Below is Orvis's first book (and only Harlequin) plus some late number NCLs.
Harlequin 367 - August 1956
Harlequin 367 back
NCL N152 - 1978
NCL N152 back
NCL N154 - nd
NCL N154 back
Showing posts with label New Canadian Library. Show all posts
Showing posts with label New Canadian Library. Show all posts
Saturday, 2 December 2017
Harlequin and New Canadian Library
The 100th issue of CNQ has two articles by Brian Busby (see The Dusty Bookcase) on Canadian paperbacks. One is about the New Canadian Library series, the other about long forgotten Canadian author Kenneth Orvis (pen name for Kenneth LeMieux).
Below is Orvis's first book (and only Harlequin) plus some late number NCLs.
Below is Orvis's first book (and only Harlequin) plus some late number NCLs.
Sunday, 29 January 2012
New Canadian Library Part II
The first set of McClelland & Stewart's reprint paperback series New Canadian Library ran from 1958 to 1978 - a total of 152 titles. Today 54 remain in the NCL series according to the M&S web site. The original number and introduction are gone and, for a few titles, an unabridged version has replaced an abridged.
Two titles that have not survived are The Stepsure Letters and Tiger Dunlop's Upper Canada. Janet Friskney's New Canadian Library (University of Toronto, 2007) helps explain why. She has a table of the unit sales for each book from 1958 to 1979. There are 73 books with 10 or more years of sales data. Eight of the books averaged sales of less than 500 copies a year, including The Stepsure Letters and Tiger Dunlop's Upper Canada. The other six are also no longer in print.
I'm not surprised at the low sales as both books look unappealing (the back cover blurbs are no help) but The Stepsure Letters does have an introduction by Northrop Frye that makes the book worth finding.
Two titles that have not survived are The Stepsure Letters and Tiger Dunlop's Upper Canada. Janet Friskney's New Canadian Library (University of Toronto, 2007) helps explain why. She has a table of the unit sales for each book from 1958 to 1979. There are 73 books with 10 or more years of sales data. Eight of the books averaged sales of less than 500 copies a year, including The Stepsure Letters and Tiger Dunlop's Upper Canada. The other six are also no longer in print.
I'm not surprised at the low sales as both books look unappealing (the back cover blurbs are no help) but The Stepsure Letters does have an introduction by Northrop Frye that makes the book worth finding.
NCL 16 - 1961
NCl 16 back
NCL 55 - 1967
NCL 55 back
Monday, 23 January 2012
New Canadian Library Part I
I've discussed Canadian publisher McClelland & Stewart's quality paperback series New Canadian Library in other posts, usually relating it to earlier Canadian paperback publishers. The recent demise of M&S has made me return to the series.
A Strange Manuscript Found in a Copper Cylinder by James De Mille was published as NCL 68 in 1969. Janet Friskney in her book New Canadian Library: The Ross-McClelland Years 1952 - 1978 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2007) discusses (pp. 104-107) the long effort by the editors to convince the publisher, Jack McClelland, to publish Manuscript. His first thought was OK but only if the book were cut. But finally it was published uncut.
The NCL edition was the first Canadian, 81 years after the American (Harper, 1888) and British (Chatto & Windus, 1888) editions. I'd love to see what Harlequin might have done with this title.
De Mille (1833-1880) was a professor of English at Dalhousie University in Halifax.
A Strange Manuscript Found in a Copper Cylinder by James De Mille was published as NCL 68 in 1969. Janet Friskney in her book New Canadian Library: The Ross-McClelland Years 1952 - 1978 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2007) discusses (pp. 104-107) the long effort by the editors to convince the publisher, Jack McClelland, to publish Manuscript. His first thought was OK but only if the book were cut. But finally it was published uncut.
The NCL edition was the first Canadian, 81 years after the American (Harper, 1888) and British (Chatto & Windus, 1888) editions. I'd love to see what Harlequin might have done with this title.
De Mille (1833-1880) was a professor of English at Dalhousie University in Halifax.
