Patriciaphernalia: A Signed Patricia Highsmith Letter Regarding Ripley's Game

I've a number of Patricia Highsmith signed books I've been meaning to blog about for bloody ages – years in fact – but the demands of work and life have meant that my blogging activity has largely been restricted to whichever books I've written or edited myself. However, I'm hoping to make more time for Existential Ennui besides simply blogging about whichever project I'm working on – case in point being my post the other day on Patrick Gierth – and have every intention of getting to those signed Highsmiths soon (and adding them to my dedicated Patricia Highsmith page). First, though, I want to showcase something even more remarkable:

A note Highsmith wrote on 9 February, 1975, regarding her "third Tom Ripley" as she puts it – in other words, 1974's Ripley's Game. The third in Highsmith's five-book Ripliad, Ripley's Game is, as I've noted many, many times, my favourite novel, not just of hers but full stop. I've never managed to secure a signed edition – though I do own a 1974 US Knopf first with an owner inscription by James Bond/Ian Fleming biographer John Pearson – so when I saw this note offered for sale I knew I had to have it so I could pair it with my 1974 Heinemann first edition of Ripley's Game (the book which began my book-collecting odyssey).

Addressed from Highsmith's then-residence in the village of Moncourt, France, where she wrote both Ripley's Game and the next book in the Ripliad, 1980's The Boy Who Followed Ripley (a signed US edition of which I blogged about back in 2017), the note is penned in response to a missive from one Peter Ladkin. An inveterate letter writer judging by the number of other examples of his author letters offered for sale at the same time (he also corresponded with the philosopher and LSE Professor John Watkins), Mr. Ladkin had evidently written approvingly of Ripley's Game, eliciting the following response from Highsmith:

Dear Mr Ladkin,

Don't worry about sending me the cost of return postage. I thank you very much for your remarks about my work and am glad you enjoyed my third Tom Ripley.

Yours sincerely

Patricia Highsmith

As the mention of "return postage" suggests, Mr. Ladkin had also seemingly requested Highsmith's signature and an accompanying inscription, which she duly supplied on a separate piece of paper, presumably so it could be used as a bookplate:

So there we have it: two notes regarding Ripley's Game, written from the house where Patricia Highsmith wrote that novel. Quite the pair of pieces of Patriciaphernalia for a Highsmith/Ripley's Game obsessive like myself.

Michael Frayn: Signed First Edition of Now You Know (Viking, 1992) and Unsigned Programme for Noises Off (1982)

Returning once more to the signed books I've bought over the past... year? Two years? I must admit I've lost track of when exactly I bought some of these books, including this one:

Now You Know by Michael Frayn, published in hardback by Viking in 1992 (jacket illustration by David Hughes), although I do know where I bought it: in Lewes secondhand bookshop A & Y Cumming. Frayn has signed and dedicated this first edition – to an "Austin" it looks like to me – on the title page:

and put a line through his own name, which is something some authors do when signing books (my first of Michael Dibdin's Ratking is similarly adorned). There's an abundance of signed Frayn first editions on AbeBooks, but at time of writing fewer than half a dozen of those are signed firsts of Now You Know, and only three are the Viking first, the cheapest of which being thirty quid. Whereas I paid half that. Mind you, I have my doubts as to whether Now You Know will really be up my alley. Towards the End of the Morning (1967), Frayn's third novel, topped my 2012 end-of-year ten best books list, but the reviews of Now You Know – his eighth novel – I've seen online are a little mixed; this contemporaneous Independent one by D. J. Taylor is indicative. Plus I recently read another Frayn novel, his 1965 debut, The Tin Men, which, while I liked it, wasn't the equal of Towards the End of the Morning.

I'll be writing about The Tin Men in my next post, but before I get to that, I thought I'd showcase something else Michael Frayn-related that I've somehow managed to acquire somewhere along the way, although where, how and why now escapes me. As well as being a novelist Frayn is of course also a celebrated playwright, perhaps his best known play being his 1982 comedy Noises Off. But I've only ever seen the 1992 Peter Bogdanovich-directed Michael Caine-starring film adaptation of Noises Off (which I rather like), which is why I'm slightly mystified as to why I own this:

A programme for the 1982 production of Noises Off at the Savoy Theatre. I can't imagine I paid any money for the thing; the only time I can ever recall going to the Savoy Theatre was to see the Pet Shop Boys in 1997 (with my mum), and as for the programme possibly being collectible, which is the only other reason I can think of for possessing it, it's not signed by Frayn or the cast or indeed anyone at all, and this production of Noises Off wasn't even the first – it originally ran earlier in 1982 at the Lyric Theatre – so I'd be surprised if it had any value. But own it I do, and I suppose it might be of passing interest to any similarly passing not to mention highly hypothetical theatrical historians, and so I've scanned a selection of spreads for posterity. No need to thank me.

