PAN Fans Club

Let's talk about PAN paperbacks, the blog for those that do judge a book by its cover. Main site is at www.tikit.net or www.panfans.club

PAN Fans Club - Let's talk about PAN paperbacks, the blog for those that do judge a book by its cover. Main site is at www.tikit.net or www.panfans.club

Monthly Archives: February 2013

Marsh-Devine Artwork Catalogue

After putting the Bonham’s original PAN artwork auction catalogue on recently I thought I would follow it up with another catalogue from around the same time. I borrowed it off fellow Pan Fan Jules Burt and I have scanned it in to make a Flash book. This sale was in response to the Bonham’s one in that it was actually the artists themselves, namely Sam Peffer, Pat Owen and Edward Mortelmans, selling their artwork at an auction run by Simon Marsh-Devine in Bristol around the end of 1991. The catalogue is a photocopy and so the images are a little dark but with the listings I think most of them can be identified. Of note are the Peffer covers for several Fleming titles which I am told are now all owned by the Fleming family, can anyone confirm this?

Marsh-Devine Auction Catalogue

Golden PAN Award

PAN

Statue used as model for PAN Award

Since the 1960’s PAN has awarded a statue of the god Pan to authors who’s books sell over a million copies. The  award is based on a bronze statue from Southern Italy in the British Museum. Amongst the recipients of this award are Russell Braddon for “The Naked Island“, John Le Carre for “The Spy Who Came In From The Cold” , Otto Frank on behalf of Anne Frank for “The Diary Of A Young Girl” and more recently Douglas Adams for “The Hitchhikers Guide To The Galaxy” and several for Wilbur Smith.

John Le Carre

John Le Carre with his Golden PAN Award

Wilbur Smith

Wilbur Smith with several Golden PAN Awards

Douglas Adams

Douglas Adams with his PAN Award

OttoFrank

Otto Frank receiving his daughter’s Golden PAN Award.

Roger Coleman

Someone once mentioned a link between PAN and Ballantine but not what it was. I have just found one in that the PAN wrap around covers for the Roger Coleman ‘Shute’ series from the early 70’s are the same as the Ballantine ones. In the UK PAN gives no clues as to the cover artist but in the US Ballantine acknowledges inside the artist as Roger Coleman. I have found, through a third party, that Roger is now in his 80’s and has become reclusive so I don’t think I can’t ask him if he knew his work was going to be used by two companies and more importantly, did he get paid twice? Neither PAN nor Ballantine mention each other inside the books.
Roger did artwork for many different publisher including the illustrations for this below for Reader’s Digest Condensed Books in 1966. Incidentally Brian Sanders, George Sharp and John Raynes also did artwork for Reader’s Digest.

The Man With The Golden Gun

Bonham’s Catalogue 15th October 1991

I recently had a request for a scan of the Bonham’s Catalogue of “Original Paperback Cover Artwork from the Pan Archive” as a reference source for a magazine article followed by “and I need it ASAP”

I scanned it all and then thought why not use the opportunity to make it into a Flash book so to view just click on the image below. As the catalogue has a glued spine it was not always possible to get it to lie flat without damaging it so some pages are a little awry.

This was the sale that caused so much bad feeling between the artists and PAN with several of them protesting outside the sale rooms. The dispute was over who had copyright of the artwork, the company or the artists? The artists always maintained they still retained ownership and the originals should not be sold. This was eventually resolved and the artists do now retain ownership of their works.

I also have the Bonham’s Catalogue of “Original Corgi Paperback Cover Design from the 1950’s, ’60’s and ’70’s” from 12th September 1990 if anyone is interested in that?