Grab a cup of tea as I want to share a rather long tale of detective work which you might enjoy.
- PART ONE
- PART TWO
- PART THREE
- PART FOUR [To Follow]
On 6 July 2018 I bought five items on eBay. There were more to be had from the series but I felt these appealed and my pockets are not bottomless. But I did download the other images for reference.
What were they? The seller described them thus:
1960's Original Pen and Ink Artwork Children's Book Illustration Stampede Death1960s Original Pen and Ink Artwork Childrens Book Illustration Lake of No Return1960's Original Pen and Ink Artwork Children's Book Illustration Burglar1960's Original Pen and Ink Artwork Children's Book Illustration Mountain Climb1960's Original Pen and Ink Artwork Children's Book IllustrationScuba Diver
But it was the photos accompanying them that grabbed me as I knew who the artist was! I shared a few of the images with Phil Rushton who suspected along with David Roach (both very knowledgeable men) these might be from Bumper Story Book for Girls 1975, which made sense as the covers are by the same artist.
Unfortunately a search of the Contents pages of both the Girls and Boys books did not match anything I had! The search continued.
I happened to win an auction in 2020 of a pile of girl’s annuals which I really enjoyed going through and discovered that some of the stories illustrated on the art boards I mentioned appeared in title only in some annuals but with other illustrations! And in one case, the same artist! Have a look below.
- Girls’ Crystal Annual 1950: Her Perilous War Time Task by Sylvia Macrae
- School Friend Annual 1969: Christmas at Glentor by Denise Barry
- Sally Annual 1971: The Gales of Glentor by unknown
“The Gales of Glentor” Sally Annual 1971, pp 18, 19, 21
“Christmas at Glentor”, School Friend Annual 1969 pp. 89, 90-91, 92
So for those who’d like to see the contents page of the title of this article:
So this is a 512 page hardback, published by Hamlyn in 1976 and edited by Leonard Matthews, who some of you may know as the creator of Look and Learn, amongst lots of other credits in the comic publishing world. Roger Perry shared his thoughts on Matthews as an insider. Now this explains why I found stories in annuals with the same titles! Matthews will have raided the Odhams/Fleetway archives for text stories and hired an artist to illustrate them, but not give the man the credit he deserves!
Part Two will reveal the artwork and who drew it.
~Norman
Visual Rants 