Patricia Highsmith's The Black House: Signed Inscribed Association First Edition (Heinemann, 1981) with Handwritten Letter

NB: Linked in Friday's Forgotten Books, 30//5/14.

This second of two signed and inscribed Patricia Highsmith short story collections which I've recently acquired is, I think, more remarkable than both the first edition of Tales of Natural and Unnatural Catastrophes (1987) I blogged about last week and the inscribed first of the short story collection Little Tales of Misogyny (1977) I got my hands on two years ago, for a number of reasons. Highsmith's inscription is more fullsome than in both of those books; there's a link between that inscription and one of the stories in the collection itself; and the book is accompanied by something even rarer than an inscribed Highsmith tome: a handwritten letter by the author.

The book is this:

The Black House, Highsmith's fifth collection of short stories, published in hardback in the UK by Heinemann in 1981. I bought this copy of the Heinemann first from Ashville, NY book dealer Warren Berry – thank you to Barbara Berry for answering my questions. Highsmith's inscription is on the front flyleaf:

It reads:

For Katherine Alexander

with gratitude for her reading of my works. I wish I could see Wellfleet again!

Hello also to Donald Olson – and friendliest greetings from

Patricia Highsmith

19 May 1982

Aurigeno 7771

TI CH

Katherine Alexander was described to me by Barbara Berry as a local librarian, which leads me to believe she was librarian at the Lakewood Memorial Library, a few miles from Ashville; she's mentioned a few times in this history of the library. Donald Olson I'm less sure about; Barbara described him as a local author, and I wonder whether he was the Donald Olson who frequently contributed short stories to Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine – to which Highsmith was also a contributor – and who penned a number of paperback potboilers – The Sky Children (Avon, 1975), Beware, Sweet Maggie (Pyramid, 1977) – and hardback suspense novels – If I Don't Tell (Putnam, 1976), Sleep Before Evening (St. Martin's, 1979). Alternatively he could be Donald S. Olson, author of The Secrets of Mabel Eastlake (Knights Press, 1986), Paradise Gardens (Knights Press, 1988), The Confessions of Aubrey Beardsley (Bantam Press, 1993) and, I think, Queer Corners (Bridge City, 1999), although going by the dates of those titles, I think that's less likely.

In any case, plainly this was Highsmith's own copy of The Black House, which Highsmith sent to Katherine Alexander in May 1982 from her then-home in Auregino, Ticino, Switzerland. The accompanying letter – written on a torn-off half sheet of Manegg typewriter paper (a watermark to that effect is just about visible on the original) – sheds light on why Highsmith sent the book:

It reads:

I can't find here a copy of "A Dog's Ransom" but that should be available in Penguin —

The Black House may never be printed in USA. It is very well liked in England, France, [now?] Germany.

Best to you —

Pat H.

19 May '82

The date matches that in the inscription (although curiously it's written in a different pen); evidently Katherine Alexander had asked Highsmith for a copy of Highsmith's 1972 novel A Dog's Ransom, but instead Highsmith sent her this copy of The Black House, a book the author seemed to be proud of – at least her comment about it being "very well liked" in a handful of countries suggests as much to me – but which she feared might not be published in America. In fact it was, belatedly: Penzler Books issued it in the States in 1988 as a hardback and a limited-to-250-copies slipcased signed edition.

Taken purely on its own merits the letter is, I'd suggest, a pretty remarkable document; though it's relatively brief, it's still longer than the one other handwritten Highsmith letter I can see for sale online at present, which has a price tag of nearly £500 (rather more than I paid for my one); and on a more personal level, given that Highsmith is my favourite author, and that I've only managed to get my hands on books containing handwritten letters or notes by their authors (or other interested parties) three or four times before (see here, here and here, although there is also this), my delight at coming into possession of the letter is, I hope, understandable. Add in the inscribed book, however, and the two items become something quite extraordinary. At least one letter from Katherine Alexander to Highsmith is held by the Swiss Literary Archives (to whom Highsmith left her papers, a good many of which can be viewed online), but more intriguingly there's a mention in the inscription of a place which is significant as regards the contents of the book: Wellfleet, a coastal town on Cape Cod.

