The pop up bookshop has been in Wolverhampton for a few week and I’ve only just got round to visiting it where it has reverted to it’s old Location (next there February 3rd 2025) They have a lot of stock on shelves but sad to say not that many vintage paperbacks. They have been doing this for a few years now so they must know what sells and maybe it isn’t old paperbacks. I did pick up a few of titles as upgrades and a couple of first day covers with stamps painted by Brian Sanders. At 50p a cover with four stamps on each I couldn’t really leave them and my wife bought a postcard from 1883 for the same reason.

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A while ago I put on a display of my ‘bits and pieces’ which included a bookmark celebrating PAN’s 50th anniversary. They said it was 1947 to 1997 but I’ve always said it should have been 1944 to 1994 as PAN Books were incorporated on the 1st September 1944. PAN changed its mind this year when they decide to go with 1944 and made this year its 80th anniversary. Somewhere along the line my bookmark disappeared so I was very pleased to pick up another one. This is a guarantee the original will reappear in the next few weeks.

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While viewing another of Jules Burt’s excellent videos I noticed it included a copy of the ‘PAN Record’ number 37 which I had not seen before. Up to then I had only reached number 32 but now I know there are more to look out for. This made me do a quick search and I was very pleased to find another, number 34, that I hadn’t got. It turns out Jules and I had both bought our respective editions from the same seller. As always if anyone has a spare copy of the missing editions or can let me have scans of the pages please drop me an email. To view Jules’ video click HERE, the ‘PAN Record’ appears at about 42 minutes. More on number 34 next week.

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Doesn’t time fly and the ‘Paperback and Pulp Fair’ is almost upon on us now less than a month away on the 25th November to be held at the Holiday Inn, Bloomsbury, WC1N 1HT. This is always a well worth visiting event as it on at the same time as the Bloomsbury Ephemera Fair also selling paperbacks amongst many other things.

I’d not realised I hadn’t finished rescanning in covers and adding original artwork to all the Cecil Saint-Laurent titles I included last week. My excuse is that we were down in Kent for our Grandsons birthday plus being involved with the multimillion pound upgrade to our disused railway line which will become a surfaced walking/cycleway after we spent seven years doing over 80% of the work to get it ready. The contractors are now on site and hopefully will be finished by next year. I also found I had some non PAN Saint-Laurent titles in French from J’ai Lu, include another of his characters Captain Steel, as I like their cover style.

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After including some of the Topliner titles by Christopher Leach I noticed that ‘Answering Miss Roberts’ had also been published in the States by Scholastic. I’m not sure why but they retitled it to ‘Kate’s Story’ and flip the photo image on the cover. The other addition was in the PAN Study Aids Revision Cards. I have a few but came across the ones for ‘Computer Studies’ and ‘Accountancy’ I didn’t have. No problem with the former but many excuses from the seller as to why I haven’t got the latter so I have given up on that for now.

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Watching the new series of ‘All Creatures Great and Small’ on Channel 5 reminded me of the non vet trilogy from John Holgate as a “townie’ trying farming. I’ve not actually read them and from the look of my copies neither has any else but they are now on my ‘to read sometime’ shelf.

Jacques Laurent or Jacques Laurent-Cély, writer and journalist, was born in Paris on the 5th January 1919  and died in Paris on 29th  December 2000. He wrote numerous novels under several pen names with PAN publishing the titles where he used the name Cecil saint-Laurent. PAN seemed to like the novels featuring young ladies! A couple of dozen of his works were made into films including ‘Caroline Cherie’ in 1951.

Caroline Cherie appears in four titles including X102  ‘Caroline Cherie’ (incorrectly numbered as X104) X162 ‘The Loves of Caroline Cherie’, X282 ‘The Intrigues of Caroline Cherie’ and M42 ‘Caroline Cherie and Juan’ Looking at lists there appears to be more in this series but that could just be down to different translation of the titles from French. Clotilde appears in two titles namely M7 ‘Clotilde’ and X127 ‘Encore Clotilde’ while Bernadette is just in one this being M79 ‘Algerian Adventure’

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I wonder why there are not bidders for this?

HOMAGE An allusion or imitation by one artist to another. In 2020 Véhicule Press of Canada published under the imprint Ricochet Books ‘The Ravine’ by Phyllis Brett Young. They used the same artwork as the PAN edition and mention the cover was adapted by J W Stewart but not that the original was by Pat Owen whose signature is at the bottom right. The PAN edition G663 has the author as Kendal Young while the Ricochet edition uses her real name. PAN published three other titles by Young. There appears to be two variants , one with the extra writing as on the PAN edition and one without.

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PASTICHE An artistic work in a style that imitates that of another work, artist, or period. TV/Film extra of more that 2,000 appearances, John R Walker, has written several books and uses a style of cover similar to other publishers. The one I noticed was ‘Dial Extra for Murder’ from 2023 which is a pastiche of PAN. He also used Target and Coronet for other titles. He was voted ‘Britain’s Most Prolific Television Extra’ in 2013 and has been an extra for over 15 years so watch out Jules. He now works as 1st Assistant Director at the BBC.

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PAN published the ‘Avaryan Rising’ trio by Judith Tarr all with artwork by different artists namely Peter Mennim, Patrick Jones and Fred Gambino. I like the artwork but not they are in B format which doesn’t look right on the shelf with all the other titles. Tarr also wrote three more titles to make it six in the trio namely ‘Arrows of the Sun‘. ‘Spear of Heaven‘ and ‘Tides of Darkness’