I was in communication with Derek Stowe recently as I had picked up a copy of Peter Benchley’s “The Island” from 1980 which has a cover credited to a Ron Kirby but is there more than one? Now I know Josh Kirby’s name was really Ronald and Derek mentioned working with him in the mid 50’s on “Authentic Science Fiction Monthly” Derek said

“Yes, my friend Ron Kirby was known by many as ‘Josh’. He was an incredible intelligent guy – always interested in the ‘The other World’ the world of the fantastic. Among other things he was always wary of cats as he believed that they made you stroke them to gather electricity for the Moon! He acquired the nickname ‘Josh’ while studying at the Liverpool City School of Art. He said ” Some wag thought I painted like Sir Joshua Reynolds” He thought that his first paperback was a PAN in 1956 of Ian Fleming’s MOONRAKER, and first magazine cover was for the Authentic Science Fiction Monthly ( March 1957) illustrating a book by Douglas West – Dead Weight. His official list of covers runs to more than 400. For all his vauge and dreamy personality, he was a great influence on me – he seemed to always know the answer to life”

I have all of the 6 covers Ron/Josh did for “Authentic Science” and they can be seen if you click HERE while the 2/3(?) painted by Derek can be seen HERE.

Between 1982 and 1984 PAN printed the four titles in the Julian May “Saga of the Exiles“ series namely “The Many Coloured Land”, “The Golden Torc”, The Non-Born King” and “The Adversary”. They all had covers in a similar style by the artist Stephen Bradbury. If you put the covers side by side you’ll find that the images do not quite join together whereas on the outside of the 1983 (first 3 titles) and 1984 (all 4 titles) boxed sets they do which prompted me to contact Stephen Bradbury and he kindly replied and said

Hi Tim, Thanks for your email.
The answer to your question is, the artworks were painted separately over a period of years. Gary (Day-Ellison) and I basically decided to keep the central horizon about the same level with each painting. We knew it was going to be a series, so we developed a ‘series look’ to the jackets from day one. The overall use of slightly different blue colours was a conscious thing. The success of the series blew us away, so I think by book 3, “The Non-Born King”, the marketing department decided to photographically merge the artworks. They were initially used this way on large billboards and giant posters, which I have copies of. The same trick was used when book 4 “The Adversary” came out. The large billboards looked quite dramatic. Each Julian May book got high in to the top ten , in the book charts. It was a great success for Gary, myself and Pan Books.

This was followed by “Intervention”, “Jack the Bodiless”, “Diamond Mask” and “Magnificat” They were a few years later, and I decided use faces of the characters in the sky. I knew the pages of the last book, “Magnificat” go right back to the beginning of “The Many Coloured Land”, so I contrived to get the artwork to do the same trick ! Overall, I tied to keep the artwork for the series quite elusive ! To draw people in, but not give anything away about the stories. It seemed to work. Intervention, is just that ! An eagle flying along , suddenly is intervened with. An intervention, unlooked for. I did this with all the covers  Quite surreal, and quite sophisticated , for the time. 

If you see the American covers for the same series, they are a bit cringeworthy. Gary and I really did create a magical format. I have the boxed set , you mentioned, and yes, they were linked by photographic means. The Many Coloured Land was my first book cover, and I will always be eternally grateful to Gary for giving me my first book  cover  and my first break in to illustration and publishing. I wouldn’t be here now, if it wasn’t for Gary.. He has great insight.

I hope that answers your question Tim. Use my email address to contact me.

Keep in touch

Stephen

I greatly admire Stephen’s work and will be adding more covers in the next few weeks. From reading reviews the books were very well received but from the excellent condition of both of my boxed sets these books appear to have never been removed!

Following on from my reference to how the painting for “Testament” by George Sharp was turned upside down I also found the same image used by Chatto and Windus for their hardback edition. The gun is again shown in yet another position to the original and George tells me he didn’t get paid for this edition! “First Blood” from 1973 has a cover in a very similar style but George says it is not his and I can’t find a name as yet.

I often wonder if it was the case with other covers that artists didn’t get paid twice especially ones like the Shute series from 1974 by Roger Coleman when they were used in the USA by Ballantine with whom PAN, I think, had a link through Ian and Betty Ballantine (Ian Ballantine was connected with Penguin in the late 40’s but there was a falling out)Another series where the same covers appeared on the UK and USA editions are titles by Jean Plaidy used by PAN in the 60/70’s and by Putnams in the 70’s. I’ve put a few HERE. I can find no reference to a cover artist for PAN editions so I bought the hardback Putnam edition of ‘Murder Most Royal’ as US publisher usually credit the artist but unfortunately not in this case. Does anyone know who he/she/they might be? The shield above appears on the title page of the PAN Plaidy “Stuart Series” and is by the late PAN cover stalwart Val Biro.