I'm unsure as to Katherine Alexander's connection to Wellfleet – although one can only assume that for Highsmith to have made note of the town in an inscription to her that she was familiar with the place – but thanks to Andrew Wilson's 2003 Patricia Highsmith biography Beautiful Shadow I do know that Highsmith stayed on Cape Cod. In 1948 she rented a house in Provincetown – the self-styled "Greenwich Village by the sea", at the tip of Cape Cod, not far from Wellfleet – with her fiancé, the writer Marc Brandel; shortly after her arrival Highsmith met Ann Clark, a painter and designer, and the two swiftly became lovers, themselves returning to Provincetown for a holiday in 1950.

All of this is pertinent because both Provincetown and to a greater degree Wellfleet feature in one of the stories in The Black House, "The Dream of the Emma C". Coming at the midpoint of the collection, it's the tale of the crew of the eponymous trawler, who fish a young woman out of the sea and are beguiled by her, variously competing for her affections, writing poetry in her honour and even coming to blows over her as they abandon logic and surrender to a strange dreamlike state. There are parallels here in the way Highsmith's out-of-the-blue encounter with Ann Clark saw her swiftly falling for the other woman, but there's a more concrete connection in that the captain of the Emma C reports the crew's find to Provincetown, and that the vessel's home port is Wellfleet, where the tale comes to a close.

It's a fine story, but it's just one among many fine stories in what is by any measure a brilliant collection, certainly stronger than the later Tales of Natural and Unnatural Catastrophes. The range of notes Highsmith hits from story to story, from the amoral ("Not One of Us") to the macabre ("Something the Cat Dragged in"), the creepy ("The Terrors of Basket-Weaving") to the criminal ("When in Rome"), is impressive enough, but the inclusion of tales which embrace themes and styles further afield from her traditional territory, like retribution and forgiveness ("Under a Dark Angel's Eye", elements of which to do with how the elderly can sometimes be a burden on the young would be reprised in "No End in Sight" in Tales of Natural and Unnatural Catastrophes), family dysfunction ("I Despise Your Life") and even farce ("Blow It"), is what makes this such a terrific book.

Best of all is "The Kite", in which a young boy channels his confusion over his sister's death and his parents' consequent arguing into building a huge kite. It's a kind of precursor to Up, or maybe more accurately Highsmith's spin on a Roald Dahl fable – Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator, say, or James and the Giant Peach, although its devastating ending marks it out as very much not a story for children. That ending is echoed in a similarly shattering climax in the subsequent story, "The Black House", which rounds out the collection, and which is representative of the array of moods and shades and murky motivations at play across the book as a whole and in each individual tale.

Reading The Black House – the Heinemann edition of which, incidentally, can also be found in the Existential Ennui Patricia Highsmith First Edition Book Cover Gallery (the inscribed copy seen here is actually the second copy of the Heinemann first I've bought) – left me in the mood for even more Highsmith, so over the next few weeks I plan on reading and then reviewing the only two Highsmith novels from the 1960s I haven't as yet got round to. Ahead of those, though, I'll be taking a look at the link between Highsmith and another favourite author of mine: Donald E. Westlake.

My Journo Mum: Dr. Finlay's Casebook at the BBC, and Morecambe & Wise, in Woman's Mirror, Mid-1960s

Having spotlighted my bob-a-dance dad's starring role in a Picture Post feature, it would, I feel, be remiss of me not to make at least passing mention of my mum's magazine adventures too – in her case behind the scenes, as a writer for Woman's Mirror magazine from 1963 to 1967 (before me and my sister came along and ruined her life). Mum did a sterling job scanning the Picture Post piece, so I got her to scan a couple of her old article as well, both of which she thinks date from 1964/65, before she married Dad – hence the byline of Jill Bury rather than Jones. Here's one about a visit to the BBC to witness the filming of Dr. Finlay's Casebook:

Click on the images to enlarge. And here's an interview with comedy legends Morecambe and Wise:

I remember Mum showing me this one before – and recalling how, true to form, Eric Morecambe never stopped cracking jokes when she met him – but I don't think I've seen the BBC one previously, nor many others of her articles – which, given that I myself was at one time a magazine writer (and editor), is astonishingly incurious of me. (What was that I said in the Picture Post, er, post about being an ungrateful bastard...?) Indeed the BBC one reminds me of a piece I wrote about Orbital appearing on Later... with Jools Holland at BBC Television Centre. As penance, perhaps I should dig that article out, and some others too, scan them (barely any of my magazine work is available online, dating, as it does, mostly from the 1990s), and present them for the soon-come Existential Ennui thousandth post. That should be a suitably deflating and embarrassing way in which to celebrate my millennial.

