Canadian Paperbacks and WWII Part I

A recent post on a favourite blog has inspired me to comment on Canadian paperbacks and WWII.

The Americans produced their well-known Armed Services Editions and English publishers their less well-known Services Editions. Canada did not have a similar effort. But there are a few examples of Canadian paperback publishers helping out with getting books to the armed services.

Beaver Publications of Hamilton, Ontario published three books in 1941. They were the first mass market paperbacks published in Canada. All had illustrated covers that were sold on newsstands as well as armed services editions that were packaged as a gift box for families and friends to send to soldiers, sailors and airmen. The covers were coloured for the three services - Canadian Army (tan/yellow), Royal Canadian Navy (blue) and Royal Canadian Air Force (red). I have also seen a blue box.

Beaver Armed Services Gift Box

Beaver Publications Part VII

In my last post on early Canadian mass market publisher Beaver Publications I discussed the armed forces editions of Beaver's three books. Each book also had an illustrated cover version which are very uncommon. But I have just recently found one of them: Rendezvous in Vienna was published with two different illustrated covers.

In these earliest mass market paperback days in Canada distribution had to be spotty. Especially for a Hamilton based publisher. There are more armed services editions to be found than the illustrated versions which were presumably sold in bookstores or, perhaps, on newsstands.

The editions are identical except for the covers. I don't know anything about the artist "Globe" but his name can be found on the odd Canadian pulp from the early 1940s.

 

May 1941 

 

May 1941 back

 

May 1941

 

May 1941 back

Beaver Publications Part VI

I've done a few posts on the first mass market paperback publisher in Canada - Beaver Publications of Hamilton, Ontario who published three books in 1941. Recently I came across something that I hadn't known about Beaver. I did know that they issued two versions of each of the books - illustrated and unillustrated covers. I speculated that the unillustrated were published for the armed forces. 

Below is the proof of that - a box with the three books designed to be a gift for a member of the armed forces. It includes a gift card. There is also a brown box version. One of the books in the box is Cherchez la Femme?

 

Cherchez la femme x 2

Two Cherchez la femme. The first (with a "?") is a paperback original published by Hamilton's Beaver Publications in December 1941, the last of three books from that publisher. The second is one from the Collection Petit Format series by the Montreal publisher Les Editions Moderne. The English first, The Follower, was published in 1950 by Simon and Schuster.

Beaver nn - December 1941

Collection Petit Format 226 - June 1951

Beaver Publications Part V

Canada's first mass market paperback publisher, Beaver Publications of Hamilton, is vexatious and I recently found a few bits of information that do indeed vex. 

The Hamilton Public Library has a copy of Modern Shorts with a handwritten notation on the title page beneath the name of the last author listed, Leslie Hamilton, that says "pseudonym of Henry Bolton". A check of Vernon's City of Hamilton Directory from the early forties tells us:

• the only Henry Bolton listed is a salesman,
• there is no listing for Beaver Publications, and
• the only Leslie Hamilton listed is an employee of Robert Duncan & Co. who printed Modern Shorts.

Did a real Henry Bolton use the name of one of the printer's employees as a pseudonym? Is the notation in the book correct? Who was Henry Bolton?

The biography of Leslie Hamilton in Modern Shorts says very little but there is a picture of a very "authorial" man.

Beaver Publications Part IV

Part I introduced Canada's first mass market paperback publisher, Hamilton's Beaver Publications. I've added a bit more information in subsequent posts as I've come across it. Here is more.

The last of Beaver's three books, Cherchez la femme?, was published in December 1941. There is a note in the back that says:

        "Our 'service' pocket library editions are now in circulation [and] are obtainable in boxed sets of the three titles. Red for the Navy, Blue for the Air Force and Khaki for the Army."

This is interesting because there are also variants of each book with illustrated covers. This note suggests that the illustrated covers were the retail issues and the text cover issues were published later as service editions only. I had thought that, like the LA Bantams and Red Arrows, the Beaver illustrated versions came after the text versions in order to boost sales. I've never seen the illustrated versions so I wonder if this note is in Cherchez la femme?.

Beaver Publications Part III

Canada's earliest mass market paperback publisher shows up in the oddest places. The last post described the listing for one of the books in the Library of Congress Catalog of Copyright Entries.

Here is one more - the April 1942 issue of the University of Toronto Quarterly. In the "Lists of Publications" section on page 359 all three Beaver books are noted.

Beaver Publications Part II

In an early post I discussed Beaver Publications of Hamilton. At the time I had nothing more to add. Recently I came across a bit more information on the company - in the Library of Congress Catalog of Copyright Entries of all places.

Two separate entries note that Rendezvous in Vienna was published in 16 chapters Dec 4, 11, 18 1940, January 1, 8, 15, 22, 29, February 12, 19, 26, March 5, 12, 19, 26 and April 2, 1941. The only detail is "Beaver feature services, Hamilton, Ontario, Canada". Perhaps a weekly local newspaper? The book is dated May 1941.

I'm still looking for the four issues of Beaver's three books with illustrated covers. Rendezvous in Vienna has two and Cherchez la femme? and Modern Shorts have one each. They have to be among the most uncommon Canadian paperbacks.

Beaver Publications - Canada's First Mass Market Paperbacks Part I

In the summer of 1935 the first ten modern mass market paperbacks (MMP) were published by Britain's The Bodely Head as Penguin Books. Four years later the first ten American MMP were published by Pocket Books. Today Penguin and Pocket continue to be have strong publishing programs as divisions of larger media companies. The Canadian story is a bit different.

Canada's first MMP publisher was Beaver Publications and its publishing legacy is three books, all published in 1941.

The books were produced with high quality paper and binding and also exist in editions with a scene from the book on the cover. Unlike the first Penguins and Pockets, Beaver's books were not reprints. Two books are novels by Leslie Hamilton and one a collection of stories by three authors including Hamilton. The story collection has a biography of Hamilton which says virtually nothing. The publisher's motto was " If it's a Beaver release - it's good!". That may have been true but low distribution combined with high production costs likely brought a quick end to the Beaver.