Amongst the many sketches I have in Hans Helweg’s folders are several for Nevil Shute covers. I’m starting to compile a page featuring Hans’ Shute covers and the preliminary sketches and paintings that go with them which can be seen HERE. With them not being signed, well not obviously although he did put in the occasional HH, I’ve used the sketches, paintings I have or where in his workshop, the printers proofs he had on file and his list he made of the covers he could remember. I was pleased to find X117 was one of his as he had a printers proof for the 1962 edition and in his list he says the 1968 version is listed as a Redo.
A while ago, while featuring Ed McBain I mentioned that he was really Evan Hunter and PAN only published one title under this name, ‘Nobody Knew They Were There’ Now I know you’ll find this hard to believe(!) but I was wrong and have found another one and I think there may be more plus he also wrote as Richard Marsten so ‘The Spiked Heel’ was another published by PAN. It says ‘Come Winter‘ is the sequel to ‘Last Summer’ although this latter title wasn’t published by PAN.
After including the obituary of David Larkin from the Macmillan magazine last week, this issue also included a write up on ‘Cover Me’ by Colin Larkin published by ‘TELOS’
It nice to keep in touch with artists and in this case it’s Cecil Vieweg. I recently came across his original artwork for one of the 32 cards inserted into packs of cigars. There is a very fetching photo of Cecil on the back of the folder with him holding another of the cards. I have added the artwork and the card (although not PAN) to the bottom of his page. Cecil has also promised me a CD of some of his preliminary sketches so looking forward to that arrive soon.
For a long time I’ve tried to track down Pat Owen once resorting to ringing all the P Owens along the south coast without success but I did have some interesting conversations! . Fortunately Kathy Ford, Sam Peffer’s great niece, pointed me in the right direction and if I had known his first name was actually Cyril I’d have found him much sooner. Unfortunately Pat passed away on the 26th May 2017 but I am in contact with Sue, his widow, who sent me an a article that appeared on the news letter of the ‘Guild of Aviation Artist’ of which Pat was a member. I hope they don’t mind me including it here. I need to sort out a page for him and will put one on the site ASAP but in the meantime HERE is the link to an article featuring Pat and Sam which I put on the site quite a while ago with kind permission of Steve Chibnall.
As I have mentioned previously David Larkin passed away last year. His brother Colin wrote an obituary for the Macmillan newsletter which I am now allowed to include here as it has now been published. Thanks to Colin for letting me have a copy. Click HEREto view as a PDF
Although I have yet to read all of a novel by Jackie Collins I have mentioned her several times as she was one of PAN’s best selling authors receiving 9 (?) ‘Golden PAN Award’s for selling a million copies each of 9 titles. I am currently trying to track down all the editions with covers by George Sharp from around the late 1980s but again the old problem of no image from a seller and the same text block and date used for several editions. These are ones I have or have found on the web so far HERE but if you can help with others please get in touch. Some of the dates also need double checking as they are outside the range for this series. I contacted George to ask him about them and he said “As for the covers I did for Jackie Collins I can only remember one or two of them. My son Ben has the original artwork of one hanging in his office. I like it a lot! Jackie was a most likeable person, very relaxed and natural. Everyone liked her” Photo below shows George on Jackie’s left.
While going through the list of Hans Helweg covers I found one listed as ‘Castle Ugly’ which was not a familiar title. I know the list says they are PANs but I have also found there are a few from other publishers and magazine illustrations. Luckily I found one copy online from Maurice atZardozand was really pleased with the condition when it arrive but a bit disappointed with the artwork on the cover although it is clearly signed H.Helweg so Hans liked it as he didn’t sign all his work. As far as I can tell PAN only published this one title from Mary Ellin Barrett (born November 25th 1926) who was the daughter of composer Irving Berlin.
This weeks sketches from Han’s folders are for ‘I Leap Over the Wall’by Monica Baldwin of which PAN published many editions with cover variants. Han’s cover goes with the 1971 edition.
I’m always on the look out for more variants of Jack Higgin’s covers and spotted these two on an Indian website where they were shown as ‘SOLD’ I’ve not see either before as ‘A Season in Hell’ usually has a blue background) and ‘Confessional’ is a new one altogether. Just wondering if anyone has got either so I can get a good quality scan and publication date?
Always a pleasant surprise to find a book that you get for a few pence turns out to be signed as in this case one by Penelope Lively.
While going through Hans Helweg’s drawings one that jumped out was for ‘Immortal Queen’by Elizabeth Byrd. I have included two but I’m not sure if one is for the same book or if it reminds me of another cover I’ve not recalled it yet. Sarah Elizabeth Evelyn Byrd was born on December 8th 1912 in St. Louis, Missouri and died on May 11th 1989 in Tucson, Arizona. She had many jobs in broadcasting and journalism before moving to Aberdeen, Scotland. She wrote 13 books altogether of which PAN published 7.
