Collins White Circle Artists Part VIII - John Fernie (3)

Continuing with the covers done by John Fernie for Wm. Collins Sons & Co. Canada Ltd.'s White Circle imprint. All are 1950.

White Circle CD 439

White Circle CD 444

White Circle CD 449

White Circle CD 469

White Circle CD 471

Collins White Circle Photo Covers - Canada's Particular Type of Beauty

In early 1947 William Collins Sons & Co. Canada Ltd. started using photo covers for their White Circle imprint. This was unique in Canada at the time.

A trade magazine article (Quill & Quire, April 1947) provides some background. The article opens with “perhaps working on the theory that truth is more interesting than fiction, if not quite as strange, the White Circles … have recently gone in for photographic covers.” The photographer, at least for the early covers, was Earl Morris of Pringle and Booth Studios of Toronto which were “leading Canadian photographers [with] a pretty glamorous set-up.” When “the models arrive, which quite frequently is a little late, one of the privileges of beauty, they are told what sort of character they are to portray, and various poses and expressions are shot. If costumes are necessary, or outside props, a rough sketch is drawn by Miss Margaret Paull, White Circle Art Director, and the models and studio assistants try to fill the requirements as accurately as possible.” Both colour and B&W photographs were taken.

Five photographs accompany the article, one showing a studio set up for Dangerous Honeymoon (303) , three of models in various poses (with the caption “Cheesecake plus!”) and one of the President of Collins, Franklin F. Appleton, smiling with three of the models.

The article notes “the girls were carefully chosen from Canada’s collection of beautiful models so that with the wide and ever growing circulation of these books, Canada’s particular type of beauty will be known all over the world.” Three models are named, Rose Burkett, a former Miss Toronto [1941], for Duchess Hotspur (313), Marnie Williams for Poison Ivy (293) and Dorothy Henderson for Dark Hero (316). All but four of the photos were colour, although some of them appear to be B&W with colour added. A few covers were combined photo and illustration. About three-quarters of the covers were female only with the rest having one or two males joining the female. A cigarette was the favourite prop, with liquor second. The women usually wore evening dress but ski wear, swimming suits and nightgowns were also seen. Two covers had notices for the supplier of the evening dress, Golden Gate Dress Co. for The Urgent Hangman (336) and Ricky Formals for Dance Without Music (391).

Here are the first five photo covers of the 32 published. All are 1947.

White Circle 293 (model Marnie Williams)

White Circle 294

White Circle 302

White Circle 303

White Circle 311

Collins White Circle Artists Part VII - Margaret Paull (2)

In part I I introduced Margaret Paull who started working in 1943 for W. Collins Sons & Co. Canada Ltd. as an artist for the White Circle imprint and posted her first six covers.

By mid 1944 she was “in charge of design and format on Collins’ productions and advertising” (Quill & Quire September 1944, p. 70), including hard cover dust jackets. A 1947 article on Canadian book design said that “Collins is also one of the few Canadian publishers employing a full time staff artist in Margot Paul [sic] who is responsible for many a clever jacket, advertisement or catalogue in an amazing variety of styles” (Q&Q January 1947, p. 33). A 1948 article (Q&Q November 1948, p. 15) included her among artists whose “recent publications bear witness to the growing maturity and originality of Canadian jacket art” and in 1949 Paull was one of three dust jacket designers to have a book in the First Annual Exhibition of Canadian Advertising and Editorial Art (Q&Q May 1949, p. 17).

Paull was involved in the publishing business outside of Collins and was a founder of the Book Publishers Professional Association (Q&Q May 1985, p. 20). After 42 years with the firm, she retired in 1985 as the managing editor (obituary – The Globe and Mail April 1, 2008, p. S7). She described her philosophy as “you care about what you publish and you care all the way along. If you don’t it’s not going to work.” (Q&Q May 1985. p. 20)

Here are the next six of her 67 covers for White Circle. The first one  is 1943, the rest 1944.

White Circle 80

White Circle 83

White Circle 84

White Circle 85

White Circle 86

White Circle 87

Bare Naked Ladies - Part I

Toronto's Export Publishing Enterprises used bare naked ladies (BNLs) on its covers to a degree unmatched by other paperback publishers of the era - Canadian or American. They hit the ground running with three of their first four books published in mid 1948 displaying BNLs. The next two were 16 published in December 1948 and 32 in March 1949. Unless noted artwork is uncredited.

no number

no number

NSL 4

NSL 16 - art by Sid Dyke

NSL 32

Export's News Stand Library US Series - Part II

In part I I discussed Export Publishing Enterprises's US 28 book series and highlighted three of the 20 that were published with and without dust jackets. Here I'll continue with the first five books (numbers 1A to 5A) in the series.

Twenty-five of the 28 were new editions of books first published by Export in their first series. The first five were reprints of American books while the remaining 20 were either new editions of Export paperback originals or, in one case, a reprint of a Canadian publisher's book. 

So this means that Export had exported five American copyrighted books into the US. It's obvious from looking at the books that this was in contravention of Export's contracts with the American publishers for reprint rights in Canada. For each of the books Export crudely disguised the copyright that had been printed on the Canadian series editions. In the first four books the copyright was blacked out although it can just barely be read. In the fifth book the copyright notice was deleted. Here are the five books with information for the US edition and then the original Canadian edition. If different the first edition cover is also shown.

NSL 1A (June 1949) and 20 (January 1949)

NSL 2A (June 1949)

NSL 13 S (November 1948)

NSL 3A (title change) (June 1949)

NSL 13 (October 1948)

NSL 4A (June 1949)

NSL 32 (March 1949)

NSL 5A (title change) (June 1949)

NSL 52 (on spine, 5A error on cover) (June 1949)