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

What’s it all about?

Edenbridge
This is the blog for website www.tikit.net a site for all those interested in the Golden Age of PAN Paperbacks, from 1945 to about the 1970’s. It originally started as a challenge to get at least one copy of the quirkily numbered PAN titles but has grown to include later ones with ISBNs or possibly part of a series or just because I like the cover. You may even find some covers from rival publishers if they took my fancy. It’s my site so I’ve decided I can change the rules a I go along!

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Mark Wilkinson
Mark Wilkinson
January 31, 2024 7:15 pm

….Just looked at the back of the board and it says hans helweg in small writing – do you know his dates?
all the best Mark

Mark Wilkinson
Mark Wilkinson
January 31, 2024 6:55 pm

Hi Tim,
Steve Chibnall suggested I contact you. I work for Sworders auctioneers and we have one Pan original artwork coming up in our summer Out of the Ordinary auction. It’s for the 1963 re-issue of Steinbeck’s ‘Sweet Thursday’ it’s the cover where a girl is wearing an orange dress and leaning up against a tree stump with two men in the background.
I’m keen to know who the cover artist is? and if possible his dates.
Steve suggested Ben Ostrick but he was not sure.
all the very best,
Mark Wilkinson

Neil Taylor
Neil Taylor
January 22, 2024 2:27 pm

Did anyone catch ‘Look at Life’ on Talking Pictures TV on Saturday(short documentaries from the 50s/60s)? It started by talking about a paperback publisher which I thought might be Pan but turned out to be Penguin – still interesting though. Main point of interest though was a clip from a printers which I’m sure contained the image seen in this column in Feb ’22 of a sheet of covers for Moonraker coming off the press.

Neil Taylor
Neil Taylor
October 18, 2023 12:45 pm

Surprising that my first contact with this site is about something other than James Bond but anyway…
I notice that Pan published The Untouchables by Eliot Ness and Oscar Fraley in 1960 but according to a Hodder & Stoughton edition that I picked up in a 2nd hand bookshop years ago it was first published in Britain by Bailey Bros. & Swinfen in 1967 and the Hodder paperback the same year. Any ideas about how that came about?

Neil Taylor
Neil Taylor
October 19, 2023 1:25 pm
Reply to  tikitnet

Hi Tim, thanks for getting back to me. I suppose that would be it though it’s a bit misleading. I thought it strange that The Untouchables didn’t appear in Britain until 1967 so the Pan edition answers that.
Kind regards
Neil

Avril Bath
Avril Bath
August 28, 2022 4:01 pm

Hi I am enquiring on behalf of my father in law, George Bath as to the availability of 1st edition pan books from 1947 – 1950. Please can you let me know. Many thanks.
Avril Bath

Lyn Kirby
Lyn Kirby
February 21, 2022 6:59 pm

I started work at Pan Books in 1978 as a lowly Production Assistant, then graduated to Cover Controller. I used to spend a lot of time in that dusty basement with all,of those old artworks. Some of them were still reprinted in my day. I used to work with Stan Boswarva, Ken Hatherley in the art department, Dennis Crutcher and David Bleasdale were my bosses. Lots of other lovely people and some I was a bit scared off…..

Lyn Kirby
Lyn Kirby
February 23, 2022 10:51 am
Reply to  tikitnet

Happy to help with whatever I can. Don’t forget, I was practicaly the lowest of the low there but it was a great place to work back in the day!

Lyn Kirby
Lyn Kirby
February 23, 2022 8:59 pm
Reply to  tikitnet

I like to think so!

Rog Peyton
Rog Peyton
December 28, 2020 6:32 pm

Hi – You ask for more info on Pan cover artists. My interests are with 1950s cover artists and I believe that the 1951 edition of Zane Gray’s “Forlorn River” (Pan 175) is by James E McConnell. I currently have details of about 500 covers he did. Best wishes, Rog Peyton

Sandy Brewer
Sandy Brewer
November 25, 2020 9:19 pm

Hello, Your website mentioned Peter McGinn formerly of Edinburgh and now living in Sarasota, Florida. I would like to contact Peter about Tom Curr, Captain of the 46th Company of Edinburgh Boys’ Brigade. I am writing Tom’s biography – more a cultural history – but another ex-BB member has told me that a painting by Tom of a drummer boy is of Peter. Please can you help?

