Pinker in 2011
Born	(1954-09-18) September 18, 1954 (age 57) Montréal, Québec, Canada
Residence	United States of America
Citizenship	Canadian
Fields	Evolutionary psychology, experimental psychology, cognitive science, linguistics, visual cognition
Alma mater	Dawson College, McGill University, Harvard University
Known for	How the Mind Works, The Blank Slate
Influences	Noam Chomsky, Thomas Sowell, Leda Cosmides, John Tooby, Richard Dawkins, Thomas Schelling[1]
Notable awards	Troland Award (2003, National Academy of Sciences), Henry Dale Prize (2004, Royal Institution), Walter P. Kistler Book Award (2005), Humanist of the Year award (2006, issued by the AHA), George Miller Prize (2010, Cognitive Neuroscience Society)
Website
http://www.stevenpinker.com/

Steven Pinker in Göttingen in 2010

Steven Arthur Pinker (born September 18, 1954, Montreal, Canada) is a Canadian-born experimental psychologist, cognitive scientist, linguist and popular science author. He is a Harvard College Professor and the Johnstone Family Professor in the Department of Psychology at Harvard University,^[2] and is known for his advocacy of evolutionary psychology and the computational theory of mind.

Pinker's academic specializations are visual cognition and psycholinguistics. His experimental subjects include mental imagery, shape recognition, visual attention, children's language development, regular and irregular phenomena in language, the neural bases of words and grammar, and the psychology of innuendo and euphemism. He published two technical books which proposed a general theory of language acquisition and applied it to children's learning of verbs. In his popular books, he has argued that language is an "instinct" or biological adaptation shaped by natural selection. He is the author of six books for a general audience: The Language Instinct (1994), How the Mind Works (1997), Words and Rules (2000), The Blank Slate (2002), The Stuff of Thought (2007), and The Better Angels of Our Nature (2011).

Biography[link]

Career[link]

Pinker was born in Montreal, Quebec, Canada in 1954, to a middle-class Jewish family. He graduated from Dawson College in 1971. He received a BA degree in psychology at McGill University in 1976, and then went on to earn his PhD degree in experimental psychology at Harvard University in 1979. He did research at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) for a year, after which he became an assistant professor at Harvard and then Stanford University. From 1982 until 2003, Pinker taught at the Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences at MIT, and eventually became the director of the Center for Cognitive Neuroscience, taking a one-year sabbatical at the University of California, Santa Barbara, in 1995-96. As of 2008, he is the Johnstone Family Professor of Psychology at Harvard.^[3] In June 2011 it was announced he would give lectures as a visiting professor at the New College of the Humanities, a private college in London.^[4]

Pinker was named one of Time Magazine's 100 most influential scientists and thinkers in the world in 2004^[5] and one of Prospect and Foreign Policy's 100 top public intellectuals in both years the poll was carried out, 2005^[6] and 2008;^[7] in 2010 and 2011 he was named by Foreign Policy magazine to its list of top global thinkers.^[8][9] His research in cognitive psychology has won the Early Career Award (1984) and Boyd McCandless Award (1986) from the American Psychological Association, the Troland Research Award (1993) from the National Academy of Sciences, the Henry Dale Prize (2004) from the Royal Institution of Great Britain, and the George Miller Prize (2010) from the Cognitive Neuroscience Society. He has also received honorary doctorates from the universities of Newcastle, Surrey, Tel Aviv, McGill, and the University of Tromsø, Norway. He was twice a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, in 1998 and in 2003.

