Harlequin Canadian Paperback Originals Part II

The mass market paperback was invented for one reason - to make money selling cheap editions of already published books. To date, aside from modern romance novels, that's pretty much still true. But there is that enticing subset of mass market paperbacks called the paperback original. See, for example, science fiction, mystery and western.

Even the early Harlequin Books published PBOs, 24, or 5% of a total 477 titles, between 1949 and 1959, fifteen fiction and nine non-fiction. Here are two of the novels.

Joy Brown was an editor at Harlequin. E(dmund) B(oyd) Osler was a well know Manitoban.

Harlequin 72 - September 1950

Harlequin 72 back

Harlequin 261 - December 1953

Harlequin 261 back

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.

Harper - 1888

Harper title page

NCL 68 - 1993 reprint

NCL 68 back

Insomniac Press - 2000

Macrae Smith Part I

The Philadelphia publisher Macrae Smith was the second most popular source for the early Harlequin titles. Thirty-eight of the 477 titles published by Harlequin between 1949 and 1959 were originally published by Macrae Smith. In contrast only two of the 429 titles from the White Circle imprint (1942-1952) of Wm. Collins Sons & Co. Canada were Macrae Smith books.

Here are two from Harlequin and one from Collins. Honeymoon Mountain and True by the Sun were published in 1934 and One Way Street in 1936.

Harlequin 8 - August 1949

Harlequin 8 back

Harlequin 50 - May 1950

Harlequin 50 back

White Circle 319 - 1947

White Circle 319 back

Harlequin Artists Part VII

In part V of this series of posts I showed two of the 480 ilustrated covers on Harlequin Books published between 1949 and 1959 that are among the few that are not original. Here are two more.

The cover for the Harlequin edition of The Window with the Sleeping Nude has two significant differences from the Quinn Publishing version. One is obvious - more people looking at the nude. The other is less obvious. In the Harlequin version the view is from inside the store with the people outside (see the reversed sign on window). The Quinn version has the view from outside with the people on the inside.

Neither Harlequin cover is signed.

Harlequin 106 - April 1951

Handi-Book 118 - 1950

Harlequin 245 - September 1953

Robert Hale - 1952

Halifax Part II

The Harlequin Book edition of Roger Sudden by Thomas H. Raddall has an illustration of early (1750s) Halifax, Nova Scotia. The one identifiable landmark is the church St. Paul's, built in 1750, to the right of our heroine's head.

The current steeple, seen in the 1831 illustration below, was added in 1812. The Harlequin view is to the right in this illustration and from behind the church looking to the harbour, largely hidden by the smoke.

Harlequin 141 - December 1950

St. Paul's - 1831