Federal Publishing Part I

Early Canadian paperback publishers, like their American and British counterparts, were reprint publishers. Very few original books were published. But there is one publisher from the era that did publish only original books - Federal Publishing Co. of Toronto. In 1951 and 1952 Federal sold four books in Canadian drugstores and on newsstands.

Federal 1

Federal 2

Federal 3

Federal 4

As far as I can tell none of the three authors had any other books published and the only information on any of them is a note on the back of Jetsam Journey that Kane is a young Canadian author. All four books have the unsigned but distinctive art of D. Rickard.

The publisher is a mystery. The back of Marjorie notes that "because of the tremendous interest this story created while appearing in TNT in serial form, we are reproducing it in this popular format." TNT likely refers the periodical T.N.T. published at the same time in Canada. A couple of examples are below. The first one is published by Metropolitan Publishing Co. and the second by Fireside Publications Limited, both of Toronto. Fireside published other books which I'll discuss in another post.