In January 2005, Pinker defended Lawrence Summers, President of Harvard University, whose comments about a gender gap in mathematics and science angered much of the faculty. Pinker noted that Summers's remarks, properly understood, could form the basis of a testable hypothesis. The remarks, Pinker said, claimed not that men are consistently smarter, but that there are "more idiots, [and] more geniuses" of the male gender.^[10]

On May 13, 2006, Pinker received the American Humanist Association's Humanist of the Year award for his contributions to public understanding of human evolution.^[11]

In 2009, Pinker wrote a highly critical review of Malcolm Gladwell's analytic methods in the New York Times.^[12] Gladwell published a rebuttal in the Times regarding Pinker's comments about the importance of IQ on teaching performance and by analogy, the effect, if any, of draft order on quarterback performance in the National Football League. Pinker then responded to Gladwell's rebuttal.^[13] The exchange prompted Advanced NFL Stats to step in and address the issue statistically, siding with Pinker in that draft order is indeed correlated with quarterback performance.^[14]

Pinker also serves on the Advisory Board of Secular Coalition for America and offers advice to Executive Director Sean Faircloth and the entire coalition on the acceptance and inclusion of nontheism in American life. ^[15]

The Committee for Skeptical Inquiry lists Pinker as one of their fellows. ^[16]

In February 2010 he was named to the Freedom From Religion Foundation's Honorary Board of distinguished achievers.^[17] Pinker appeared on the Colbert Report on 10/18/11.

Personal[link]

His father, a lawyer, first worked as a manufacturer's representative, while his mother was first a home-maker then a guidance counselor and high-school vice-principal. He has two younger siblings. His brother is a policy analyst for the Canadian government. His sister, Susan Pinker, is a psychologist and writer, author of The Sexual Paradox.^[18][19] Pinker married Nancy Etcoff in 1980 and they divorced in 1992; he married Ilavenil Subbiah in 1995 and they too divorced.^[20] His current wife is the novelist and philosopher Rebecca Goldstein.^[21] He has two stepdaughters: the novelist Yael Goldstein Love and the poet Danielle Blau.

He has said, "I was never religious in the theological sense... I never outgrew my conversion to atheism at 13, but at various times was a serious cultural Jew."^[22] As a teenager, he says he considered himself an anarchist until he witnessed civil unrest following a police strike in 1969.^[23] He has reported the result of a test of his political orientation that characterized him as "neither leftist nor rightist, more libertarian than authoritarian".^[24] Pinker confesses to having "experienced a primitive tribal stirring" after his genes were shown to trace back to the Middle East.^[25]

Theories of language and mind[link]

Pinker is known within psychology for his theory of language acquisition, his research on the syntax, morphology, and meaning of verbs, and his criticism of connectionist (neural network) models of language. In The Language Instinct (1994) he popularized Noam Chomsky's work on language as an innate faculty of mind, with the twist that this faculty evolved by natural selection as a Darwinian adaptation for communication, although both ideas remain controversial (see below). He also defends the idea of a complex human nature which comprises many mental faculties that are adaptive (and is an ally of Daniel Dennett and Richard Dawkins in many disputes surrounding adaptationism). Another major theme in Pinker's theories is that human cognition works, in part, by combinatorial symbol-manipulation, not just associations among sensory features, as in many connectionist models.

Written work[link]

Pinker's books, The Language Instinct, How the Mind Works, Words and Rules, The Blank Slate, and The Stuff of Thought combine cognitive science with behavioral genetics and evolutionary psychology. The Language Instinct has been criticized by Geoffrey Sampson in his book, The 'Language Instinct' Debate.^[26] The assumptions underlying the nativist view have also been subject to sustained criticism in Jeffrey Elman's Rethinking Innateness: A Connectionist Perspective on Development (Neural Networks and Connectionist Modeling), which defends the connectionist approach that Pinker has criticized.

Bibliography[link]

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Steven Pinker

Steven Pinker in 2005

Books[link]

• Language Learnability and Language Development (1984) ISBN 978-0-674-51055-5
• Visual Cognition (1985) ISBN 978-0-262-66178-2
• Connections and Symbols (1988) ISBN 978-0-262-66064-8
• Learnability and Cognition: The Acquisition of Argument Structure (1989) ISBN 978-0-262-66073-0
• Lexical and Conceptual Semantics (1992) ISBN 978-1-55786-354-6
• The Language Instinct (1994) ISBN 978-0-06-097651-4
• How the Mind Works (1997) ISBN 978-0-393-31848-7
• Words and Rules: The Ingredients of Language (1999) ISBN 978-0-465-07269-9
• The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature (2002) ISBN 978-0-670-03151-1
• The Best American Science and Nature Writing (editor and introduction author, 2004) ISBN 978-0-618-24698-4
• Hotheads (an extract from How the Mind Works, 2005) ISBN 978-0-14-102238-3
• The Stuff of Thought: Language as a Window into Human Nature (2007) ISBN 978-0-670-06327-7
• The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined (2011) ISBN 978-0-670-02295-3

