Dustiest Bookcase: R is for Richardson

The Dustiest Bookcase:

Short pieces on books I've always meant to review (but haven't).

Desired Haven
Evelyn M. Richardson
Toronto: Ryerson, 1953
286 pages

Contemporary newspaper accounts record Evelyn M. Richardson's surprise when her first book, We Keep a Light, received the 1945 Governor's General Award for Creative Non-Fiction. I wonder whether she felt something similar when her second book, Desired Haven, won the All-Canada Fiction Award.

A debut novel, Desired Haven revolves around Mercy Nickerson, the desirable daughter of a Nova Scotia sea captain, and her romance with "Dan Redmond, the handsome son of an Irish gentleman."*

I'm pretty sure that's meant to be Mercy and Dan on the jacket, as depicted by American illustrator Walter Seaton.

My copy was rescued seven years ago from an outdoor book stall on a sunny, busy street in London, Ontario. You'll note that the dust jacket doesn't quite fit. This may be because it's a Sears' Peoples Book Club jacket wrapped around a Ryerson Press book.

The Peoples Book Club existed from June, 1943 through 1959. Literary historian Christine D'Arpa informs: "Sears established a publishing house in Chicago that designed and printed the book club editions and the club’s monthly catalog." As she notes, very little has been written about the Peoples Book Club, despite it once having over 350,000 members.

Desired Haven was published the year after Sears – as part of Simpsons-Sears – began operating in Canada. Was its Peoples Book Club also operating in Canada?

I've yet to uncover evidence.

The copy I picked up all those years ago in London adds intrigue by including this, which I took to be the front flap torn from the Ryerson jacket:

It led to the discovery that Walter Seaton's cover illustration was not the original. This is the cover of the Ryerson edition:

I'm betting it's the work of Arthur Steven.

Note the difference in trim sizes between the People Book Club edition (left) and Ryerson's:

There's so much to explore, including this, which appears on the front free endpaper:

Desired Haven set me back a dollar.

Clearly, I've more got more than my money's worth... and I haven't even read it.

* Here I quote the Peoples Book Club jacket.

Related posts:

Anyone Care About the Ryerson Fiction Award?

Mr. Steven Against Company Policy

Mr. Steven Against Company Policy

Thanks goes out to Jim B. for helping to identify the artist behind the handsome jacket to Philip Child's Mr. Ames Against Time, the subject of Wednesday's post. He is Arthur Steven, who from 1947 to 1970 served as Art Director of Ryerson Press. Mr Steven's illustration is wider than previously pictured, stretching from the spine to just inside the front flap. Clicking on the cover below will bring a nice-sized image.

Captured is the novel's opening scene:

The court-house clock boomed five times and Mr. Ames performed the rite of taking out his watch. It never failed to give him a small satisfaction to find that his watch was exactly on time, for he was a man who liked things in order: watch in order, clothes however shabby in order, conscience neatly in order.
   A dog chased a cat across Mr. Ames' path...

At the right, we can see the Urania Burlesque Theatre, at which Mr. Ames serves as doorman.

Randall Speller has written a very fine piece on the artist, "Arthur Steven at the Ryerson Press: Designing the Post-War Years (1949-1969)" (Papers of the Bibliographical Society of Canada/Cahiers De La Société Bibliographique Du Canada, Fall/Automne 2003), in which we find this:

In opposition to company policy during these early years, Steven was able to discreetly insert his name or an initial on the occasional dust jacket or illustration, something that appears to have been easier in the early 1950s. The jackets for Philip Child's Mr. Ames against Time [sic] (1949), J.V. McAree's Cabbagetown Store (1953), and William Arthur Deacon's The 4 Jameses (1953), among others, are signed "Steven" in very small letters; Isabelle Hughes' The Wise Brother (1954) and the map endpapers of Marjorie Freeman Campbell's Niagara: Hinge of the Golden Arc (1958) are signed with a very small 'S' in the lower right corner. These "signatures" are the first indicators of a consistent design presence at Ryerson in the post-Thoreau MacDonald years.

This, of course, has sent me running to the bookcase. Sure enough, I found "STEVEN" by the side of the road on the cover of Cabbagetown Store.

On the jacket he produced for Ryerson's The 4 Jameses, a favourite, "STEVEN" can be seen near the bottom right-hand corner.

And, also bottom right, there's that "S" on the cover of The Wise Brother.

I found no other jackets signed "STEVEN" or "S" in my modest collection of Ryerson Press books – just forty-two in all – but that doesn't mean I won't keep looking.

Related post:

Mr. Child's Simple Story of Dramatic Suspense