FOOTNOTE: I bought a book from Antikvárium in Hungary and after a couple of weeks received an email to say due to the rising levels of COVID in the UK and to protect their workers they were no longer posting to here. I emailed back to say “Sorry, what?” but no reply. Am I missing something?
UPDATE As I was having problems with the default ‘comments’ option I have added in ‘wpDiscuz’ which appears to be working and all previous comments are now showing. This uses the existing ‘comments’ button but has a squillion more options so it will be a work in progress while I fine tune it. Reasonably happy with it so far apart from everyone seems to get the PAN Avatar!
Three blogs ago I posted a ‘rough’ of a cover by Hans Helweg and asked if anyone recognised it? Well I very pleased to say Tony Whitehorn emailed; “On your 28 Dec blog you showed a rough of a Helweg cover and asked if anyone could identify which book it was for. In case no one else has done so yet, I can tell you, because I wrote the blurbs for it and still have the cover, though not the book. It was for ‘TO LIVE IN DANGER’ by Bryan Magee (Pan X184), which I remember as being a good thriller” Tony was featured in another blog HERE
I have been collecting up the Piccolo books I have called ‘FLASH’ titles as they have one across the cover. They are mainly jokes, riddles, limericks, poems and ‘funny’ newspaper cuttings and can be seen HERE. There are several other titles in the same genre but without the ‘flash’ and I’ve added a couple on the page. There are a few more titles I will add if I come across them but they are not that high on my priority list!
I was really pleased to find some preliminary sketches from Hans Helweg for his Wiibur Smithcovers. I’ve added them to the page I made for him and his ‘Golden Pan Award’ I also found three photographs of Smith in his study that I added at the bottom and if you look carefully you can just about see the award on his desk.
Denys Parsons collected together items from papers of mistakes, misquotes and double entendres. He was the grandson of actor-manager Sir Herbert Beerbohm Tree. and originally worked in the field of scientific research and invention. He then became a film-maker and finally ended up as the Press Officer for the British Library. Click HERE to see the his PAN/Piccolo titles.
PAN published four of the thirty two ‘Miss Silver’ titles by Patricia Wentworth including ‘Pilgrim’s Rest’from 1953 with artwork by Sax (Rudolph Michael Sachs) Hodder reused it for their 2007 edition of the same title but did not really do it justice. The other titles are ‘Miss Silver Comes to Stay’, ‘The Clock Strikes Twelve’ and ‘Grey Mask’
This week is the last of the Hans Helweg artworks I got back in October but I do have a lot more of his sketches for covers that I will add if I can identify them. The artwork is for ‘Belle Catherine’ by Juliette Benzoni from 1968 for which Hans got paid £58.16. He is also painted the cover for ‘Catherine and Arnaud’ as in this photo I took in his studio. I’m not sure who painted the later edition of ‘Belle Catherine’ but it looks like it could be John Raynes?
Having acquired, over the years, several boxed sets containing different numbers of titles from the ‘The Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy’I was pleased to find the above on a site in the States as I didn’t have one with just the first three titles. I’m not sure of the exact date of publishing although it will be ’42’ years in 2021 since PAN first published book one on the 12th October 1979.
Another boxed set but with a different subject this time, namely cooking and it contains three titles in the ‘A Taste of England’ series of recipe books. They appear to be the standard UK PAN editions but put in a slip case for an American company ‘LANDS’ END DIRECT MERCHANTS, INC’ with a trade mark registered in 1984.
This weeks artwork by Hans Helweg is ‘Death Is Our Playmate’by Patrick Turnbull. I also found a few preliminary sketches by Hans to go with it. I found a photo of Patrick in ‘Argosy’ magazine plus just a few details of his life. Patrick Edward Xenophon Turnbull was born on 17 March 1908 in Barberton, Mpumalanga, South Africa, his father, Hugh, was 28 and his mother, Ethel, was 28. He spent many years in the army off and on and was married four times and had three children. He died on 23 March 1986 in Chilton, Oxfordshire at the age of 78.
I hope you all managed to have a sort of festive time in spite of the current restrictions and got a lot of the presents you were expecting? I recently couldn’t resist 36 small artworks by Glenn Steward to go with two ‘Camberwick Green’ titles and thanks to my wife being the generous lady she is, she bought me 40 custom made frames as my Christmas present. They needed to be made to measure as there was nothing their size readily available. I have to admit they do look good and replaced several frames of postcards of pulp covers with dubious images maybe not suitable for our Grandson to ask about if he is ever allowed to come up here! Glenn Steward did many covers for PAN of which I have a few but don’t really know much about him so if any relatives are out there I’d love to add at least one photo of him.