Best wishes,
Sandy

books `n` bits (john)
books `n` bits (john)
January 7, 2019 11:42 am

books `n` bits is a recently opened shop in horley surrey. i have a collection of about 800 pan paperbacks from no.1 to about x600 which is about 20 years. included in this collection are many of the fleming titles. please contact me if this is any use to you in any way. regards john

Tony Whitehorn
Tony Whitehorn
July 2, 2020 3:27 pm
Reply to  tikitnet

Hi Tim, Have just discovered your site. Thought you might be interested to know something about the team who produced the Pan covers at 8 Headfort Place in the 1960s. I was the chief blurb writer there from January 1962 to November 1964, having moved to Pan from Panther. I wrote about two-thirds of the front and back cover copy, Simon Bott, Alan Bott’s son, the other third. I shared a small office with Stan Boswarva, who co-ordinated copy, artwork, design and lettering. (Bos, as he was always known, was a heavy smoker – 60 a day – and in those smoking-OK days and that confined fug-filled space I, a non-smoker, became a passive one for nearly three years.) Bos was answerable to the editorial director, Clarence Paget (of whose judgement in every aspect of paperback publishing the whole team had a low opinion, to put it politely).

Once the copy was written Bos would get the artists’ agent Tony Bowen-Davies in to commission one of his artists to produce the cover painting. When copy and artwork were ready for several books, Edward Young (who you know of as the man who designed the Penguin logo and as a war hero who wrote the 1000th Pan, One of Our Submarines) would come in to discuss them and take copies away to design the front and back covers. Finally, a lettering artist (we’re talking pre-Letraset days) would inscribe title and author for the front cover panel.

A few of the Raymond Hawkey Bond cover designs were realised and photographed in the office. For On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, for example, table salt was used for the snow, red ink for the blood and Bos’s wedding ring for the ring.

All of the people I knew at Pan in those days that I have been able to track down are now dead: the chairman Aubrey Forshaw; his son, Simon Master, who was learning the ropes there and went on to become a big cheese at Random House; Clarence Paget; Simon Bott; Bos; Tony Bowen-Davies; Edward Young; Paul Chevalier, the PR man, whose novel I Can See You But You Can’t See Me was published by Pan under his pseudonym Eugene George, his middle two names; sales director Ralph Vernon-Hunt, who posed for a cover Bond; export manager Robin Neillands, later to become a military historian; and no doubt others.

I left Pan to join an American publishing company, the Greystone Corporation. Six months later Pan asked me to return, at a much higher salary, because they were dissatisfied with my successor. I turned down the offer. They say copywriters at ad agencies are burned out after a year. After three years of constantly trying to think of new selling approaches for books I didn’t have any more blurbs left in me.

Belinda Booth
Belinda Booth
March 17, 2018 7:57 pm

My uncle was Geoffrey Hedger-Wallace who wrote ‘End Quiet War ‘ I don’t know a lot about him as I only met him a few times ! He was one of two children born to Alexandra A R hedger-Wallace who had two children as a single parent in the late 1920’s !!! and my mum was fostered and Geoff was raised by his aunt. He never married but was well traveled and did lots of theatre , knitting pattern covers and tv work – famous in our family for being killed in first ten mins of most films !!! It seems you have a copy of his book and the contract ? I would be interested I seeing a copy !of the contract … I believe I have a signed copy of the book somewhere but would be interested in finding out more about him ?

Lobster
Lobster
December 12, 2017 12:42 pm

Hi, I am trying to find an email address to contact you about some covers, can you please help?

Simon Wood
Simon Wood
April 21, 2017 9:53 am

I was the promotions copywriter at Pan (at Cavaye Place) from 1979-1984. Easily the best company I worked for.

