Sunday, April 26, 2015

Pick a Peck of Penguin Punshons

In a writing career lasting over half a century, English mystery writer E. R. Punshon (1872-1956), published over fifty mainstream and mystery novels, but he became best known for his 35 Bobby Owen detective novels, which appeared between 1933 and 1956, the year of Punshon's death. Although they had a spottier publication record in the US, the Bobby Owen series was quite popular in the UK, having been well-launched by a series of laudatory reviews from Dorothy L. Sayers in the Sunday Times.  Like Sayers, Punshon also was an early, and active, member of the Detection Club. (He is one the most featured members in my CADS booklet "Was Corinne's Murder Clued? The Detection Club and Fair Play.")


Five of Punshon's Bobby Owen mysteries were reprinted as Penguin paperbacks, between 1948 and 1955.  After Punshon's death in 1956, however, his books, with the exception of a couple of English library market editions, fell entirely out-of-print until 2009, a year that saw the reappearance of Diabolic Candelabra, a Punshon novel I had included on an internet list of 150 personal favorites by Golden Age authors and which since has been reviewed very favorably on several blogs.  Dean Street Press now plans to reprint the Bobby Owen series, beginning with the first five books in the series, the same five Penguin reprinted sixty and more years ago.


I'll be having more to say about Punshon in the weeks to come, as well as other vintage mystery writers, of course.  I have just about finished the index to my book on the detective fiction of Henry Wade and GDH and Margaret Cole, which along with the introductions, has been taking time away from the blog.  But I expect to be back to it more regularly by next week.

8 comments:

  1. Love your blog! I am discovering so many new and different authors and titles. You almost make me wish I were 50 years old so that I could have enjoyed these discoveries when they first appeared. But then I would be 120 now, so my wish is absurd! Well, thanks for the great postings! Yours truly at Crimes in the Library is enjoying all of them.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Thanks, RT. I often think how amazing it would have been to have been around when all these books were actually appearing for the first time. Although of course there was some down side to living in the 1930s as well, I think we can say.

      Delete
  2. Another golden age detective writer I've never sampled! I must check him out.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. The first five in the Dean Street Press edition should be out soon.

      Delete
  3. Great news that they are also reprinting these - the Dean Street bunch seem like a very decent lot!

    ReplyDelete
  4. I have read a couple of these in old green Penguins, but had no idea there were so many. Some catching up to do...

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Yup, and Dorothy L. Sayers seems to have read the whole run of Bobby Owen mysteries (she died the year after Punshon passed away). I know the first ten will be reprinted this year by Dean Street Press and I hope the intros will put him in a good Golden Age historical context.

      Delete