My Bob-a-Dance Dad: Ballroom Dancing for Hire in the Picture Post, 30 June, 1951

Here's something I nabbed on eBay over the festive period:

The 30 June 1951 edition of Picture Post. Not the sort of thing I normally buy on eBay, I must admit – after all, as the subtitle, not to mention the substance, of Existential Ennui attests, I tend to collect old books, not old photojournal magazines – but I had a particular reason for picking this issue up, to do with the article on pages 20–23:

"Bob-a-Dance Men Wait to Be Asked". The feature spotlights an intriguing innovation in Britain's dance halls at the time, the male hired dance partner. Hired dance partners – taxi dancers in American parlance – had been around since the early twentieth century, but by and large they tended to be female; the male variety was much more uncommon. So when the newly opened Lyceum Ballroom in London introduced them in the early 1950s, they exerted a certain fascination, as evidenced by this Picture Post piece. These "bob-a-dance men" – so named because they charged a shilling, or a bob, a turn round the dancefloor – were obliged to remain in "the Pen" at the Lyceum – a closed off area guarded by a lady with a cash box – until their services were required. They weren't allowed to leave the Pen, or ask anyone to dance themselves – they could only be asked – but they could read if they wished, or drink coffee, or just sit and wait.

Unfortunately, sitting and waiting was precisely what they did most of the time. The bob-a-dance men had been attracted to this new career by the prospect of a commission of half a shilling per dance on top of a £7-a-week wage. But as they quickly learned, the commission only kicked in once they'd "sold £7 worth of dances in a week" – and none of them managed to get anywhere near that. Instead, as the page above demonstrates (click on the image to enlarge), they spent the majority of their time cooped up in the Pen. The bottom left photo shows a packed Lyceum, but in the top left photo, there the bob-a-dance men sit, clearly bored out of their skulls, chatting amongst themselves or to their female counterparts, or sneakily fraternising through the railings with a prospective partner.

Indeed, it's the fellow doing the illicit fraternising who was my reason for purchasing this copy of the Picture Post. Here he is again on the next page:

On the far left of the top photo, gazing gloomily into the distance. He's named in the caption as Fred, a former "warehouseman", although his surname is never given. In point of fact it's the same as mine: Jones. And I know this because he's my dad.

You see, over Christmas, while Rachel and Edie and I were staying at my parents' house, Dad showed us his treasured copy of this edition of the Picture Post. It was in a dreadful state: worn, torn – literally falling apart in his hands. At one time he'd owned a second copy in much better condition, but it had been lent to someone and, to Dad's lasting regret, never returned. Accordingly he'd figured he'd just have to make do with his battered copy... Except of course in this day and age, for someone like me, tracking down old magazines (or, more ordinarily, books) is often as simple a matter as picking up a smartphone and hitting a few keys. Within minutes I'd found a nice-looking copy of the Picture Post in question on eBay, and snapped it up for a tenner. A couple of days later it arrived at my folks' house, and now my dad has a splendid new copy (kindly scanned for me by Mum... who, now I come to think of it, herself has a notable background in magazines...) of one of his most prized possessions.

Dad wasn't a bob-a-dance man for very long, but he did go on to become a ballroom dance instructor. Though my sister, Alison, made good use of these skills (for a while, anyway), I, in typically contrary and obstinate fashion – traits, ironically enough, I think I've inherited from Dad – elected not to. Which, given the renewed rise to prominence of ballroom dance in the wake of Strictly Come Dancing, was decidedly shortsighted of me. Later, Dad changed his career and became a driving instructor. Once again, while my sister took full advantage of this, learning to drive as soon as she possibly could, I declined any and all offers of assistance and only passed my driving test last year, at the age of forty-three, having paid a small fortune for the privilege.

Basically, I've always been an ungrateful bastard, and while buying my father an old magazine hardly makes up for decades of taking him for granted, I suppose it's something.

Or at least it would have been, if, unbeknownst to me until later, he hadn't slipped Rachel twenty quid to cover the cost.

The Volcanoes of San Domingo by Adam Hall (Author of the Quiller Spy Series); Collins, 1963, Original Cover Art by Bryan Lubrani

NB: Featured as one of this week's Friday's Forgotten Books.