Harper - 1888
Harper title page
NCL 68 - 1993 reprint
NCL 68 back
Insomniac Press - 2000
Sunday, 15 January 2012
Mass Market Paperback (1935 - ?) Part II
In an article for The Atlantic's on-line edition, "The Revenge of the Paperback Book", Steven Heller discusses a "new book series [that] attempts to revitalize the printed word with innovative design." He argues that "[b]efore Kindle and Nook, the mass-market paperback book was the publishing industry’s crown jewel. Convenient and compact, it was the inexpensive alternative to bulky tomes and ripe for avant garde experimentation."
Heller quotes Adam Michaels, the creator of the series,: ”Neglected by publishers in recent years, the mass-market paperback format remains highly desirable for its accessibility, both in terms of portability/usability and its low production and purchase costs.”
This and the recent news about the end of the Canadian publisher McClelland & Stewart made me think of the M&S mass market New Canadian Library series which began in January 1958 and ended in January 1978. A modified series began in 1981 and continues. Here are the first and last of the original NCL series.
Heller quotes Adam Michaels, the creator of the series,: ”Neglected by publishers in recent years, the mass-market paperback format remains highly desirable for its accessibility, both in terms of portability/usability and its low production and purchase costs.”
This and the recent news about the end of the Canadian publisher McClelland & Stewart made me think of the M&S mass market New Canadian Library series which began in January 1958 and ended in January 1978. A modified series began in 1981 and continues. Here are the first and last of the original NCL series.
NCL 1 - January 1958
NCL 1 back
NCL 152 - January 1978
NCL 152 back
Thursday, 2 June 2011
Canadian Authors Part IV - Earle Birney
In the first part of this post I discussed Earle Birney's Turvey. A revised edition was published in 1976, also by McClelland & Stewart. Here are Robert Fulford comments:
"When Turvey was first published, in 1949, it was seen by some reviewers as vulgar. Arnold Edinborough, writing in the Queen's Quarterly said: 'There is a Rabelaisian reliance on the bodily functions and the Army's treatment of them which makes the book in many parts a very unamusing affair.' Queen Victoria could hardly have put it better.
But Edinborough and the other reviewers didn't know just how bad it really was - or how nearly they escaped even more unamusing passages. Birney, in his original manuscript, reported Canadian Army dialogue as he heard it during his service. It was only the bowdlering intercession of McClelland and Stewart, dropping in dashes here and there and changing one word to 'bucking.' that saved our 1949 book reviewers from many an uncomfortable blush.
But these are more liberated times. Now McClelland and Stewart, 27 years after the original publication, has given us an edition in which the original manuscript is restored to all its Rabelaisian splendor. Now we can read it just as Birney wrote it. It doesn't make much difference, of course; the readers of the original edition presumably filled in the appropriate words where they needed them. But it's a pleasure to see the book back in the bookstores, handsomely jacketed. Perhaps a whole new generation will discover it."
The next year M&S published the new edition in paperback. It was an uninspired effort. The covers are ugly, the introduction is the same as the 1963 NCL edition with no mention of the changes and, finally, it is not clear what the book is. The front cover says complete and unexpurgated but the back cover says fifth reprint. So is this the sixth printing of the new edition? No it's the first printing but the sixth printing of N 34.
"When Turvey was first published, in 1949, it was seen by some reviewers as vulgar. Arnold Edinborough, writing in the Queen's Quarterly said: 'There is a Rabelaisian reliance on the bodily functions and the Army's treatment of them which makes the book in many parts a very unamusing affair.' Queen Victoria could hardly have put it better.
But Edinborough and the other reviewers didn't know just how bad it really was - or how nearly they escaped even more unamusing passages. Birney, in his original manuscript, reported Canadian Army dialogue as he heard it during his service. It was only the bowdlering intercession of McClelland and Stewart, dropping in dashes here and there and changing one word to 'bucking.' that saved our 1949 book reviewers from many an uncomfortable blush.
But these are more liberated times. Now McClelland and Stewart, 27 years after the original publication, has given us an edition in which the original manuscript is restored to all its Rabelaisian splendor. Now we can read it just as Birney wrote it. It doesn't make much difference, of course; the readers of the original edition presumably filled in the appropriate words where they needed them. But it's a pleasure to see the book back in the bookstores, handsomely jacketed. Perhaps a whole new generation will discover it."
