The Mystery Writer Mystery Unravels

'Keeping an Eye Out for Pamela Fry' pays off:

A writer friend informs that Pamela Fry, author of Harsh Evidence and The Watching Cat, is the very same Pamela Fry who once worked as an editor at McClelland & Stewart. Though Miss Fry's years with the publisher were not many – 1965 to 1971 – she did work with several canonical favourites, including Sinclair Ross, Ernest Buckler and Farley Mowat. I imagine she'll be best remembered not for her mysteries, but as the editor of The Edible Woman, Margaret Atwood's debut novel. A high point to be sure.

The low? Look no further than Eric Koch's ill-fated satire The French Kiss (1969), which I mention here only because the book just might lay claim to the worst launch in Canadian publishing history. In Jack, McClelland biographer James King tells us that The French Kiss was on bookstore shelves when legal advice came down that members of Quebec's Johnson family might have been slandered in its pages:

The three thousand books were recalled, small slips pasted over the offending passages and the copies then returned to retailers. Jack only learned of the potentially disastrous situation at the book's launch at the home of the book's editor Pamela Fry. He called her aside, told her the book would have to be recalled and acted quickly and decisively to prevent a lawsuit.

According to King, Pamela Fry left M&S in for a position on a federal government task force. In his autobiography, Drawing on Type, designer Frank Newfeld places her c.1980 at the National Gallery of Canada. From there the trail grows cold.

Thanks go out to my "writer friend" and to fellow sleuth Richard Blanchard.

Related post: Keeping an Eye Out for Pamela Fry

The Canadian Publishers

McClelland & Stewart swallowed up by Random House Canada

McClelland and Stewart

"The Canadian Publishers"

1906 - 2012

RIP

Artwork by Astrid K. Busby
with apologies to Frank Newfeld

POD Cover of the Month: Romany of the Snows

Romany of the Snows – what we sticklers refer to as A Romany of the Snows – another fine product from print on demand house Tutis. Take care, bears are not nearly as cute, cuddly, petite or domesticated as they'd have you believe. From the novel:

I got sick and numb. There on that anvil of snow and ice I saw a big white bear, one such as you shall see within the Arctic Circle. His long nose fetching out towards the bleeding sun in the sky, his white coat shining. But that was not the thing — there was another. At the feet of the bear was a body, and one clawed foot was on that body — of a man.

First edition:

New York: Stone & Kimball, 1896

Runner up:


The Tutis take on Michel and Angele – what we sticklers refer to as Michel and Angèle – Sir Gilbert's romantic tale of two young lovers in 16th-century England.

Related posts:

POD Cover of the Month: Montreal for Tourists..

POD Cover of the Month: Rila of Ingelside
POD Cover of the Month: The Simple Adventures of a Memsahib

Mister Gumble Meets David Golder

A brief follow-up, of sorts, to Monday's post on Mr. Gumble Sits Up.

One keen-eyed friend notes that Irène Némirovsky's David Golder features amongst the "Selection of Horace Liveright Fall Books" listed on the back flap. Indeed it does. The publisher seems to have really been behind this novel, pushing it also on Gumble's back jacket.

What cost two dollars back in 1930, cannot be had today... at least not through online booksellers; only two copies of this first English-language edition are listed. Both sans jacket, the more expensive is described thusly:

There [sic] pages are clean except for some slight damp stain at the outside edge of some pages. The half-cloth binding has some staining mostly to the orange front paper cover. The corners are bumped, the spine is cocked, and there is a small tear to the crown of the binding. Webbing is exposed in the back.

"Reading copy" is the bookseller's summary. Surely not! At US$500 – a price I expect he'll get – his is a copy for the collector. This is a reading copy:

Sold in the original French for a mere C$9.99. New.