Articles and essays[link]

• Pinker, S. (1991). "Rules of Language". Science 253 (5019): 530–535. DOI:10.1126/science.1857983. 
• Ullman, M.; Corkin, S.; Coppola, M.; Hickok, G.; Growdon, J. H.; Koroshetz, W. J.; Pinker, S. (1997). "A neural dissociation within language: Evidence that the mental dictionary is part of declarative memory, and that grammatical rules are processed by the procedural system". Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience 9: 289–299. 
• Pinker, S. (2003) "Language as an adaptation to the cognitive niche" In M. Christiansen & S. Kirby (Eds.), Language evolution: States of the Art New York: Oxford University Press.
• Pinker, S. (2005). "So How Does the Mind Work?". Mind and Language 20 (1): 1–24. DOI:10.1111/j.0268-1064.2005.00274.x. 
• Jackendoff, R.; Pinker, S. (2005). "The nature of the language faculty and its implications for evolution of language" (Reply to Fitch, Hauser, & Chomsky)". Cognition 97 (2): 211–225. DOI:10.1016/j.cognition.2005.04.006. 
• S. Pinker (2007), "In Defense of Dangerous Ideas" Chicago Sun-Times, July 15, 2007
• A number of Pinker's articles at Harvard

References[link]

External links[link]

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Steven Pinker

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Steven Pinker

• Official website

Interviews

• In Depth interview with Pinker, November 2, 2008
• Steven Pinker discusses the "Games People Play: Indirect Speech as a Window into Social Relationships"
• Steven Pinker on The Hour
• Steven Pinker Multimedia. Extensive lists of audio and video files
• Biology vs. the Blank Slate Reason magazine interview with Pinker
• Live interview with Steven Pinker on The Blank Slate
• Radio interview on Philosophy Talk
• Online video interview with Pinker

TED talks

• Chalking it up to the blank slate, 2003
• The stuff of thought, 2005
• A brief history of violence, 2007

Debates

• The Two Steves Debate with Steven Rose
• The Science of Gender and Science Debate with Elizabeth Spelke

Owen Sheers (born 20 September 1974) is a Welsh poet, author, playwright, actor and TV presenter.^[1] He is the first writer in residence to be appointed by any national rugby union.

Biography[link]

Owen Sheers was born in Suva, Fiji in 1974 and brought up in Abergavenny, South Wales. He was educated at King Henry VIII comprehensive school, Abergavenny, New College, Oxford, and at the University of East Anglia where he did an MA in Creative Writing.^[2] He worked on The Big Breakfast as a researcher.^[3]

The winner of an Eric Gregory Award and the 1999 Vogue Young Writer’s Award, his first collection of poetry, The Blue Book (Seren, 2000), -a collection of poems about family, first love and farming life - was short-listed for the Wales Book of the Year and the Forward Poetry Prize Best 1st Collection, 2001. His debut prose work The Dust Diaries (Faber 2004), a non-fiction narrative set in Zimbabwe, was short-listed for the Royal Society of Literature’s Ondaatje Prize and won the Wales Book of the Year 2005.

In 2004 Owen was Writer in Residence at The Wordsworth Trust and was selected as one of the Poetry Book Society’s 20 Next Generation Poets. Owen’s 2nd collection of poetry, Skirrid Hill (Seren, 2005) won a 2006 Somerset Maugham Award. Unicorns, almost his one man play based on the life and poetry of the WWII poet Keith Douglas was developed by Old Vic, New Voices, and performed by Joseph Fiennes.