Jacqui Graham
Jacqui Graham
February 1, 2024 7:56 pm
Reply to  tikitnet

I’ve only just come across this site (is it still going??)
I was the “six foot blonde chief press officer” referred to in the 1983 Private Eye article you posted.
I worked with Simon Wood, among countless other brilliant people, from 2 Jamuary 1978 to September 2010. I could wrte a book about it!

Lyn Kirby
Lyn Kirby
February 21, 2022 6:54 pm
Reply to  Simon Wood

I remember you Simon Wood – I was the lowly production assistant, later Cover Controller Lyn Kirby

scott herbertson
scott herbertson
September 24, 2016 6:28 pm

Just bought a bunch of very nice condition 1940s Pan books (£1 each for 20 of them from a local charity shop) and thanks for this site which provides useful reference and cataloguing information

As an aside my brother Craig and I attended the World Horror Convention in Brighton in 2010,my brother having written a story for Pan Horror way back in the late 70s. He was on a panel with many of the other authors and they discussed the publishing quirks of Pan, and especially of Herbert Van Thal, the editor. There’s a picture of my brother and some of the other authors and a little bit about the panel here: http://www.christopherfowler.co.uk/blog/2010/03/29/pan-fans-gather-in-brighton/

chris
chris
October 18, 2015 8:39 pm

Is this site still active? I have about 300 of the first pan series up to no 443 and a similar amount of great Pans up to GP416, some multiple copies.

peter griffin
peter griffin
August 19, 2014 9:50 am

Just found G410 from 1964 with the cover used on X615. Had you known about this second edition G410?

peter
peter
March 25, 2014 10:31 am

Is there a scan of the pan dust jackets available. I am sure I have seen one but have lost the link.
Best wishes

peter griffin
peter griffin
February 20, 2014 6:03 pm

Is it possible to list/find the actual dates that the cover alters for eg the Bond series.
This would save the frustration of buying a copy of say Dr No only to find that an earlier publication date exists for that particular cover.

Bart
Bart
November 17, 2013 9:21 pm

A wonderful site and blog, very interesting and useful. I adore the older covers.
Keep posting, congrats.

Jeremy Crawshaw
Jeremy Crawshaw
June 21, 2013 9:21 pm

Love the blog and the main site. I’ve also recently started collecting Pan Books initially only collecting the early James Bond titles but I’ve been drawn in by the wonderful artwork and it’s become quite an obsession now. I now started collecting lots of the war stories, thrillers, Saint books and other genres and I’m enjoying reading them too although I’m buying them far quicker than I can actually read them. I’m actually having to reign myself in from spending far too much than I would like as I keep seeing lots of wonderful covers on eBay. Keep up the great work on this blog and site, it’s a great reference point for us ‘newbie’ collectors.

peter
peter
February 24, 2013 4:41 pm

Sorry meant G387

peter
peter
February 24, 2013 4:37 pm

cannot link to G237 to see cover

Tony Earnshaw
February 3, 2013 9:20 pm

Dear Tim,

Would you be able to help me? I run a fantasy film festival – Fantastiq – taking place in Derby from August 9-11 this year. I wish to investigate using one of Val Biro’s covers as the basis for our poster ident – the Second Ghost Stories image. I’d like to contact him and hoped you might be able to put me in touch, or forward an email.

Congratulations on the site.

My best,

Tony Earnshaw

I Stubbs
January 28, 2013 4:22 pm

Am interested to see how this website grows. I came to Pan’s via Fleming and love the look of the older covers. I also like a lot of the cover art form this era. If you want any scans of my limited collection I’d be happy to oblige when I have the time.

John Young
John Young
March 11, 2013 4:32 pm
Reply to  tikitnet

Hi,
just started to collect the James Bond series and found this site. I think its brilliant having the information about the variations on the different covers eg priced printed or not printed etc.On one of the bond covers you circle a spot the difference I cannot “spot the difference”?
Can we have a page possibly dedicated to just James Bond with all variations.
Do you know what are the best covers to protect these books?
too many questions………
thank you John

barbara
barbara
June 9, 2013 4:29 am
Reply to  John Young

in sydney.have flemings 201 232 233 234 235 238 well read any good ?