The latest subject of Bookselling This Week's "What's in a Name?" series is Penguin Bookshop, Sewickley, Pa., which first opened in 1929 and is currently under the leadership of its sixth owner, Susan Hans O'Connor, who took over the store in 2014. Although she didn't name the shop, O'Connor does know the story of how Penguin's first owners, Isabelle L. Adams and Eleanor Gilchrist, came up with the moniker when they founded the store 90 years ago.
"Their favorite book was Penguin Island by Anatole France," O'Connor said. "They named the store after that book, and there is no formal connection with the publishing [house] Penguin. We pre-date them, actually, because Penguin was founded in 1935."
She noted, however, her own informal connection from her time working at Penguin Books in New York City: "It was just serendipity that I ended up moving to a town where there was a store called the Penguin Bookshop."