Export Publishing Bibliography Part VI

Montreal's Vehicule Press has just published its 13th Ricochet Book - John Buell's 4 Days. Three of their books were originally published by Export Publishing. Here are the Export bibliographic entries and the Vehicule edition for Waste No Tears. There are two Export editions, a Canadian (116) and an US (27A).

116 Waste No Tears

A1.

WASTE | NO | TEARS | by | JARVIS | WARWICK | A NEWS STAND LIBRARY POCKET EDITION

Collation: pp. [1-5] 6-160; 177 x 108 mm.

Contents: p. [1] The Book at a Glance; [2] NEWS STAND LIBRARY POCKET EDITION | First Printing | July 1950 | Printed and bound in Canada | Export Publishing Enterprises Limited | TORONTO LONDON NEW YORK; [3] title; [4] blank; [5]-160 text.

Binding: Perfect. Inside covers illustration – slate blue. 

Note: Paperback original. Pseudonym of Hugh Garner. Signed art by Sid Dyke. 

27A Waste No Tears

A1.a.

WASTE | NO | TEARS | by | JARVIS | WARWICK | A NEWS STAND LIBRARY POCKET EDITION

Collation: pp. [1-4] 5-160; 176 x 109 mm.

Contents: p. [1] The Book at a Glance; [2] NEWS STAND LIBRARY POCKET EDITION | First Printing | July 1950 | Printed and bound in Canada | Export Publishing Enterprises Limited | TORONTO LONDON NEW YORK; [3] title; [4] blank; 5-160 text.

Binding: Perfect. Inside covers pattern with logo – light blue.

Note: Paperback original. Pseudonym of Hugh Garner. Signed art by Sid Dyke.  

Vehicule Press - 2014

Vehicule Press back

Hugh Garner and Export

Hugh Garner was a Canadian author who had three paperback originals published in the late 1940s and early 1950s. The link provides an entertaining short history of his relationship with publishers and mentions the novels - Cabbagetown and Present Reckoning from Wm. Collins Sons & Co. Canada Ltd. and Waste No Tears from Export Publishing Enterprises Ltd.

Here are a couple of letters about Export from the Queen's University Garner archives. They speak for themselves but I can't help but note that Garner expected that he might not recognize his own book on the newsstand and wanted to know the title and name under which it was published. Hard to imagine an author today being comfortable with anything like that.

There were two issues of Waste No Tears - one for the Canadian market and one for the American. The only difference between the books is the spine where the Canadian has the number 116 and distribution code MDS and the American has 27A and KD. The book is available through book dealers but be prepared to spend some money. A nice copy is selling for $500 from a Toronto dealer. The Canadian issue is much rarer than the American.

News Stand Library 27A

News Stand Library 27A back

Bay Street in Toronto

Bay Street has long been one of the most recognizable of Toronto's streets. Bay runs three km from the harbour to just past Yorkville Avenue. Along the way it cuts through the financial district, past both the new and old City Halls and just blocks from Queen's Park, the provincial legislature, and the University of Toronto. Two vintage Canadian paperbacks attest to its fame.

The first is the Hugh Garner's Present Reckoning (Toronto: Wm. Collins Canada, 1951). I've described the scene in an earlier post as the south-east corner of Bay and Richmond. Here is another scene, this time from Ronald Cocking's Die With Me, Lady published in 1953 by Harlequin Books. The book was originally published as Weep No More, Lady by Hurst & Blackett (London: 1952).

The man and woman are further down Bay Street, probably at King and Bay, two blocks south of Richmond. The now Old City Hall (the current City Hall dates from the mid 1960s) with the clock tower can be seen in the distance at Queen and Bay, a block above Richmond. The wires for the street cars and the street car are a nice touch. Toronto is one of the few major North American cities that didn't tear up its street car tracks in the 1950s and the street cars still run up Bay.

