Having picked up a copy of ‘The Send-Off’ by Christopher Leach which I actually read and enjoyed I looked to see if PAN had published anymore of his titles but it appears this was the only one. What I did find was he has written five titles in the Topliner series, two published as hardback and three as softback.
Topliners were originally published by PAN/Macmillan and then taken over solely by Macmillan. Of the five by Leach it is odd that ‘Answering Miss Roberts’ clearly says Macmillan on the back but has a PAN ISBN. The two hardback say the jackets are designed by a familiar name, ‘Young Artists’
Looking at a copy of ‘Options’ by Freda Bright I thought it looked different to the one I had. Turns out I was right in that there are two versions from 1882 where one has a photo of a lady in a hat on the front and a lady with a roll neck sweater on the back and reversed on the other. I’m left wondering why? Was it just a play on the title and how were they put on the shelves, a random number of each? PAN published some of her other titles in the 2000s.
In the 1970s PAN published or republished a series of titles they called the ‘PAN Classics’ of which I had 27 and an image of a variant of ‘Jane Eyre’. I still wanted this but after ordering a couple of times when I ended up with the one I’ve already in spite of the picture showing otherwise I thought I’d give it a rest until I spotted a copy not on a ‘stack them high, sell them cheap’ site. For once I actually got the right one plus a copy of ‘Bleak House’ which I’m really pleased to add to the page as I hadn’t seen it before. I’ve no clue as to the artist of the latter but at nearly 900 pages it is quite a door stop. I’m left wondering how many more there might be out there still to find?
Today (30th September) is a sad day in that it is the funeral of Pat, Kitty Peffer’s sister and Sam ‘PEFF’ Peffer’s sister in law. Pat never really got over the effects of COVID and complications arising from that. The funeral will take place in the small village where she lived and is for family and friends only.