Owen’s first novel, Resistance , has been translated into ten languages and was short listed for the Writer's Guild of Great Britain Best Book Award 2008 and won a 2008 Hospital Club Creative Award. The novel imagines that the D-day landings have failed and Wales been occupied by the Nazis. Sheers had heard about the Auxiliary Units-secret civilian networks which, in the event of an invasion would have formed a British resistance,- whilst working as a tiler in the valleys one summer. Yet the novel focuses not on fighting " but on the uneasy means of survival open to the women who are left behind". The film of the novel, which Owen co-wrote, was released in autumn 2011 and starred Andrea Riseborough. Sheers insisted that the film was shot in and around the Black Mountains. ^[3]

In 2007 Owen collaborated with composer Rachel Portman onThe Water Diviner’s Tale, an oratorio for children which was premièred at the Royal Albert Hall for the BBC Proms. In 2007/8 Owen was a Dorothy and Lewis B. Cullman Fellow at the New York Public Library.

In 2009 Owen published the novella 'White Ravens', a contemporary response to the myth of Branwen Daughter of Llyr, written as part of Seren's series of New Stories from the Mabinogion. He published an anthology of British landscape poetry to accompany his TV series of the same title, A Poet's Guide to Britain.

Owen also written journalism and reportage for a variety of publications including Granta, The Guardian, Esquire, GQ, The Times and The Financial Times. He wrote a play for BBC Radio 4 about the WWII poet Alun Lewis: If I Should Go Away. In 2011, Owen wrote the script and novelisation (The Gospel of Us) of The Passion for National Theatre Wales and WildWorks. The Gospel of Us has been re-published by Seren Press. Sheers worked with Michael Sheen co-creating the three-day passion play which unfolded over the Easter weekend of 2011 in Sheen's hometown of Port Talbot. "In Sheers's Neath-flavoured take on the Bible, The Last Supper became pork pies and beer at the Social Club (with music from the Manic Street Preachers), while the Garden of Gethsemane was a scrubby patch of grass on a council estate. " ^[3] He participated in the Bush Theatre's 2011 project Sixty Six where he wrote a short play The Fair & Tender based upon the Book of Ezekiel in the King James Bible^[4] In January 2012, Owen wrote The Two Worlds of Charlie F, a play based on the experiences of wounded soldiers, many of whom also made up the cast of the production, directed by Stephen Rayne and performed at the Theatre Royal Haymarket. His work Pink Mist was broadcast on Radio 4 and presents an elegy about camaraderie in modern warfare as seen through the stories of serving soldiers in Afghanistan, their families and friends.

Rugby union[link]

In December 2011, Owen Sheers became the first writer in residence at the Welsh Rugby Union.^[5] Sheers was also a minor rugby player himself at scrum half for Gwent county XV.^[5]

Actor & TV Presenter[link]

Sheers has played Wilfred Owen on stage and has presented arts programmes for BBC Wales.

In 2009, he wrote and presented the BBC 4 series about poetry and the British landscape, A Poet's Guide to Britain. He has also presented The Art of the Sea for BBC 4 and several programmes for BBC Radio 3 and 4. In 2008 he presented two episodes of BBC Radio 4's Open Book programme.

Awards and honours[link]

• 1999 Vogue Young Writer’s Award
• 1999 Eric Gregory Award
• 2000 short-listed for the Wales Book of the Year (for The Blue Book)
• 2001 short-listed for Forward Poetry Prize Best 1st Collection
• 2005 Wales Book of the Year (for The Dust Diaries)
• 2006 Somerset Maugham Award (for Skirrid Hill)
• 2008 Hospital Club Creative Award (for Resistance)
• 2008 short-listed for Writers' Guild Best Book Award for Resistance

Works[link]

• The Blue Book (2000)
• The Dust Diaries (2004), a travel memoir through Zimbabwe, following the life of his great great uncle Arthur Shearly Cripps (Welsh Book of the Year)
• Skirrid Hill (2005) (Somerset Maugham Award)
• Resistance (2007), His first novel, published by Faber & Faber (Hospital Club Creative Award)
• White Ravens (2009), The second novella in Seren Books' 'New Stories From The Mabinogion' series
• A Poet's Guide to Britain (2009) poetry anthology

References[link]