Travellers Pocket Library Part II

In Part I of the Travellers story I discussed the series and whether it might have been published in Canada. I also showed three of the six books in the series. Here I'll show the other three and make a few more comments. The three other books are:

Books 100 to 104 have similar design features on the front cover and spine. Book 105 doesn't exist and 106 has important differences. The book number appears to be handwritten, the text feature at bottom right is gone and the spine has differences. In fact book 106 has features identical to those of another publisher, Alval Publishers of Canada. Compare Travellers 106 with Alval's Crow Pocket Edition 27 Published in July 1949. Alval is Alexander Valentine of Toronto - more on him later.

The artist is the same and the author name is written in the same hand. Even the title is a "Crow" type title.

So what does any of this mean. One interpretation is that the first five Travellers were published by persons unknown (Canadian?) and Valentine tried to continue the series, mistakenly thinking that there had been a number 105. What the books stated publisher, Ward-Hill of New York, has to do with any of this a question that likely will never be answered. 

Travellers Pocket Library - Canadian? You be the Judge! Part I

In 1949 a series of six paperbacks were published by Ward-Hill Books of New York. Each book is called "A Travellers Pocket Library Best-Seller". The books were numbered 100-104 and 106. Number 105 isn't known to exist. The books were a mixed bag of three reprints and three apparently original novels. One reprint is instantly recognisable - Lady Chatterley's Lover. The other is Venus in Furs by Russian Leopold Sacher-Masoch. Masoch lives on in the word masochist.

Collectors of paperbacks consider these books Canadian. The obvious question is why since the publisher address is New York. The books state "Printed in Canada" but that in of itself is not significant. A few of the books have an ad on the inside back cover by Medical Publishing Corp. of Toronto. The same ad and different ads for the same product can be seen in Canadian paperbacks although the company is sometimes British News Agency, still of Toronto. Finally, the covers show work by different artists but the cover of Speak the Sin Softly looks to be by the artist who did the covers of a series of paperbacks called Crow published by Alval Publishers of Toronto.

So Canadian or not?