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Ladybird books traces its origins to 1867, when Henry Wills opened a bookshop in Loughborough
in Leicestershire.
Within a decade he progressed to printing and publishing guidebooks and street directories.
He was joined by William Hepworth in 1904, and the company traded as Wills & Hepworth.
By 1914, Wills & Hepworth had published their first children's books, under the Ladybird imprint.
From the beginning, the company was identified by a ladybird logo, at first with open wings,
but eventually changed to the more familiar closed-wing ladybird in the late 1950s.
The ladybird logo has since undergone several redesigns, the latest of which was launched in 2006.
The pocket-sized hardback Ladybird measured roughly 4½" x 7" (11.5cm x 18cm).
Early books used a standard 56-page format, chosen because a complete book could be printed
on one large standard sheet of paper, a quad crown, 40 inches by 30 inches, which was then
folded and cut to size without waste paper.
It was an economical way of producing books, enabling the books to be retailed at a low
price which, for almost thirty years, remained at two shillings and sixpence (12.5p).
The first book in the line, Bunnikin's Picnic Party: a story in verse for children with
illustrations in colour, was produced in 1940.
The book featured stories in verse, accompanied by full-colour illustrations.
The appeal of Bunnikin, Downy Duckling and other animal characters made the book an instant success.
Later series included nature books and a host of non-fiction books, including hobbies and
interests, history and travel.
Wills & Hepworth began trading as Ladybird Books in 1971 as a direct result of the brand
recognition that their imprint had achieved in Britain.
In the 1960s and 1970s the company's Key Words Reading Scheme (launched in 1964) was heavily
used by British primary schools, using a reduced vocabulary to help children learn to read.
Thousands of children, myself included, grew up on the “Peter and Jane” books.
This series of 36 small-format hardback books presented stereotyped models of British family
life – the innocence of Peter and Jane at play, Mum the housewife, and Dad the breadwinner.
In the 1960s, Ladybird produced the Learnabout series of non-fiction (informational) books,
some of which were used by adults as well as children.
An independent company for much of its life, Ladybird Books became part of the Pearson
Group in 1972.
However, falling demand in the late 1990s led Pearson to fully merge Ladybird into its
Penguin Books subsidiary in 1998, joining other established names in British children's
books such as Puffin Books, Dorling Kindersley, and Frederick Warne.
The Ladybird offices and printing factory in Loughborough closed the same year, and
much of the company's archive of historic artwork was transferred to public collections.
In 2014, Ladybird signed up to the Let Books Be Books campaign and announced that it was
"committed" to avoiding labelling books as "for girls" or "for boys" and would be removing
such gender labelling in reprinted copies.
The publisher added: "Out of literally hundreds of titles currently in print, we actually
only have six titles with this kind of titling".
Its parent company, Penguin Random House followed suit.
In 2015, it was announced that Ladybird books would be publishing its first series of books
for adults.
The eight books, which parody the style and artwork of the company’s books for children,
include the titles The Hangover, Mindfulness, Dating and The Hipster, and were written by
television comedy writers Jason Hazeley and Joel Morris.
The series follows a trend of other spoof Ladybird books including We Go to the Gallery
by Miriam Elia who had previously been threatened with legal action by Penguin.
In 2016, Touchstone Books, an imprint of Simon & Schuster, announced that they would publish
American adaptations of the Ladybird Books for Grown-ups, called The Fireside Grown-Up Guides.
Ladybird Expert was launched in 2017 following the success of Ladybird for Grown-Ups.
The books in this series are not parodies but instead use the classic format to serve
as clear introductions to a wide variety of subjects, generally in the fields of science
and history.
The first book published and the inspiration for the series is Climate Change by the Prince
of Wales, Tony Juniper and Emily Shuckburgh.
Four more titles were released that same year.
The line was expanded with fifteen further books in 2018 and more titles were published in 2019.
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