Export Canadian Paperback Originals - Part V

In part IV of this series of posts I discussed three News Stand Library books published by Toronto's Export Publishing Enterprises Ltd. I identified them as paperback originals which turns out to be wrong. Each of them had been published earlier under different author names. My thanks to Kenneth R. Johnson who saw the errors and took the time to let me know about them. Kenneth is the creator of the best Peggy Gaddis bibliography (a challenging task) and the fascinating The Digest Index.

Lust for Love (NSL 151) by Donna Simpson was first published as by Wright Williams (Wallace E. Watkins) as an unnumbered Stork Original Novel in 1949 by Star Publications Inc. of New York.

Everybody Loves Irene (NSL 152) by George Tremblay was first published in 1950 as by Wright Williams by New York's Quarter Books Inc. as Quarter Book 62.

Suzy Needs a Man (NSL 153) by Martha Knowles was first published as by Joan Sherman (Peggy Gaddis) as an unnumbered Exotic Novel in August 1950 by New York's Astro Distributing Corp.

Here are two Export books that I know to be PBOs. They are the two anthologies that Export published. Neither has a credited editor. Comments on the Kinsey Report is not a reprint of the more famous Signet version published earlier in 1948. Here are the contents:

7-22 COMMENTS ON THE KINSEY REPORT John R. Christie;
23- 28 MECHANICS OF SEX Marion Edwards;
29-36 STUDY OF THE SEX GLANDS Dr. D.A. Downing;
37-41 BIOLOGICAL NERVOUSNESS IN MAN Dr. Thomas Brooks;
42-47 WHY SOME MEN ARE IMPOTENT;
48-50 FIRST AIDS TO THE IMPOTENT Stephen G. Low;
51-53 EXHIBITIONISM;
54-58 MISTAKEN MALES;
59-65 WHAT IS SEX ATTTRACTION?;
66-74 SEX SECRECY IS NO ANSWER Joseph Lander, M.D.;
75-83 THE SANE WAY IN SEX TEACHING Frances Bruce Strain;
84-92 YOUTH LOOKS AT SEX Grace Verne Silver;
93-97 SEX AND THE CHILD Herman H. Rubin, M.D.;
98-103 MEN ARE MONAGAMOUS Lawrence Gould;
104-108 BLAME THE MAN;
109-114 HAS WOMAN A MYSTERIOUS INFLUENCE OVER MAN? Charles Lewis;
115-122 THE LOVE RIGHTS OF WOMAN Havelock Ellis;
123-130 HOW TO COMBAT THE SEX CRIME WAVE Charles Harris.

The stories in Spicy Detective Stories have been reprinted from the May 1937 issue of the American pulp of the same name. So while the contents are not original this is the first time in book form. Contents of Spicy Detective Stories (notwithstanding the front cover there are nine not eight Spicy Stories):

5-24 Silk Stocking Clue by N. Wooton Poge;
25-40 Murder Debt by Ellery Watson Calder;
41-58 The Thin Dame by Robert A. Garron;
59-78 Gypsum Blizzard by Robert Leslie Bellam;
79-96 Lady Dick by Arthur Wallace;
97-118 Case of the Limber Corpse by Cary Moran;
119-136 Death in the Third Act by Ken Cooper;
137-144 Killer’s Rights by Colby Quinn;
145-160 Star Witness by Peter Grant.

News Stand Library 5 - undated but 1948

News Stand Library 5 back

News Stand Library 123 - August 1950

News Stand Library 123 back



Crown Novel Publishing Part I

In my earlier post about Canadian publishers and the post-war British book market I discussed Popular Publications. Another Canadian publisher abroad is Crown Novel Publishing Company. The books carry a 1946 "printed" date and are unnumbered. There are nine I've found so far.

Seven Men states "Published by Crown Novel Book Publishing Company [sic] for Pemberton’s of Manchester Limited, 14 Lever Street, Manchester, England. Wholesale distribution through World Distributors Incorporated, Manchester, England."

The source for Rangeland Clean-up is unknown. Seven Men was first published in the April 12 1941 issue of Detective Fiction Weekly and then as a book by Quinn Publishing (New York, 1942). Seven Men is 124mm x 183mm and Rangeland Clean-up is 135mm x 210mm. My copy of Seven Men does not have a back cover.



