As it would have been Rona Jaffe’s birthday on the 12th June I’ve rescanned in all her PAN editions that I know of. This includes X81 and X80, the first printing of which was incorrectly numbered. Jaffe wrote 17 books of which PAN published 4. She was born in 1931 in New York City and died in London on the 30th December 2005. Jaffe wrote her first book ‘The Best of Everything‘ in 1958 while working as an associate editor at Fawcett Publications. It was adapted into a film starring Joan Crawford also called ‘The Best of Everything’ in 1959
I’m always pleased to get comment’s on blogs and especially the latest one regarding James E McConnell. Steve Chibnall’s book on McConnell is now available to pre-order from Telos Publishing. It’s thanks to ‘down.thetubes.net’ for letting me know and for the links from their article to my website.. Talking of McConnell does anyone know if he also painted the cover of the Heinemann edition of ‘Bony and the Black Virgin’ as it is so similar to his later PAN edition?
When I saw some original book cover artwork I couldn’t resist even thought it was for Hodder and not PAN. It was for the 1958 edition of ‘Polonaise’ by Doris Leslie signed ‘Leonard’ and on the back it said D Michael Leonard. I emailed Viv Lawrence who looks after Michael’s website and he kindly replied with the good news to say “Yes, this is a very early Michael Leonard commercial work. I recognise the signature which is how he signed his work at that time. D M Leonard is Douglas Michael Leonard always know as Michael. He would have just left St Martin’s School of Art aged 25. He is still with us but in a care home now being well looked after”
Thanks to fellow PAN Fan Stuart Radmore from Upfield’s adopted country for spotting a couple of errors on my Arthur Upfield page featured in a recent blog. He notice I had included a duplicate edition which has now been removed and also I had not included X716. On looking for it on the shelf I also found I had not included X717 so now both added, thanks Stuart.