Brief post today as my computer has finally died and I’m having to borrow one until my new one arrives. What I was going to talk about was the PAN series labelled ‘WESTERN‘ on the spine and having a hat logo on the back. I can’t update the page showing them at the moment so they are all labelled the same but here they are anyway.

A couple of months ago I mentioned the PAN ‘Great Western Novels’ series and managed to find five titles. I have now come across titles as part of PAN’s ‘Best Of American Crime Fiction’ series but so far have only found a few labelled as such from Erle Stanley Gardener, Hillary Waugh, Patricia Highsmith and Charles Williams. Ed McBain and John D MacDonald are also supposed to be part of the series but none of their books that I have state this, they just appear in a list on the back covers of other authors titles.

……. and talking of Gardner has anyone any more with this style of cover or any more in the series? I have found ‘The Case Of The Blonde Bonanza’ and ‘The Case Of The Mischievous Doll’ both listed as having 1975 PAN editions but I’ve not found an image of them.

I’d like to say thank you to Jack for telling me about two books I didn’t know had dust jackets. I think it is probably the usual story of PAN updating from old stock especially with these to make them match the others in the series. The two are from  “Battle Of Britain” namely T45 “Full Circle” with the Shepherd cover having a Glenn Steward jacket and “Eagle Day” with the Ettridge cover again with a Steward jacket.

Having had two family bereavements in very short succession I’ve not really had my mind on the blog for this week. I have managed to finish collecting a couple of sets published by Piccolo, one of which wasn’t helped by Amazon/Alibris/Abebooks/Biblio all having the same ISBN for two different titles and every time I got the one I didn’t want!

The ‘Dial’ series from Piccolo
The ‘Do You Know’ series from Piccolo

While looking through a selection of James Leasor covers I came across the French Edition Pocket of ‘Passport To Oblivion’ and felt the cover image looked vaguely familiar. I’ve thought this in the past but on further investigate would usually find they were just similar but this time these two covers are not just similar but identical. Both books were published in 1967 so which came first?

UPDATE Since adding this post I now have the French title in my hand and in the back it says it was published on 30th December 1967 and on the back cover says “Notre Couverture: © Pan Books Ltd. Loudres” so that probably answers the question but did they use anymore?

Now the winter is behind us and spring is on the way (!!!!) our thoughts turn to holidays abroad and the obligatory guide book and PAN was there with their PAN Languages series for travellers. I love the covers by Goran Lindgren which show either typical national costumes or racial stereotyping depend on your point of view.

I have found fifteen titles up to now but if anyone has others please let us know

Douglas Adams would have been 61 today. He was one of PAN’s best selling authors and winner of a Golden PAN Award.

I have often wondered if these titles from the 1960’s were intended to be part of a series but there is no reference to them being any different from other titles from the same time. Were they seen as ‘classics’, a precursor to ‘Bestsellers Of Literature’ and why is the logo moved to the left. Are you thinking ‘Where have I seen a similar design showing the publishers logo with a laurel wreath?’ Click on the question mark to find the answer from 1954.

These are all the titles with the PAN/laurel wreath logo on the spine that I can find in my collectionbut does anyone know of anymore?

Welcome to the New Year and the first blog of (hopefully) many for 2013 
     
Still finding bits of original artwork and this one seem appropriate for the occasion. It is for the 1971 edition of “The Roots Of Health” by Leon Petulengro (0330 025635) The artwork itself, unfortunately not signed, is in excellent condition but the transparent has darkened considerably.

This is the original artwork for a PAN title from 1971 which I recently acquired. Unfortunately it is not signed nor is the artist acknowledge on the book cover. It is part of a series of this authors work all done in a similar style. If you want to know the answer scroll down for the answer link.

As this will be the last blog before Christmas can I just wish all our readers a very happy one and a successful book buying New Year.
Click here to see from which book the artwork comes. I do have some more from this series which I will be adding when I find them and of course if you know who the artist might be I’m sure you’ll let me know!