On my ‘Wanted but not at any price list’ was a Canadian copy of X668 ‘Octopussy’ and I eventually found one from a Canadian seller who wasn’t asking postage that was several times more than the cost of the book! With so many delays in the mail I had actually forgotten about it and so was pleasantly surprised when it arrived last week to to find it was a copy that I would call ‘good+’ and happy to put on the shelf next to the UK printing.
I like to look for any book publishers advertisements and I couldn’t resist this standee from Sampson Lowe. It measures about 8″ X 6″ and is cut out of plywood. I would love to find a copy with a dustjacket to match but none of the ones I have found so far does. I’m not sure of the date as the only edition which is listed with a dustjacket by artist Charles Edmund Brock (1870 to 1938) is from 1908 but the price of 7/6 is more like the 1935 edition might have cost.
This week the sketches from Hans Helweg are for M81 ‘A Touch of Thunder’ by Brian Newman Cooper (1919 to 2007) He was born in Stockport, Cheshire and was an author and Head of the History Department, Bolsover School, Derbyshire until his retirement in 1979.. He is the creator of ‘Lubbock and Tench’, a retired Detective Chief Inspector and a Detective Chief Inspector in England. As far as I can find he only had two of his eighteen(?) books published by PAN, this one and ‘The Van Langeren Girl’