The next year M&S published the new edition in paperback. It was an uninspired effort. The covers are ugly, the introduction is the same as the 1963 NCL edition with no mention of the changes and, finally, it is not clear what the book is. The front cover says complete and unexpurgated but the back cover says fifth reprint. So is this the sixth printing of the new edition? No it's the first printing but the sixth printing of N 34.
N 34 - 1963
N 34 - 1963 back
N 34 - 1977
N 34 - 1977 back
Sunday, 1 May 2011
Canadian Authors Part I - Earle Birney
Who is a Canadian author? Should be a simple question to answer - someone with Canadian citizenship. But what if they've lived out of Canada for the last 40 years and write novels about Australia? Or Canada? Or lives in Canada and writes about the country they were born in, Vietnam? Or not a Canadian citizen but lives in Canada and writes about depression era Saskatchewan? Or visits Canada for six months then writes about the immigrant experience in Toronto? Does it matter where the book is published? Does any of this matter? Yes if you want to win a Canadian writing award. I'll look at these in another post.
How many Canadian authors were published by the Canadian mass market paperback publishers of the 40s and 50s? Wm. Collins Sons & Co. Canada Ltd's White Circle imprint published 143 authors, 16 of whom were Canadian. No doubts here - all Canadians living in Canada writing about Canadian subjects. Number of titles was 23, of a total 429. Nine were paperback originals. Here is the list:
Aitken, Kate
Allen, Ralph (ed.)
Birney, Earle
Campbell, Grace
Carter, Dyson
Conner, Ralph
Denison, Merrill
Edgar, Keith
Garner, Hugh
Montrose, David (Graham, Charles Ross)
Hughes, Isabelle
Kelley, Thomas J.
Leacock, Stephen
MacLennan, Hugh
Niven, Frederick
Robins, John D.
Here is an author who has not yet been seen in this blog - Earle Birney (1904-1995). His WC book, Turvey (Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 1949), won the fourth Stephen Leacock Memorial Medal for Humour in 1950. Below is the WC edition plus the New Canadian Library edition. The NCL imprint from McClelland & Stewart publishes only Canadian authors.
How many Canadian authors were published by the Canadian mass market paperback publishers of the 40s and 50s? Wm. Collins Sons & Co. Canada Ltd's White Circle imprint published 143 authors, 16 of whom were Canadian. No doubts here - all Canadians living in Canada writing about Canadian subjects. Number of titles was 23, of a total 429. Nine were paperback originals. Here is the list:
Aitken, Kate
Allen, Ralph (ed.)
Birney, Earle
Campbell, Grace
Carter, Dyson
Conner, Ralph
Denison, Merrill
Edgar, Keith
Garner, Hugh
Montrose, David (Graham, Charles Ross)
Hughes, Isabelle
Kelley, Thomas J.
Leacock, Stephen
MacLennan, Hugh
Niven, Frederick
Robins, John D.
Here is an author who has not yet been seen in this blog - Earle Birney (1904-1995). His WC book, Turvey (Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 1949), won the fourth Stephen Leacock Memorial Medal for Humour in 1950. Below is the WC edition plus the New Canadian Library edition. The NCL imprint from McClelland & Stewart publishes only Canadian authors.
White Circle 534 - 1952
White Circle 534 back
New Canadian Library 34 - 1963
New Canadian Library 34 back
Friday, 9 April 2010
Mordecai Richler's Wicked Novel
The Canadian author Mordecai Richler's second to fifth novels had a straight forward paperback publishing history. The first paperback editions of each were either Canadian or British. The Canadian editions were published in McClelland & Stewart's New Canadian Library (NCL) series. The only slightly off element was the sequence:
Son of a Smaller Hero (first edition 1955) - NCL 45 (1966)
A Choice of Enemies (1957) - NCL 136 (1977) [first paperback edition - Panther (UK), 1960]
Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz (1959) - NCL 66 (1969) [first paperback edition - Penguin, 1964]
The Incomparable Atuk (1963) - first published in M&S's Canadian Best Seller Library series 7 (1965) then NCL 79 (1971)
Note the number of years before the paperback editions were published. Now of course a year would be the typical period.
