Penguin Canada is celebrating the famous bird's 75th anniversary this year by launching Allen Lane Canada, a "prestige imprint" created to publish top-quality non-fiction.
Named for the well-known brand established in Britain more than 40 years ago by Penguin's influential founder, Allen Lane Canada will launch this fall with a new series, The History of Canada, co-edited by historians Margaret MacMillan and Robert Bothwell. Dan Snow's Death or Victory: The Battle of Quebec and the Birth of an Empire, is scheduled as the first title.
The imprint will be managed by Penguin Publishing Director Diane Turbide, who promises "books that matter" in the tradition of the original imprint. The decision to create it follows Penguin's success in 2009 with a similar imprint set up to publish literary fiction, Hamish Hamilton Canada, which produced two Giller Prize nominees -- Kim Echlin's The Disappeared and Colin McAdam's Fall -- in its first year of operation.