On to the second of two posts on Adam Hall – the Quiller spy thriller-writing alias of Elleston Trevor – memorabilia. And having showcased some of the items that Trevor's son, JP, has for sale, I thought I'd showcase my own Adam Hall item – which, before you ask, is most definitely not for sale, and which is related to this:

The British first edition of The Volcanoes of San Domingo, published by Collins in 1963. This is the first book Trevor wrote under the Hall nom de plume, before deploying the moniker, from 1965 to 1996, to pen the nineteen books which comprise the series starring secret agent Quiller. The Volcanoes of San Domingo has nothing to do with Quiller, however, at least in terms of plot: it's a standalone thriller set in the fictional South American country of Aguador, where Transocean Airlines head of London station Paul Rayner is sent to investigate the circumstances of a TOA airliner crash off the coast of the capital of Aguador, San Domingo, and how the captain of the plane has been spotted in the country when all on board were reportedly killed. Stylistically, though, despite being written in the third person rather than the Quiller novels' first, it's clearly cut from the same cloth. Though the locale is fictional, Hall's evocative description brings the place to sweltering, sticky life, and certain phrases and action sequences presage Quiller: a couple of appearances of Quiller catchphrase "no go", for example, or a tense knife fight narratively deconstructed – slowed down and broken down into its bruising, bloody constituent parts.

The jacket design of the Collins edition is credited to Bryan Lubrani, who also painted covers – usually credited as Brian rather than Bryan – for books by Charles Kearey, Mary Scott and Chester Alan. He's virtually forgotten these days, but even so, he was the main reason (the other one being I've enjoyed the Quillers I've read and was intrigued to find out what the first Adam Hall novel was like) I decided to hunt down a copy of The Volcanoes of San Domingo. Or rather, trying to learn his name was the main reason – because I'd come into possession of this:

The original artwork for the jacket, which I acquired from David Schutte. Painted in acrylic – or possibly poster paint – on board at a surprising four or five times the size of the printed version, it lacks the front cover and spine text, which was obviously added by a designer at Collins. But it also lacks a signature or any other kind of credit; the pencil writing at the bottom lists the book's title, author, publisher and year, but not the artist; while the label on the back:

lists almost everything under the sun other than the identity of the illustrator. David Schutte didn't know who the artist was, and I couldn't find the information online either. The only thing for it, then, was to try and locate a copy of the Collins edition and hope that it carried a cover credit on the jacket flap. Unfortunately, finding a cheapish, decent-ish copy – not ex-library, in other words – with a dust jacket in the UK wasn't as straightforward as I'd hoped, and I actually ended up asking JP Trevor if he had a copy he could check for me (he didn't). But in the end I found one, and Bryan Lubrani was credited on the front flap. Phew. Mystery solved.

Even though Mr. Lubrani isn't exactly the most well-remembered of cover artists, I still like this piece a lot; it's now framed and hanging on a wall at home. Is it the greatest cover ever created? Not by a long chalk; the likes of Val Biro and Denis McLoughlin were creating more striking dust jacket art around this same period (see the Beautiful British Book Jacket Design of the 1950s and 1960s permanent page for examples by those and other artists). But it is nicely painted, and it's significant, in that it illustrates the first book Elleston Trevor wrote as Hall. Moreover, it's representative of the way covers were created back then – partly the materials used and the time taken, but also, and more vitally, the way that, much as Biro and McLoughlin did with the novels they designed wrappers for, Bryan Lubrani evidently read The Volcanoes of San Domingo. That's plainly Paul Rayner on the front of the jacket, nursing the injury he receives whilst shark fishing early in the story – a scene depicted in blue in the bottom right corner – while the blade-wielding boy on the spine is Paul's "Levantine" opponent in the knife fight two-thirds of the way into the novel.

These days, cover designers rarely get to read the novels they create the covers for; indeed they're lucky if they even get a brief synopsis, which is part of the reason why we see so many formulaic Photoshopped image library covers – other reasons being it's cheaper to design covers that way, and marketing departments seem unable to disabuse themselves of the restricting notion that certain covers should look a certain way – i.e. a man running into the distance on an urban street for thrillers, or foggy, "found", arty photographs on literary works. That such an, in its day, essentially un-extraordinary cover as Lubrani's should seem so extraordinary by comparison is, for me, very telling. It reminds us – reminds me, anyway – of what we've lost, I think. Not necessarily hand-painted and -lettered covers and jackets – although more of those would be welcome (and the odd individual, such as Lewes-based designer Neil Gower, is doing their best to keep that tradition alive) – or covers that explicitly illustrate particular scenes from a novel; but covers conceived and created by talented artists and designers, not sales and marketing departments; covers where those artists and designers have been granted the opportunity to read the book before making its cover.

I suppose some designers may baulk at that arduous task. To them I say: if an author has given over a year (or more) towards writing a book, the least you can do is spend a few days reading the damn thing. Ultimately, lovingly designed covers will be to the benefit of those of us who'd like to see the physical book not only survive, but flourish. (And how much more desirable is that in the wake of the woman whose Kindle was wiped – and yes, eventually restored, but that's beside the point – by Amazon?) If that is to happen, there has to be a reason for it to happen, and it strikes me that beautiful design – along with great production and printing and binding – is as good a reason as any.

