In my last Star Weekly post I discussed the abridged novels that, for 35 years, many readers in Canada bought each Saturday. A shortened novel every week! Who did the work of cutting? Did the editor have help? I think so. Can't see someone handling all the administrative chores of publishing as well as having the time to read and cut many thousands of words week after week.
Or maybe titles were used that had already been condensed. This is what the editor of the other Canadian insert, The Standard (Montreal), did, at least for a time. Omnibook was an American periodical that published four or five abridgements each month from December 1938 until ???. The Standard used Omnibook abridgements from at least 1953 to 1965. Here are three.
January 28, 1956 - No Thoroughfare by Denise Egerton (Hodder and Stoughton, 1954)
June 4, 1960 - Comanche Moon by William R. Cox (McGraw-Hill, 1959)
January 9 and 16, 1965 - The Wooden Horseshoe by Leonard Sanders (Doubleday, 1964)
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