Richler's first novel, The Acrobats, had a different paperback history. The first hardcover edition was the British published by Andre Deutsch in 1954. The first American was also published in 1954 by G. P. Putnam. There never has been a Canadian hard cover edition. The British edition was distributed in Canada by Wm. Collins. The last edition during Richler's life was a British paperback in 1970. Richler did not give permission to reprint and the first Canadian edition wasn't published until 2002, the year after he died. Fittingly it was in the NCL series.
In 1955, the American publisher Popular Library gave The Acrobats the classic mid century "tune-up" for paperback editions with a change in title, cover and blurbs. Nothing Canadian on these covers.
The Popular Library cover illustration mirrors the Andre Deutsch version. There's a man and a woman with the man, for some reason, holding paint brushes but not painting. But the characters have switched places from bed to standing. Obviously the change is to get the woman front and centre in the Popular edition (there's no doubt she's more attractive than our odd looking artist on the Deutsch). On the Canadian cover is the painting "Young Canadian". The subject is 29 year old Canadian painter Carl Schaefer.
Son of a Smaller Hero (first edition 1955) - NCL 45 (1966)
A Choice of Enemies (1957) - NCL 136 (1977) [first paperback edition - Panther (UK), 1960]
Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz (1959) - NCL 66 (1969) [first paperback edition - Penguin, 1964]
The Incomparable Atuk (1963) - first published in M&S's Canadian Best Seller Library series 7 (1965) then NCL 79 (1971)
Note the number of years before the paperback editions were published. Now of course a year would be the typical period.
Richler's first novel, The Acrobats, had a different paperback history. The first hardcover edition was the British published by Andre Deutsch in 1954. The first American was also published in 1954 by G. P. Putnam. There never has been a Canadian hard cover edition. The British edition was distributed in Canada by Wm. Collins. The last edition during Richler's life was a British paperback in 1970. Richler did not give permission to reprint and the first Canadian edition wasn't published until 2002, the year after he died. Fittingly it was in the NCL series.
In 1955, the American publisher Popular Library gave The Acrobats the classic mid century "tune-up" for paperback editions with a change in title, cover and blurbs. Nothing Canadian on these covers.
The Popular Library cover illustration mirrors the Andre Deutsch version. There's a man and a woman with the man, for some reason, holding paint brushes but not painting. But the characters have switched places from bed to standing. Obviously the change is to get the woman front and centre in the Popular edition (there's no doubt she's more attractive than our odd looking artist on the Deutsch). On the Canadian cover is the painting "Young Canadian". The subject is 29 year old Canadian painter Carl Schaefer.
Andre Deutsch
Popular Library 677
Popular Library 677 back
New Canadian Library
New Canadian Library back
Friday, 19 February 2010
Canadian Best-Seller Library Part I
This blog is subtitled "Canadian Paperbacks of the 40s and early 50s" but books from the 60s and 70s will find a home here from time to time. A couple of recent posts included books from the New Canadian Library series published by McClelland & Stewart from 1958 to 1978. The series was one of a number of series that M&S published to feature Canadian writing. The original NCL series had 152 books. After a three year hiatus the series started up in 1981 and continues to this day. Among the other series that M&S published was the 46 book Canadian Best-Seller Library (CBL) from 1964 to 1968. Three-quarters were non fiction (with iconic Canadian writers such as Pierre Berton, Peter Newman and Farley Mowat).
Some of the fiction were recycled as part of the NCL including one of the two books described here.
The Incomparable Atuk was Mordecai Richler's fifth novel, published in 1963, four years after The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz. The American title is Stick Your Neck Out. Unlike any of his previous novels, Atuk is a broad satire on Canadian celebrity and culture. As a recent Richler biography says "Richler exposes all the pettiness and smallness of the cultural scene as he saw it, hanging out to ridicule the pretensions and absurdities patently obvious in the cultural nationalism of the day" (M. G. Vassanji, Mordecai Richler, Toronto: Penguin, 2009, p. 26). M&S published the first paperback edition in 1965 as CBL 7, then again as NCL 79 in 1971.
