Beginning in 1895, Stead issued affordable reprints of classic literature under such titles as "The Penny Poets" and "Penny Popular Novels", in which he "boildown the great novels of the world so that they might fit into, say, sixty-four pages instead of six hundred". His ethos behind the venture pre-dated Allen Lane's Penguin Books by nearly forty years, and he became "the foremost publisher of paperbacks in the Victorian Age". In 1896, Stead launched the series "Books for the Bairns", whose titles included fairy tales and works of classical literature.