Devotedly, unostentatiously, Carcanet has evolved into a poetry publisher whose independence of mind and largeness of heart have made everyone who cares about literature feel increasingly admiring and grateful.
In 1995 Carcanet embarked, under their director Michael Schmidt, and to commemorate Graves’s Centenary, on a ‘Robert Graves Programme’. Over some fifteen years they published, under the editor-in-chief Patrick Quinn, virtually all of Graves’s work in 25 volumes. The most important of these were the three volumes of Robert’s Complete Poems, with commentary, although they also published a simple Complete Poems in one thick volume. This is the basis of the Penguin Paperback edition.
Some time ago – in 1934, to be precise – our founder was waiting for a train and couldn’t find anything good to read. What was needed, he realised, were quality books at a reasonable price. And so he decided to change things – the following year Penguin was launched, kickstarting a paperback revolution that would sweep the world.
Penguin Random House is the international home to more than 300 editorially and creatively independent publishing imprints. Our mission is to ignite a universal passion for reading by creating books for everyone. We believe that books, and the stories and ideas they hold, have the unique capacity to connect us, change us, and carry us toward a better future for generations to come.