Leslie McFarlane has almost certainly had more of his books sold than Richler. Under the publishing house name Franklin W. Dixon he wrote 21 of the Hardy Boys adventures. His hockey novel McGonigle Scores! was published as CBL 21 in 1966 as a paperback original.
Some of the fiction were recycled as part of the NCL including one of the two books described here.
The Incomparable Atuk was Mordecai Richler's fifth novel, published in 1963, four years after The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz. The American title is Stick Your Neck Out. Unlike any of his previous novels, Atuk is a broad satire on Canadian celebrity and culture. As a recent Richler biography says "Richler exposes all the pettiness and smallness of the cultural scene as he saw it, hanging out to ridicule the pretensions and absurdities patently obvious in the cultural nationalism of the day" (M. G. Vassanji, Mordecai Richler, Toronto: Penguin, 2009, p. 26). M&S published the first paperback edition in 1965 as CBL 7, then again as NCL 79 in 1971.
Leslie McFarlane has almost certainly had more of his books sold than Richler. Under the publishing house name Franklin W. Dixon he wrote 21 of the Hardy Boys adventures. His hockey novel McGonigle Scores! was published as CBL 21 in 1966 as a paperback original.
Wednesday, 17 February 2010
Canadian Paperbacks - Other Editions Part II
Stephen Leacock's self published his first literary book, Literary Lapses, in 1910 when he was 40. In 1939 the first paperback edition was published by Penguin Books. Six years later Wm. Collins Sons & Co. Canada Ltd. published its White Circle edition. In January 1958 Canadian publisher McClelland & Stewart published Literary Lapses as one of its first four offerings in the New Canadian Library (NCL) imprint. Coincidentally the Penguin edition is 212 and the White Circle edition is 213. The Penguin edition has a dust jacket identical to the book's covers except for the flaps.
A Bibliography of Stephen Leacock by Carl Spadoni (Toronto: ECW Press, 1998), pages 97 and 98, notes that the Penguin edition sold over 46,000 copies in the first five months after publication. The bibliography also notes that McClelland & Stewart held the Canadian rights to the book and refused Collins (who were Penguin's agent in Canada) permission to sell the Penguin edition in Canada. But in 1945, the year after Leacock died, Collins was able to publish the first Canadian paperback edition. The Collins edition has been printed from the same plates as the Penguin edition.
The Penguin edition has a short biography of Leacock but no introduction. B. K. Sandwell, a Canadian editor and author, provided a three page introduction to the Collins edition which also had a couple of photographs of Leacock by the celebrity photographer of the day, Karsh. The NCL edition has a five page introduction by Robertson Davies and remains in print. The texts are the same except the NCL edition doesn't have a one page of acknowledgements from the author.
A Bibliography of Stephen Leacock by Carl Spadoni (Toronto: ECW Press, 1998), pages 97 and 98, notes that the Penguin edition sold over 46,000 copies in the first five months after publication. The bibliography also notes that McClelland & Stewart held the Canadian rights to the book and refused Collins (who were Penguin's agent in Canada) permission to sell the Penguin edition in Canada. But in 1945, the year after Leacock died, Collins was able to publish the first Canadian paperback edition. The Collins edition has been printed from the same plates as the Penguin edition.
The Penguin edition has a short biography of Leacock but no introduction. B. K. Sandwell, a Canadian editor and author, provided a three page introduction to the Collins edition which also had a couple of photographs of Leacock by the celebrity photographer of the day, Karsh. The NCL edition has a five page introduction by Robertson Davies and remains in print. The texts are the same except the NCL edition doesn't have a one page of acknowledgements from the author.
Penguin 212
Penguin 212 back cover
Penguin 212 DJ flaps
White Circle 213 - Margaret Paull artist
White Circle 213 back cover
New Canadian Library 3
New Canadian Library 3 back cover
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