Gisele Lepin Returns

Thanks to Vehicule Press Gisele Lepin, like a breath of cool clean air, returns. Originally published by Export Publishing Enterprises in 1949 the Vehicule Press edition of Sugar-puss on Dorchester Street has a lovely adaptation (by J. W. Stewart) of the original artwork by D. Rickard (note initials on the window). Actually its the art on the Canadian edition. There was a further edition for the American market with artwork by Sid Dyke. And yet a third version on the DJ that is found on the American edition. Will Straw, who introduces the Vehicule edition, talks about buying the American edition in the mid 1980s.

 

Vehicule Press - 2013

 

Vehicule Press back

 

News Stand Library 84 - November 1949

 

News Stand Library 20A - February 1950

 

News Stand Library 20A DJ

Beaver Publications Part VI

I've done a few posts on the first mass market paperback publisher in Canada - Beaver Publications of Hamilton, Ontario who published three books in 1941. Recently I came across something that I hadn't known about Beaver. I did know that they issued two versions of each of the books - illustrated and unillustrated covers. I speculated that the unillustrated were published for the armed forces. 

Below is the proof of that - a box with the three books designed to be a gift for a member of the armed forces. It includes a gift card. There is also a brown box version. One of the books in the box is Cherchez la Femme?

 

Export Publishing Enterprises Artists Part VII

Very few of the covers of early Canadian paperback publisher Export Publishing Enterprises were signed. Here is one artist who remains anonymous.

News Stand Library 52 - June 1949

 

News Stand Library 53 - June 1949

 

News Stand Library 74 - October 1949

News Stand Library 75 - October 1949

James Bond and Harlequin

Between 1953 and 1957 the Canadian paperback publisher Harlequin Books issued eleven books described as "Harlequin-Pan" editions. The Pan in the description is Pan Books in London. From 1955 until at least the 1970s Pan Books had the exclusive British paperback rights to Ian Fleming's James Bond series and between 1955 and 1957 Pan published three Bond books - 

Casino Royale
Live and Let Die
Moonraker

Any one of the the three might have been a Harlequin-Pan edition. Alas no. Instead we have five from Edgar Wallace, three from Agatha Christie and three from other authors. Pity.

The only one of any interest is A. C. Doyle's The Lost World. 

Harlequin 238 - July 1953

Harlequin 238 back

Pan 100 - 1950

Pan X236 (16th printing) - 1964

Pan X236 (16th printing) back

Evangeline and Evelyn

It's a helluva story. So thought Henry Longfellow whose 1847 poem Evangeline, a Tale of Acadie was a best seller. Ninety-six years later Canadian novelist Evelyn Eaton published her The Sea is So Wide. Both use the 1755 expulsion of the Acadians from Nova Scotia as a background to lost love.

An early (circa 1851) English edition of Evangeline joins a Harlequin edition of The Sea is So Wide published 101 years later. Surprisingly both remain in print.

Harlequin 170 - May 1952

Harlequin 170 back