White Circle C.D. 517

White Circle C.D. 517 back

Harlequin 233

Harlequin 233 back

Where Did the White Circles Come From? Part I

Wm. Collins Sons & Co. Canada  Ltd. published 429 titles in their White Circle imprint from 1942 to 1952. All but 10 were reprints. Where did Collins find their books to reprint? Some three-quarters were originally published by the Scottish-English parent company Wm. Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. The rest came from over 40 publishers including five reprints of their own books originally published in hard cover:

Thorn-apple Tree by Grace Campbell (first edition 1942), Serpent's Tooth by Isabelle Hughes (1947), Storm Below by Hugh Garner (1949), A Pocketful of Canada by John D. Robins (1948) and Two Solitudes by Hugh MacLennan (1945). A Pocketful of Canada was published twice in paperback - outside of the WC line in 1948 and as a WC in 1952. The WC version is 32 pages shorter and has slightly different contents.

White Circle 310 - 1947

White Circle CD 412 -1949

White Circle CD 451 - 1950

White Circle C.D. 531 - 1952

1948

White Circle C.D. 540 - 1952

Export and Books in Print! Part I

Anyone familiar with Export Publishing Enterprises's books may be surprised that any they published are in print or may be in print. Export published 165 titles in two imprints, News Stand Library (NSL) and Torch, and it would be charitable to say that any more than a fraction are readable, never mind would remain in print. Even Google wouldn't want them.
But there are a few. The first two are early novels by two well known Canadian authors, Raymond Souster as Raymond Holmes and Hugh Garner as Jarvis Warwick. A small publisher, The Battered Silicon Dispatch Box of Shelburne, Ontario, published Souster's book The Winter of Time in 2006 and has Garner's Waste No Tears scheduled for 2010.

News Stand Library 85

The Battered Silicon Dispatch Box reprint

News Stand Library 116 and 27A

Export published two literary books, Hope of Heaven by John O'Hara and The Children by Howard Fast. Neither book is in print but both authors do have books in print and the Export books could join them.

 

News Stand Library 8

 

News Stand Library 18

Two Toronto Addresses

All three of the largest Canadian paperback publishers in the 1940s/early 1950s were Toronto based.

Wm. Collins Sons & Co. Canada Ltd. and their White Circle imprint were initially at 70 Bond St., then 53 Avenue Road, both central Toronto. The Bond street building is still there - a lovely example of an early office building built in 1910. The Avenue Road address was an old house around the corner from Yorkville Avenue and long gone. Export Publishing Enterprises Ltd. and their News Stand Library imprint were first at 3079 Dundas St. West and then at 240 Birmingham Road in New Toronto, a town then west of Toronto. New Toronto was long ago swallowed by Toronto. The Dundas St. two story building still exists; the New Toronto building burned down in 1950. The last publisher, Harlequin, had offices in Winnipeg and Toronto. The corporate, manufacturing and distribution side was Winnipeg. But the editorial offices were in Toronto on Carlton Street next to Maple Leaf Gardens.  

Nearly all Collins and Harlequin books were reprints of American and British novels. So very few books were original and virtually none were based in Toronto. Export had more originals but again few could be identified with Toronto. However two books announced their Toronto locale with Toronto addresses on the front cover. The first is Raymond Holmes (actually Raymond Souster) and his The Winter of Time.

The street sign says 5?1? Bloor at the corner of Bloor St. West and Lansdowne Ave. The corner exists but the numbering is around 1300. Further research needed to see if the laundry existed.

The other is Hugh Garner's Present Reckoning, White Circle C.D. 517. The address here is 399 Bay St. This is the corner of Bay and Richmond St. West in downtown Toronto. The illustration is accurate because on the left one can clearly see the large flag (Union Jack - this was 15 years before Canada's current flag) covered Simpson's department store at the north-west corner of Yonge St. and Richmond. So the view is looking east from the south-east corner of Bay and Richmond. The store is still there but now part of the Hudson's Bay chain. The sign on the post at left is for King's Highway 2, one of over a hundred King's Highways in Ontario at the time. King's Highway 2 was the major east-west highway through Ontario from Montreal to Detroit. Long superseded by the "401" it was decommissioned in the 1990s. The theatre in the centre is unidentified.