So then. Campaign for Proper Cover Design, anyone?

Quillerbilia: Exclusive Look at Adam Hall / Elleston Trevor / Quiller Memorabilia for Sale

I've a couple of posts on Adam Hall – alias Elleston Trevor, thriller writer and, under the Hall alias, creator of the Quiller spy series – planned for this week, both of them to do with memorabilia. I'll be unveiling my personal piece of Hall ephemera later in the week, but first: earlier this year, quite out of the blue, I was surprised and delighted to receive an email from Elleston Trevor's son, JP Trevor. JP had spotted one of my posts on Hall/Quiller – my review of the second Quiller outing, The Ninth Directive, I believe, which I own in signed first – and wondered if I might know of a good place online to sell a number of Hall/Quiller items: books, posters, cuttings, photos; notes for the final Quiller book, Quiller Balalaika, which JP helped his dying father finish; even memorabilia related to the 1966 big screen Quiller adaptation, The Quiller Memorandum, and the 1965 film version of Trevor's novel The Flight of the Phoenix.

I told JP I'd ask around on his behalf, but also offered to post something myself on the items. JP agreed, and so I'm pleased to be able to present below the full list of pieces for sale. It's an extraordinary collection of Adam Hall memorabilia – Quillerbilia, if you will (or even memoraquillera... no, perhaps not) – and this is the first time any of it has been seen online; the photographs scattered about this post were kindly taken by JP especially for me, which makes them something of an Existential Ennui exclusive. Anyone interested in any of the pieces or seeking more information can contact me on the Existential Ennui email address, and I'll be sure to forward all inquiries and questions to JP.

QUILLER'S ORIGINAL BLACK BELT (ADAM HALL'S)

BALALAIKA A4 PLOT BOOK – 62 PAGES OF NOTES BY ADAM HALL

23 PAGE ORIGINAL QUILLER FORMAT

QUILLER'S RUN JOVE PUBLISHING POSTER WITH CUTOUT DRAGON

QUILLER JOVE PUBLISHING POSTER

QUILLER KGB WH ALLEN/STAR PUBLISHING LARGE POSTER

QUILLER BALALAIKA ORIGINAL OUTLINE

SIGNED A4 B/W ADAM HALL

QUILLER LONDON ODEON MARQUIS A4

ADAM HALL & SENTA BERGER AT LONDON PREMIERE

ORIGINAL QUILLER MEMBERSHIP ACETATE TEMPLATE A4

FIGHTING STARS MAGAZINE, MINT CONDITION, 4 PAGE ARTICLE ON ADAM HALL

21 PAGE ELLESTON TREVOR'S ORIGINAL LAST RITES OUTLINE

VARIOUS ORIGINAL NEWSPAPER CUTTINGS & PHOTOS

And:

ELLESTON TREVOR'S PERSONAL COPY OF THE FLIGHT OF THE PHOENIX SHOOTING SCRIPT: a one-off edition made by Twentieth Century Fox for Elleston Trevor, plus sixty-four black-and-white photographs taken by Trevor on location in Arizona, and A4 cast photos, nine of them – including James Stewart and Richard Attenborough – signed.

Memo from Macmillan Publisher Alan Maclean to Chairman (and Former Prime Minister) Harold Macmillan Concerning P. M. Hubbard's A Thirsty Evil (1974); plus Review of the Novel

NB: Featured as one of this week's Friday's Forgotten Books.

That mouthful of a title up top should give you a pretty good idea of what we're dealing with in this latest post on signed editions (and ephemera), but further explication is, I suspect, warranted...

This is the British first edition of cult suspense novelist P. M. Hubbard's A Thirsty Evil, published by Macmillan in 1974. Now, those of you with reasonable memories might recall my having blogged about this book before, albeit in a different edition: a 1974 US Atheneum first edition, to be precise, signed by P. M. Hubbard and inscribed to his friend, the author Alan Kennington, making it the only signed Hubbard book I've ever seen. That copy of the book came with its own remarkable bit of ephemera: a signed, handwritten letter by Hubbard to Kennington about the novel, which, one might reason, together with the signed edition would be quite enough for any Hubbard enthusiast. But I later spotted this Macmillan edition online and then went to take a look at it at the seller's bookshop, and simply couldn't resist it and the ephemera that was stapled to its front free endpaper.

