If all goes according to plan this blog should launch itself as I am hoping to be down in Kent for a long weekend after having had a successful visit to London for the Paperback and Pulp Fair. The only problem might have been the availability of trains with a strike the day before causing disruption to the Sunday timetable. If I get there I will report back next week otherwise it will be a day out with the family somewhere but probably without books!
I was pleased to find this standee for ‘The Death of a President‘ by William Manchester and will admit to spending a bit more than I would have usually done but it was unusual. The one difference is that it doesn’t have ‘Z’ on the spine like the real thing. ‘Z’ means it cost 15/0
I am currently scanning in as many of the Georgette Heyer PAN covers from around the 80’s as I can find but I was interested to spot this “As Heyer’s popularity increased, other authors began to imitate her style. In May 1950, one of her readers notified her that Barbara Cartland had written several novels in a style similar to Heyer’s, reusing names, character traits and plot points and paraphrased descriptions from her books, particularly ‘A Hazard of Hearts’ which borrowed characters from ‘Friday’s Child’ and ‘The Knave of Hearts’ which took off ‘These Old Shades’. Heyer completed a detailed analysis of the alleged plagiarisms for her solicitors, and while the case never came to court and no apology was received, the copying ceased” I was sure PAN must have published the two Cartland titles mentioned as they had 133 titles in their list but seems I was wrong. I did find them in Arrow as a poor substitute although the covers are by William Francis Marshall who painted the ones for PAN and other publishers.
Our local library has been given dozens of Reader’s Digest condensed books which I’ve been going through to find matches to the untitled Jack McCarthy artwork I bought a while ago and so far have found three. What also struck me, and I think I’ve said this before, was the number of well known artists who also painted so many PAN covers. I did buy the ones that went with the artwork plus one which mentioned the upcoming publication of ‘JAWS 2′ by PAN. This year it is 45 years since it was published on the 19th April. After buying those four that’s a pound I’ll never see again!