Now going through the folders of sketches from Hans Helweg and there are some real ‘crackers’ to use a festive metaphor. I’ll be adding them to the book covers and artwork if I have it and put up a link on here to make it easier to find. There are also some that look familiar but just can’t quite bring it to mind such as this example. Can any one help?
One disappointment was the supposedly six book boxed set of PAN Books Sherlock Holmes titles I found online in the States. The webpage said it was this, when it arrived the label on the package said it was this as did the invoice so how come it was just one hardback copy of ‘Memoirs’ from Reader’s Digest, no connection to PAN at all? I should have know as fellow PAN Fan Stuart Radmore emailed to say he didn’t think PAN published ‘Casebook’ or ‘Memoirs’ as did Alysoun at PAN but we held out the hope that they might be Canadian editions but unfortunately not. On the plus side Stuart gave me the names of all artists for the covers PAN did publish plus I did get my money back, no quibble but I would rather have had what I thought I had ordered. It makes me wonder if this box set did actually exist at one time.
What a year it has been! I’d like to say not being able to get out and visit places has saved a bit of money but I think I’ve actually spent more stuck in front of the computer searching online. On the plus side I have been in contact with some very interesting people who are trying to keep themselves safe as well and are hoping, like me, for the vaccine in the New Year.
This weeks Hans Helweg artwork is for ‘Rogue Roman’ by Lance Horner. Just looking at it through the overlay which has really gone brown you don’t appreciate the how vivid the colours have stayed over the last fifty years. I have also been lucky enough to get a preliminary sketch and possible alternative cover which I’ve put on the page.
I recently got a unread boxed set of Judy Blume titles in Piccolo editions with most of the covers by artist Yvonne Gilbert. Click HERE to see them. I emailed Yvonne and she very kindly replied “Nice to meet you! Wow! Thank you. How on earth did you find them? My goodness—that was so long ago. I don’t know if I’d even recognise them these days. I vaguely remember them and you’re probably right about the date. The artwork probably never came back to me because most of it didn’t in those days—there’s certainly no trace of it now. The 3 titles sound somewhat familiar but it was pre-computer days so I have no record. You have reminded me how much has changed—posting artwork, having to take photographic slides, never seeing the artwork again! I feel bad that I can’t be more helpful Tim. I had a look at your site—I love those pulp fiction covers. I would love to have had some of that artwork!”
I’m pleased to announce that this website has come of age being 21 years old on the 16th December. When I set it up back in 1999 it was cutting edge with frames, a higher than usual resolution and search etc. but time has moved on and every year I say I will update it BUT every year I manage to find ‘new’ old bits and pieces to distract me so the update gets put on hold. On the plus side a lot of the covers are now at a much higher resolution and size as I tend to rescan if I mention them in a blog but on the negative side it’s a really boring job! Maybe the update will never happen as I am a firm believer in if it ain’t broken then don’t fix it, it’s just a bit clunky and showing it’s age, rather like me. Anyway here’s a joke from the latest edition of ‘Private Eye’ which amused me as it is pertinent in the trying times.
After trying for many years I’ve managed to obtain, thanks to Sam Peffer’s niece Kathy, two videos relating to the infamous Bonhams auction of ‘Original Paperback Cover Artwork from the PAN Archives’ held of 15th October 1991. They are self explanatory so I’ll just put the two links to ‘YouTube’ where I uploaded them for everyone to find.
I captured this screen shot of the artist outside Bonhams but there is still one I have not managed to identify.
They are from left to right Rex Archer, Hans Helweg, Sam Peffer, ?, Edward Mortelmans and Pat Owen. Anyone help with a name as I’m sure I vaguely recognise him?
The author featured this week is George Macdonald Fraser. I recently picked up a few bits and pieces from his estate on eBay including a letter to him from PAN plus a PAN printers proof. As I have the other items I include them on his page although not PAN but later titles PAN didn’t publish. George Macdonald Fraser’s extensive library was sold at auction and a catalogue can be viewed online by following the link HERE
NEWS JUST IN It was reported that John Le Carre died on Saturday. I’ll rescan all his covers for a tribute soon. From the web; “LONDON (AP) — John le Carre, a spy turned novelist who became the preeminent writer of espionage fiction in English, has died at age 89 Le Carre’s literary agency, Curtis Brown, said Sunday that he died in Cornwall, southwest England on Saturday after a short illness. The death was not related to COVID-19. Born David Cornwell, le Carre worked for Britain’s intelligence service before turning his experience into fiction in works including “Tinker, Tailor, Soldier Spy” and “The Spy Who Came in from the Cold.”
Hans Helweg’s original artwork resumes next week. plus may have some great related news if the postman delivers by then.
