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| a palpable sense of the sinister |
Coming next month are Punshon's Bobby Owen mysteries from the 1940s, an interesting period for the series, when the UK was bedeviled by war and postwar austerity. (And people think times are bad now!)
This was also a period when a major American publisher, Macmillan, picked up Punshon, producing much more attractive editions than what Punshon's longtime and steadfast English publisher, Gollancz, was putting out at the time.
Among book collectors Gollancz's so-called "Yellow Peril" dust jackets has an infamous reputation. Noted publisher Victor Gollancz was not a believer in using attractive jacket art--or any art to speak of, really--to sell books.
Gollancz did believe in blurbs, however, and typically the Punshon novels published by the firm would bear Dorothy L. Sayers' famous "What is distinction?" blurb, drawn from a 1933 rave review of Punshon's first Bobby Owen novel, Information Received. Sometimes other blurbists of eminence were used by Gollancz, such as John Betjeman (see below), who later became Poet Laureate.
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| Nice Blurbs! |
Macmillan, on the other hand, offered pleasing cover designs by prominent jacket artists of the time. Their books were also much better made. On account of paper shortages, Gollancz editions at this time used tissue thin, acidic paper and microscopic print.
Reading Forties Gollancz books is not the aesthetic pleasure a devoted reader would like, their merit notwithstanding; but happily these new Punshon editions, which will be available both in paper and digital versions, will offer a great improvement on that score!
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| classy cover art |
Additional discussion of these matters, and more, will be found in the introductions to the new Punshon reissues by Dean Street Press.
Gollancz has an infamous reputation among book collectors for its unattractive, so-called "Yellow Peril" dust jackets
ReplyDeleteOh, no, no, no, no: please believe me when I say you've got this completely wrong. Just as, back in the day, the green Penguins were a magnet, so were the Gollies yellowjackets. You'd go into a (UK) bookstore or library, look around, and assume (usually rightly) that anything in Penguin green or Golly yellow was worth your while. Like the green Penguins, the Golly yellowjackets were a guarantee (almost universally) of quality.
I think we need to distinguish between book collectors, to which I referred, and book buyers. Look at those Gollancz Punshons, is that anything about that jacket which would excite you as a book collector?
DeleteI agree, though, of course Gollancz deserved a good reputation, like Penguin, for quality of authors. And the yellow of course stood out in the stall, like the green. There was Hodder too, with the yellow color scheme.
I'll have to dig up a Barry Pike quotation on the aesthetics of Gollancz jackets, he's very critical! And the wartime Gollnacz book quality of production is spectacularly bad, even by wartime standards. I've suffered enough eye strain reading those books to know! ;)
Barry is classically blunt here:
ReplyDelete"....so sparing them from the lurking yellow plague that was just about to engulf Gollancz fiction and make artists expendable."
"Neither of his [English] publishers gave Punshon attractive dust-wrappers....The Gollancz series had the inevitable yellow jackets, enlivened only by a resounding quotation from Miss Sayers...."
But I admit that I almost entirely missed the Gollancz era on a personal level. I think I may have bought a Gollancz Emma Lathen or two in the 1990s. So I never developed any personal attachment to them.
Penguins now, I know quite a few collectors there. But then penguins are just adorable!
ReplyDeleteI'm looking forward to the new artwork and improved print! I've never read any Punshon, thrilled to be able to add a 'new' old author to my list. Thanks for the heads up :-)
ReplyDeleteThey will be easier on the eyes than the Gollancz wartime editions! though, by the way, I made a slight edit to make clear to people I'm talking about the jackets and paper and print quality, not Gollancz generally. Of course Gollancz was a very prominent publisher, deservedly so. In the mystery field specifically they had quite a good stable of authors over many decades.
DeleteI think we need to distinguish between book collectors, to which I referred, and book buyers.
ReplyDeleteAh -- fair enough. I'm not really a book collector myself, although very occasionally I'll pick something up just because I like the edition. Oddly enough, I have shelled out for the occasional yellowjacket on this principle, but that really has more to do with the fact that they had such a formative influence on my youth than any aesthetic preference.
And it seems I'm not the only one. When Gollies started their SF Masterworks series of classic reprints in (I think) the 1990s, they reverted to the yellowjacket style, presumably with the intention of exploiting nostalgia as a marketing tool.
Yes, I think I have one or two from that time. And you're right, Victor Gollancz wanted his boooks to stand out--and they did, without recourse to artists.
DeleteDoes this mean DIABOLIC CANDELABRA (1942) finally has been reprinted by Dean Street Press? Been waiting for what seems like forever. :^) That will always be my favorite Punshon book. Nothing I've read of his has matched it in terms of creepy other worldliness and originality. So glad many more will be able to enjoy it now since the Ramble House edition reprinted back in 2013 is not available as an eBook and everyone in the universe seems to prefer digital books these days.
ReplyDeleteYup, finally we get to Diabolic Candelabra, the book that started it all. Such an inspired tale. I recently wrote an introduction for that one and of course mentioned your blog review of it.
DeleteBy the way, I noticed when rereading for the intro that the first chapter of the Ramble House edition had transposed pages, so stuck to the original Gollancz edition, which has the tiniest print I have ever seen on a twentieth-century book. But even with that terrible tiny type and awful acidic paper I enjoyed rereading the story. It's a winner that does justice to the author's unique voice within mystery fiction.
I like PUnshon's work having discovered it recently in ebook form. He's not your average run of the mill golden age writer - he has a creepy quotient that I kind of like. I really enjoyed FOUR STRANGE WOMEN.
ReplyDeleteYes, Yvette, I think that is true, P feels like more of an original, like Gladys Mitchell, say. It's nice to find one of these older writers who is somewhat outside the run of the mill.
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