Where Did The White Circles Come From? Part V

For the first four posts in this series I had an answer to that question. Here are three of the 15 titles, from the 429 published in Wm. Collins Sons & Co. Canada's White Circle imprint, that are a mystery. I can find no earlier edition but I'm sure most, if not all of the 15, are not paperback originals.

Mary Howard is a pseudonym for Mary Mussi who also wrote as Josephine Edgar. In common with many romance writers she wrote a lot of novels over many decades. Gary Marshall is one of the pseudonyms of Charles Horace Snow. There are 31 White Circles written by Snow under four pseudonyms.

White Circle C.D. 393 - 1949

White Circle C.D. 393 back

White Circle CD 444 - 1950

White Circle 444 back

White Circle CD 461 - 1950

White Circle CD 461 back

The Time Machine Part IV

A comment on the first post in this series leads to a further look at the 1931 Random House edition of The Time Machine.

Published in 1931 as a limited edition of 1200 for $12.50 (when hardcovers sold for $2.00), the Random House edition has a new preface by Wells. The AIGA web site gives the design details for the book. Lloyd Currey in his Science Fiction and Fantasy Authors (Boston: G.K. Hall, 1979) says the limited edition was issued in unprinted tissue paper DJ and paper slipcase. There are also copies without the limitation statement on page [88]. My copy is the latter one. This also came with a slipcase but I don't know if it is different from the limited edition's slipcase.

A division of Random House, The Modern Library, published a trade paperback edition in 2002 that reproduces the 1931 edition.

Below is the 1931 edition's front cover, slipcase and the four colour plates plus the Modern Library edition.

Abridged, Expurgated, Revised, Bowdlerized - Part V

In earlier posts in this series I discussed Canadian paperbacks that were abridged, expurgated etc. Two posts had Export Publishing Enterprises Ltd's News Stand Library imprints and two were about Alval Publishing's Crow imprint. Here we'll look at another expurgated Export book but also a modern example with a twist.

I Found Cleopatra was one of two Thrilling Novels published by Export in 1946 for the post war British market. The story was first seen in the American pulp Weird Tales as a four part serial from November 1938 to February 1939. Export's edition is approximately 30% shorter. The Weird Tales version was also published by Fax Collector's Editions: Linn, Oregon, 1977.

The modern example is Orion Books's Moby-Dick: in half the time (1/2), one of a twelve book Compact Editions series. The twist is ;or The Whale (;) created by Damion Searls using the Penguin edition of the Northwestern University Press edition of Moby Dick or The Whale (M). The relationship is described in The Review of Contemporary Fiction Summer 2009 issue as:

; = M - 1/2.

A couple of examples. The 15 pages of M's chapter 32 "Cetology" are missing from 1/2; one of the 566 words in chapter 62 "The Dart" is missing from 1/2 - "hapless". All of M's chapter 32 is in ; and ;'s chapter 62 is "hapless".





Harlequin Authors Part VIII

The first post in this series was about James Hadley Chase (1906 - 1985). Given that he was the most popular Harlequin Books author with 24 titles (of 481 through 1959) it's time for another. Here are three books from 1951.

Chase's real name was Rene Brabazon Raymond. George Orwell defended Chase and his first novel, No Orchids for Miss Blandish, in his essay "Raffles and Miss Blandish" (Horizon Magazine, October 1944), writing that "it is not, as one might expect, the product of an illiterate hack, but a brilliant piece of writing, with hardly a wasted word or a jarring note anywhere."

The Dead Stay Dumb was first published by Jarrolds (London, 1939). The other two were published by Robert Hale in 1950.

Harlequin 124 - July 1951

Harlequin 124 back

Harlequin 130 - September 1951

Harlequin 130 back

Harlequin 135 - October 1951

Harlequin 135 back

Export Canadian Paperback Originals Part IV

Export Publishing Enterprises Ltd published 55 paperback originals in 1949, 1950 and 1951. Taking into account known pseudonyms there are 44 named authors plus two anonymous editors of collections. Only 13 of the 44 have been identified. The remaining 31 authors make their only appearance in an Export book. I can find no other books they wrote or anything about them.

Here are the last three PBOs from the anonymous authors published in January 1951.

