PAN Fans Club

Let's talk about PAN paperbacks, the blog for those that do judge a book by its cover. Main site is at www.tikit.net or www.panfans.club

PAN Fans Club - Let's talk about PAN paperbacks, the blog for those that do judge a book by its cover. Main site is at www.tikit.net or www.panfans.club

The Young Lions by Irwin Shaw

I was just adding the 1970 edition of ‘The Young Lions’ today and cross referencing it with the other editions when I realised PAN had given this title 3 numbers over the years namely X11, M3 and E21. This started me trying to work out which title was published under the most different numbers. So far ‘The Young Lions’ wins but I’m sure there must be others. I’m going to add 1974 edition just for completeness to the series – when I can find it!

I was very pleased to see I was getting a lot of comments until I realised they were all the posting equivalent of spam. If you have sent a comment and its not appeared please send again and start it with something like ‘This is not Spam’ and I can edit the comment to remove it before approving.

Founder of PAN Books Alan Bott Part 2

Alan Bott was a WW1 flying ace and was shot down in Turkey. This scene is represented in a painting “The Bott Incident” by Stuart Reid in the collection of the Imperial War Museum.
 He also wrote about this experience and his subsequent escape from a POW camp in the book ‘Easter Nights and Flight’ which was originally published in 4 parts in the Harpers magazine from August 1919. It was also republished by Penguin in 1941.  He escaped with a fellow prisoner who also wrote about this incident in his book ‘Guests Of The Unspeakable’ by T W White.

I shall be updating the Alan Bott pages on the site shortly and will have a lot more details about this and other aspects of his life.

 

 

The Fountain Of Life

As mentioned previously, when talking about dust jackets, I referred to “The Fountain Of Life” by A G Prys-Jones. I have three versions of this, all dated 1949, but one is the hardback version and two paperback versions. One of the paperback versions is the same size any other PAN paperback, 112mm by 178mm, but the other is what I would call over-sized being 117mm by 182mm and having a dust jacket and a plain cover inside. It was only while showing someone these they said wasn’t the larger paperback the same size as the hardbacks text pages? On measuring them I found they were right so all I can think is that PAN had a lot of the hardback sized pages on which they just put a dust jacket, looking the same as the ‘normal’ paperback version, making a paperback rather than the red cloth hardback.

Dustjackets

I’m often asked about dust jackets or dust wrappers on the early PANs. Sometimes these were put on as a film tie in such as 48, or to make a dull cover more attractive on the shelf or, and I may be accused of being cynical, a crafty way of upping the price. I have several that are still 1/6 inside but 2/0 on the dustjacket. These are the PANs I have that have jackets 24, 27, 29, 36, 40, 44, 48, 68, 70, 72, 73, 74, 75, 77, 79, 80, 88, 90 and 138. Unusually I have two different dust jackets for 90 and disappointingly the cover and dust jacket of 138 are identical! Later PANs with dust jackets include X432 and E5 both as film tie-ins. PAN 194 seems to have a dust jacket but I’ll have another blog on that soon.

I was very pleased to get number 68 ‘Late and Soon’ in mint condition as I found it in a secondhand book shop where it appeared to be chaos but the owner knew exactly what he had got. It was not priced but I knew if I gave it to him on its own he notice and put on a hefty price so I ended up buying several from the 10p each shelves and putting 68 near to bottom. Luckily he just looked at the first few, decided they were all 10p and I got out of there very fast!

If you have any that aren’t included please let me, I just looked along the shelf so I may have missed some as well.

Founder of PAN Books Alan Bott Part 1

Alan Bott not only founded PAN Books but also started The Book Society, The Reprint Society, The British Guild Of Publishers, Avalon Press, jointly help to set up Folio but was also an author in his own right. Bott married Josephine Blumenfeld, daughter of Ralph Blumenfeld (editor of The Express for 30 years) and who was also an author herself having written several titles mainly of short stories such as ‘Shrimps For Tea’, ‘Pin A Rose On Me’ and ‘Heat Of The Sun’ One thing I would like help with is tracking down a picture of her as I’m not sure the one that comes up if you Google is actually her.


This is a proof copy of one of her books that was never published with this title although it contains a short story ‘Birds On The Roof’ which was published as part of a collection under than name.

What is the record for the same edition?

Fellow Panfan Dave Browining wrote “On Her Majesty’s Secret Service 1965 6th printing text block…. with a 1972 Still Life wrap…. so 7 years between print and sale. Don’t suppose you know who at Pan was responsible for these ‘still life’ covers? I really like them, often wonder who the models in the little B/W photographs were”
This made me double check my copy of “The Pan Book Of Card Games” dated 1960 but with an extra page in the back with an address for a website set up in 1996 so this makes 36 years. Can anyone beat that?

As for Dave’s question regarding the Fleming ‘still life’ covers I’ve never found any definitive answer as to who might have been responsible. Some say it was the photographer (who?) others the PAN art director at the time (possibly David Larkin) As for the girls in the photos of this series I often wondered if they were just pictures of celebrities of the time as I’m sure the one on FRWL is Sophia Loren and my wife reckons it’s Twiggy on Goldfinger. Can anyone provide any more information?

Finally while mentioning the ‘still life’ series my 6th printing from 1972 of Octopussy has a bound in tear off card for the Prudential. I’m often finding lose cards for the Prudential, Co-op or Creative Writing courses but this is only the second one I have with it actually attached. Again does anyone know any more?

Problem with search now fixed

Sorry if anyone found the search did not produce the results expected, usually saying nothing found. This was because when I moved to a new server half the links to pages from the catalogue refused to work even though they were shown on the server. I asked my hosting company to fix it which they failed to do so I found the only answer was to rename the pages, reset the links, send them up and all was well! The site has now be ‘spidered’ again so fingers crossed. Although it is now Sunday I do intend to add a new post every Monday when possible so keep visiting.

PAN’s Books Despatch Centres Part 1

Fellow Panfan Jules Burt sent me a scan of the back cover of the PAN Record Magazine number 20 from 1956 (I’m still after a copy if anyone has one to spare or any other PAN Records for that matter)
The scan shows the new despatch centre for PAN Books situated in West Molesey which set me wondering if it still existed? I used Google to ‘walk’ the streets but no luck so I decided to write to local organisations. After sending the 9th email and getting no response to any of them (I tried residents associations, history clubs, old folks homes, estate agents, schools and even the vicar) I tried ‘walking ‘ again and I don’t know how I missed it before but found it the second time. It is now a printers and I have an invite from the director to pop in for a look around if I’m in the area. This will probably be in the summer and I’ll add another post if I get there.

Now all I’ve got to do is identify all the books the ladies are packing in the lower photograph on the Record, I’ve managed three so far, answers to follow in a later posting.