I'll return to that in a moment, but first, the novel itself. As is often the way with the books I buy, I hadn't read A Thirsty Evil when I originally wrote about it, but I have since, and it is, as the late Wyatt James dryly notes in his annotated bibliography, "a characteristic book by this author". It certainly reminded me of Hubbard's clammy masterpiece A Hive of Glass (1965), although A Thirsty Evil isn't quite of that calibre; overall it's less oppressive, though still with that intensifying aura of dread, the juxtaposition of a rural idyll – in this case centred on a remote pool hiding a submerged, totemic tooth-like stone – with a sense of there being something very wrong in this summer sun-drenched English backwater.

Hubbard's protagonists are often unpleasant fellows, and the narrator of this one, novelist (and heir to a biscuit empire) Ian Mackellar, is a man who is, at root, as feckless as his nemesis, Charlie, the mentally disturbed brother of Julia, the woman Mackellar is obsessed with; it's evident early on that matters won't end well, and so it proves. But the getting there is grotesquely gripping – the tense scenes where Mackellar encounters Charlie and Julia's other sister, Beth, are especially memorable – and both Wyatt James, who labelled the book "not outstanding", and indeed Hubbard himself, who, in his letter to Kennington about the book, stated, "it's not one I'm very keen on myself", were, I think, doing A Thirsty Evil a disservice: it's a short, taut, unnerving little triumph.

The dust jacket illustration on the Macmillan edition of A Thirsty Evil is by well-known children's illustrator (and onetime tutor at Brighton College of Art) Justin Todd, and it's that image which prompted the writing, on 4 February, 1974, of the piece of paraphernalia stapled to the front free endpaper of this particular copy:

It's an internal Macmillan memo, from the then-publisher, Alan Maclean – brother, incidentally, of Cambridge spy Donald Maclean (who recently made a cameo in spy novelist Jeremy Duns's The Moscow Option) – to Macmillan's then-chairman: one Harold Macmillan, prime minister, from 1957 to 1963, of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. You see, after retiring from politics in 1964, Macmillan rejoined his family's publishing firm (he'd been a junior partner from 1920–1940), this time as Chairman – and if this document is anything to go by, it seems he was quite an active one...

Maclean's memo is apparently a response to a note from Harold Macmillan, who was evidently far from keen on Justin Todd's Henri Rousseau-esque jacket artwork for A Thirsty Evil. Maclean's defence of the design choice runs thus: "All the jackets for [Macmillan editor] George Hardinge's list are aimed particularly at the 'thriller' market, and this one has been very well received in the trade. The Australian company ordered 250 copies on the strength of the jacket alone!" After reasoning that the illustration "is not entirely irrelevant", Maclean signs off by saying that he's returning Macmillan's own copy of the book – presumably the very copy seen in this post.

And then, at the bottom of the memo, comes something quite extraordinary: a handwritten note by Harold Macmillan, signed "HM", with a "thank you" to Maclean, followed by the exclamation, "Oh God! Oh Montreal!" On first inspection those words might appear slightly baffling – they did to me, anyway – but it's actually a reference to English novelist and satirist Samuel Butler's "A Psalm of Montreal", a commentary on what Butler perceived as the Canadian propensity to embrace financial matters above artistic ones, as embodied by the fate of a plaster cast of the classical Greek sculpture Discobolus (epitome, appropriately enough in the wake of London 2012, of the Olympic spirit) on the premises of the Montreal Natural History Society. Essentially, Macmillan was bewailing the justification of what he thought was a rubbish cover by the book's advance sales.

As remarkable as this document is, there are a couple of things about it which, to my mind, make it even more so. For one, Harold Macmillan clearly read and enjoyed A Thirsty Evil, which strikes me as being, at the very least, notable: a former prime minister was a "fan" of P. M. Hubbard (there's one for the blurbs on the forthcoming Murder Room ebook reissues of Hubbard's novels). For another – and this is priceless – it looks to me as if Macmillan actually corrected Maclean's original note when he acknowledged receipt! Maclean misspelt "douanier" – as in Le Douanier, Henri Rousseau's nickname – as "douanaie", which Macmillan – it appears to be in his hand and his slightly darker blue pen, not Maclean's – has in turn amended, crossing out the additional "a" and adding an "r" at the end!

To be honest, I'm not sure if the bookseller I bought this from quite knew what he had on his hands – I paid a fair amount for it, but not much more than you'd have to pay for a decent Macmillan first edition of A Thirsty Evil anyway (like most of Hubbard's novels, it's become quite quite uncommon in first). In any case, I shall treasure this just as much as my signed Atheneum edition and accompanying Hubbard letter – and as a bonus, you all get to see it as well.

Next: we're leaving the signed editions for the moment for a Westlake Score...