News Stand Library 151

News Stand Library 151 back

News Stand Library 152

News Stand Library 152 back

News Stand Library 153

News Stand Library 153 back

The Return of Russell Teed

Put the Molson quarts in the fridge and find the State Express at the drugstore. The McGill educated Montreal PI Russell Teed has returned. Russell has been missing since 1953 but thanks to Vehicule Press his first two adventures from Wm. Collins Sons & Co. Canada Ltd. in their White Circle imprint are back. The final Teed was published by Harlequin.

The blurbs on the backs of the Vehicule Press editions have been taken from the White Circle editions. The artist on Murder Over Dorval is unknown. The cover on The Crime on Cote des Neiges is one of 32 photo covers from Wm. Collins for the White Circle imprint.

Dorval is now Montreal-Pierre Elliott Trudeau International Airport.

White Circle C.D. 516 - 1951

White Circle C.D. 539X - 1952

The Case of the Missing Paperback

With books like Airport Arthur Hailey (1920 - 2004) must be one of Canada's most commercially successful writers. His first book, co-written with John Castle (joint pseudonym of John William Garrod & Ronald Charles Payne), was Flight Into Danger, published simultaneously in 1958 by Ryerson Press, Toronto and Souvenir Press Ltd., London. It was based on a CBC play broadcast in 1956. The story proved to be very popular with a film in 1957 (as Zero Hour!) and new broadcasts in the UK (1962) and the US (1971 as Terror in the Sky). And of course famously spoofed in Airplane! (1980).

More editions followed. The book was published by Doubleday in 1958 as Runway Zero-Eight with Bantam issuing the first American paperback in 1960 under the same title. The UK paperback edition came out in 1958 (London: Pan) and a French edition came along in 1959 under the title 714 Appelle Vancouver. But Canadians would wait 18 years for a paperback edition. And then it was an odd one from Clarke, Irwin of Toronto. Described as an educational edition on the copyright page, it is abridged with six pages of questions and topics for further study prepared by Norah K. Morrow. The abridgement alone is odd as the original edition is just 154 pages long. The Clarke, Irwin edition is longer at 158 pages but has a larger font size. Somewhere in the publisher's archives at McMaster University is the story about this book.

The Time Machine Part III

There is a tiny Canadian connection to H.G. Wells's The Time Machine. Early in Chapter 1, the Time Traveller mentions a recent talk on the fourth dimension given by Simon Newcomb. Newcomb, who was born in Wallace, Nova Scotia in 1835, became, after moving to the US as a young man, one of the most respected scientists of his day.

The talk was given at the December 28, 1893 annual meeting of the New York Mathematical Society and was published in Nature 49 (February 1, 1894).

Here are a couple of mid century paperback editions of The Time Machine. The Airmont cover has the oddest version of the machine that I've seen. The Berkely edition's cover is by Richard Powers, one of the masters of SF illustration. The scene here, unlike most illustrations of the story, is of the Time Traveller's final trip to the far future:

"The darkness grew apace; a cold wind began to grow in freshening gusts from the east. And the showering white flakes in the air increased in number. From the edge of the sea came a ripple and whisper. Beyond these lifeless sounds the world was silent. Silent? It would be hard to convey the stillness of it. All the sounds of man, the bleating of sheep, the cries of birds, the hum of insects, the stir that makes the background of our lives - all that was over. As the blackness thickened, the eddying flakes grew more abundant, dancing before my eyes; and the cold of the air more intense. At last, one by one, swiftly, one after the other, the white peaks of the distant hills vanished into darkness. The breeze rose to a moaning wind. I saw the black central shadow of the eclipse sweeping toward me. in another moment the pale stars alone were visible. All else was rayless obscurity. The sky was absolutely black.

A horror of this great darkness came on me. The cold, that smote to my marrow, and the pain I felt in breathing overcame me. I shivered, and a deadly nausea seized me. Then like a red hot bow in the sky appeared the edge of the sun. I got off the machine to recover myself. I felt giddy and incapable of facing the return journey. As I stood sick and confused I saw again the moving thing upon the shoal - there was no mistake now that it was a moving thing - against the red water of the sea. It was a round thing, the size of a football perhaps, or, it may be, bigger, and tentacles trailed down from it; it seemed black against the weltering blood-red water, and it was hopping fitfully about. Then I felt I was fainting. But a terrible dread of lying helpless in that remote and awful twilight sustained me while I clambered into the saddle."

Berkely 380 - 1957

Berkeley 380 back

Airmont CL44 - 1964

Airmont CL44 back