Biography
Ilia Galán was born in Spain in 1966. He is a Lecturer in Aesthetics and Theory of Art at Carlos III University at Madrid; he is currently an Academic Visitor in the Faculty of Philosophy at the University of Oxford, and has been a Visiting Professor at Harvard, New York and the Sorbonne. He edits the magazine Conde de Arande. As well as poetry, he writes novels, essays and occasional journalism. His volume of poetry, In the Wilderness of Signs, is published also by the Albion Beatnik Press.
Allen Lane, the founder of Penguin books, was a man who liked to be seen riding a virtuous horse though his spurs were as sharp as an abacus: money was his game and he chanced to sell his new Penguin range through his Penguincubator in 1937, in tobacconists alongside newspapers and boiled sweets, also a few placed as concessions in branches of F. W. Woolworth’s. One Penguincubator was commissioned at Charing Cross Station, placed next to a machine vending cigarettes. (6d the price of a packet of fags, 6d the price of the first Penguins, though am not sure if Lane had thought through how you were supposed to keep the books alight without a filter.) Booksellers in the Charing Cross locality objected to the Penguincubator and it was removed. It would seem that they were never successful in any case.