Collins White Circle Authors Part XIV - Erskine Caldwell

In an earlier post I discussed Erskine Caldwell's three books that the Canadian publisher Wm Collins Sons & Co. Canada published in the 1940s.

Mr Caldwell was a very popular author once upon a time. His Trouble in July, for example, remains in print - at a university press no less. 

Here are four versions in paperback including the Collins's, which was reprinted in 1949, 1951 and 1952.

 

Penguin 567 - October 1945

Penguin 567 back

 

Penguin 567 third printing - May 1947

 

Penguin 567 third printing back

 

Pan G269 - 1959

 

Pan G269  back

 

White Circle 335- 1948

 

White Circle 335 back

Collins White Circle Authors Part VII

There is a fascinating wikipedia entry listing the top selling authors of fiction. The list ranks authors with estimated sales of at least 100,000,000 - some 80 in all. It seems to me that the list is as well documented as any such list needs to be.

Wm. Collins Sons & Co. Canada Ltd. published three of the list's authors in their White Circle imprint. Agatha Christie (2 - 4 billion sold - tied with Shakespeare at number 1) and Mickey Spillane (100-200 million - 36th on the list) have been the subjects of earlier posts. Here we'll look at the third author - Erskine Caldwell (80-100 million - 63rd).

Collins published three of Caldwell's 25 novels - Tobacco Road (first published 1932), Trouble in July (1940) and A House in the Uplands (1946). Tobacco Road is Collins most reprinted WC with six printings while Trouble in July has four printings and A House in the Uplands one. It is interesting to note that Collins didn't publish Caldwell's best selling novel - God's Little Acre. In Canada that was left to a small publisher, Anglo-American Publishing, to pirate the American edition. All cover art is by unknown.

White Circle 257 - 1946

White Circle 335 - 1948

White Circle 346 - 1948

Two Canadian Pirates

Here are two Canadian paperbacks from the late 1940s or early 1950s that are pirated versions of American books.

The first Canadian pirate is God's Little Acre by Erskine Caldwell - stolen from the New American Library (NAL) Signet edition first published by NAL's predecessor Penguin US. The pirate is published by Anglo-American Publishing Co. Limited. There is no publisher address but the book states "Printed in Canada 1948". All the publisher identifiers on the original cover have been removed but, except for the title and copyright pages, the book is a duplicate of the NAL edition.

The second pirate is not so obvious. A new title and cover help disguise White Heat by Joan Sherman (pseudonym of Peggy Gaddis). The legitimate edition was published as Lulie (Handi-Book Romance 91) by Quinn Publishing Company, Inc. of New York in 1949. This edition has four pages with title, copyright etc. and then text from page 5 to 122. The pirated edition, referred to as Bizarre Books No. 1, has no preliminary pages and starts with the same page 5 and ends on the same page 122. The title/copyright/publisher information is on the inside front cover where there is a line that says "Restyled into Another Sell-Out Edition" for the publisher, The Trade-Mark Pocket Library at 28-20 Wellington St. West in Toronto. Note the two quotes from non-existent newspapers/magazines - "Fleshpots and Sinners..." from the London Literary Chronicle (!). The cover is in the running for the "ugliest Canadian paperback cover of all time".

The pirate's dimensions are smaller because the pages of the Quinn edition have been trimmed. Clearly the cover and first four pages of the Quinn edition have been removed, the pages trimmed and the White Heat cover glued on.