A Signed Letter by Thriller Writer Gavin Lyall to Author Rowland Ryder on Publishing, plus Lyall on Desert Island Discs

NB: Featured as one of this week's Friday's Forgotten Books. Er, letters, rather.

I realise I'm treading on the toes of Letters of Note with this latest post in this lengthy series on signed editions (and now ephemera too), but before you go accusing me of plagiarism I should point out that I do have form here: witness this post on a letter by suspense novelist P. M. Hubbard and this one on a letter by spy novelist Joseph Hone.

The letter in question this time out is by British thriller writer Gavin Lyall, an author of whom I'm a great admirer – see here, here, here, here and here for a sample of previous missives, including some signed editions. It was written in 1981 to fellow author Rowland Ryder, who'd evidently asked for Lyall's thoughts on publishing rights and translation. Lyall sent Ryder two typed pages' worth of suggestions, which make for fascinating reading:

The opening paragraph will be familiar to anyone who's a part of the weird and occasionally wonderful world of publishing. Certainly for as long as I've worked in publishing – twenty years, all told – the feeling within the industry has always been that it's been "in recession", and Lyall's letter confirms that this was the case even back in 1981. His line about there having been "several nights of the long knives at the major houses, with departments being merged and a number of people out on the street" will doubtless send a shiver down the spine of fellow industry folk, especially in the, ahem, current climate. The "Cavell book" he mentions is Ryder's biography of Edith Cavell, published in hardback by Hamish Hamilton (hence the "HH" references) in 1975. Seems Ryder was frustrated at the lack of a paperback edition of the book, a frustration that must have persisted since the biography was never published in paperback and ultimately fell out of print.

In the next paragraph, Lyall lays out how publishing rights work in relation to hardbacks and paperbacks. He makes the point that they are "indivisible legally; there is simply one right", which is controlled by the hardback publisher, who may (or may not) sublicense the rights to a paperback house. "In practice," Lyall continues, "this means that if your book goes into paperback, a fair percentage of the royalties will be scooped off by your original hardcover publisher. So be braced for this. On the other hand, it does mean that your publisher has an incentive to get your book into paperback, although" – and this, I think, is my favourite line in the letter – "I have never found excess of energy to be a normal publishing vice."

The third paragraph is instructive on translation rights for those who aren't au fait with that aspect of publishing, and then, after a bit about agents, in closing Lyall mentions the military historian Ronnie Lewin, for whom Lyall "did a book... when he was at Hutchinson". That book was The War in the Air 1939–1945 (1968), one of only two non-fiction titles Lyall published (the other being Operation Warboard, a well-liked instruction manual on wargaming). Lyall notes that Lewin "was a nice chap and a good editor", and signs off with the line, "I sincerely hope he's more use to you than I am."

If, like me, you're interested in matters to do with publishing, the letter makes for absorbing reading in its own right, but for a Lyall fan like myself, it's additionally thrilling. Lyall didn't sign many of his books – only really inscribing some of his novels to friends and acquaintances – so I was immensely chuffed to acquire this signed document. And let me just say a quick thank you to the fragrant Ellie Wilson for kindly scanning the letter for me.

While we're on the subject of Gavin Lyall, I've stumbled upon a couple of diverting links since last I wrote about him. The first is a short video piece on Web of Stories featuring Lyall's widow, the journalist Katharine Whitehorn; Whitehorn talks frankly about Lyall's struggles with writing and the demon drink towards the end of his life and career, so it's well worth four minutes of your time. The second is a 1976 edition of Desert Island Discs, with Gavin Lyall as presenter Roy Plomley's guest. Lyall selects the records he'd like to take with him to a desert island – largely jazz – and in between discusses music, his early cartooning, his time as a fighter pilot, writing for the Cambridge University paper, journalism, how he met Whitehorn, the origins of the title of his debut, The Wrong Side of the Sky (1961), and how he wrote some of his novels.

By this point Lyall had written seven in total, prompting Plomley to point out that seven books in fifteen years is a little lax. To which Lyall replies, "I wouldn't pretend to be the most energetic man in the writing business." I also like the part where Plomley asks what Lyall's writing discipline is. Lyall's response: "Sit down at a desk, brew a pot of coffee, read the papers, sooner or later I get so bored I start working." It's a great interview, so go give it a listen.

I have another piece of intriguing publishing paraphernalia waiting in the wings, concerning the aforementioned suspense novelist P. M. Hubbard, but ahead of that, I'll probably have another signed edition, and accompanying review, this time of a Lawrence Block book. Not quite sure when those posts will appear, as blogging will probably be a little sporadic over the coming weeks – summer hols and all that – but keep 'em peeled...