All the shelving is now in place for my library and I’m slowly putting books on shelves and generally tidying up. I will include some photos next week so be warned.

I’ve just picked up a printers proof sheet on eBay for PAN’s “Saucy Postcards Annual 2” which I’ve scanned in and included HERE. I was very disappointed to find my first book of postcards has a very damaged cover which I’d not noticed until I scanned it so I’ve temporarily included an image from the web.

I also picked up some exhibitors campaign books for two films which have PAN book tie-ins and show the covers of the editions published at the same time which are HERE.

Finally we bit the bullet and went away in our camper in spite of the weather forecast and it was not too bad, just a little wet and not as cold as predicted. The site had electricity on prepayment meters and when we arrived ours still had £6.35 credit. No matter how hard I tried with everything switched on I only managed to reduce it by £3.00! While there we visited Coughton Court and I was hoping to include a photo in the section “as seen in National Trust” properties. I found a run of Dick Francis but my wife said they didn’t count as they were in the second-hand book shop!

Due to the final lot of shelving arriving in 22 parcels and at last managing to get all my PAN titles on the shelves I’ve neglected to write a blog this week but rest assured it will be back as normal next week.

This week I will be assembling and then stocking 600 feet of books shelves which are stacked in my ‘library’ This is about three quarters of the amount I think I can fit in with the rest becoming available when the book stacks on the floor get transferred to the shelves. The ones in the photo are later titles with ISBN’s which will be shelved in alphabetical order.

I was pleased to get a ‘comment’ last week from Bert Whetstone who said:

“I’ve been a fan of Koziakin’s “Mazes” series of books since I was a kid in the 1970s. These are the books titled like “Mazes 2” and they were a bit more complex than the “Mazes For Fun” series.
Information on Koziakin is hard to come by, but a few months ago I bought a 1973 jigsaw puzzle maze by Koziakin which had some information about him on the back of the box.
Koziakin is of Russian descent, born in Yugoslavia during WWII. His family immigrated to the USA from Germany in 1947, to the east side of NYC. In the late 60’s he worked as a Graphic Artist for NBC on The Tonight Show and The Today Show. He began publishing his maze books in April 1971.
As it turns out he also produced maze greeting cards and a 6-foot “hanging maze” banner. The “hanging maze” along with the maze jigsaw were manufactured by Gameophiles Unlimited which seems to have been a small specialty gaming manufacturer located in NYC.
Aside from that, I have reason to believe Koziakin is still alive and resides in northeast New York state. But that’s all I can tell you”

After looking through US Whitepages I replied to Bert to say I’d found a Vladimir  Koziakin living at Redkill RD, Fleischmanns, NY 12430 but I’d also found a death record for someone of the same name. Unfortunately as my wife’s subscription to Ancestry is only for the UK I couldn’t check it the States.

In July 1973 the ‘Daily Mirror’ used two of Koziakin’s mazes on their ‘Junior Mirror’ page and also mention that PAN Book 2 was available. You can see them HERE if you scroll down. This might just be me but I was amused by the advert for ‘painful piles’ next to the maze. The only painful piles I’ve had lately is when stacks of books have fallen on my head but hopefully soon to be a thing of the past!

I’ve realised, after the reference last week to ‘PAN as seen on television’ I’ve not got a page for ‘PAN as seen in films’ as now, thanks to a suggestion from Robin Harbour, I’ve found a PAN featured in the film ‘The Spy With A Cold Nose’. Any more references grateful received.

I’ve also got a screen shot from the TV series ‘Grand Designs’ thanks to Bazeer Fulmore in Australia who spotted a shelf full of Shute titles. Bazeer runs the fantastic www.pizgloria.com site and I’ve appointed him my Australian agent (maybe I should tell him this?) This edition of ‘Grand Designs’ featured a property in Northern Ireland first shown in the UK in September 2017. We used to watch GD but Kevin McCloud who presents it is so full of ‘doom and gloom’ as to the outcome because they’ve not got a project manager etc, which always resolves itself after the last adverts, we’ve stopped watching it. Looks like we may need to start again.

With the ‘library’ room actually finished I now need to order the shelving, well enough for two thirds as I need floor space to sort the jumbled stacks of books into alphabetical order before putting them on the shelves. I’m also hoping to catalogue them all at the same time but I’ll see how long that takes.

Amongst the first piles were several titles in the 1970’s series of ‘PAN Classics’ which was the successor to the ‘Bestsellers of Literature’ series from the 1960’s (another page that really does need updating) I usually like to show the actual cover I have but I seem to be several short so I’ve resorted to images off the web which will be updated as I go along. Click HERE to see them so far. I’m also looking at the later series from around 1980 as they often used the same artwork and some of these list the artist.
It’s interesting in that when I bought my boxed set it was very cheap as it only had five of the six titles. I knew I had a copy of ‘Pride and Prejudice’ which I could put in it but try as I might I couldn’t squeeze it in with the others. I’ve just noticed on eBay someone selling a set and asking £50 but I’m more interesting working out if they are the same thickness as mine, where’s that ruler?
A couple of updates including a scan of a copy of Daphne du Maurier’s ‘The Progress of Julius’ which I’ve shown as a web image for quite a while but have now got one of my own,

As with these things I just said I’d not added to my “PAN as seen on Television” section for quite a while and then add one a couple of weeks ago and followed by two in the last week

Last week the UK ground to a halt because of Siberian wind and snow dubbed the ‘Beast from the East’ by the papers or ‘Winter’ as we call it. No post here for days but a rack and pinion railway engine I bought off eBay in the States arrived in just over a week! 

Last week I mentioned finding another George Sharp cover, ‘The Totem’ by David Morrell. I emailed George and he replied that it is actually him modelling and the shot was taken by a photographer at Artists Partners.

I’ve also been trying to make sense of all the PAN Classics titles and editions and found six Austen titles from 1981 were painted by Jooce Garrett who now lives in Switzerland. I sent him an email and he very kindly replied;

“I will gladly add what I can to your fine website. First off, as you will see when I dig out the artwork and take the photo you want, that I am a chap. I have put together a list of the jobs I did for Pan, mostly for David Larkin, but latterly with Gary Day-Ellison. I was with Artist Partners and, though I did occasionally make the pilgrimage out west from Soho, mostly they took the briefs and did the running around. I was impressed with the freedom David gave me. The instruction back then was to leave the top third of a book jacket free for the type, but David let me do those little vignettes on the Jane Austens. I think the red is his scribbles on my roughs. I’ll be in touch again when I’ve taken that photo”

I’m not sure what happened, typing mistake possibly, but I addressed Jooce as Ms, looks like he has forgiven me. Jooce also included a list of other covers he did for PAN and I’ll try and track them down to add later, luckily he included the year as well so that will help. As for getting hold of the six Austen titles, that’s proving difficult due to my constant complaint of sellers not showing the actual coves, just stock images. Any way here is one of them plus the rough Jooce mentioned.

   
As Jooce mentioned Artist Partners as did George I asked if they knew each other but seems they only knew of each other.

Lastly HERE are a random selection of press cuttings featuring ‘The Botts’, Alan founder of PAN Books and his wife Josephine.