What do you think?
Rate this book
The Mushroom Jungle: A History of Postwar Paperback Publishing
Cheap paper and hard covers, the paperbacks of the postwar period were intended to sell in large numbers, and they did. Surprisingly this period of British literary history has never been documented before. So here at last it is, a book for the scholar, the collector or the reader. Steve Holland's study of PAPERBACKS will evoke memories for some, and enlighten others, of the blossoming of the modern paperback from the MUSHROOM JUNGLE of postwar back street publishing houses.
This book reveals the origins and history of these publishers, together with the story of popular authors and artists of the period. In so doing it has done much to preserve an endangered part of our recent cultural heritage.
This book reveals the origins and history of these publishers, together with the story of popular authors and artists of the period. In so doing it has done much to preserve an endangered part of our recent cultural heritage.
- GenresPulp
216 pages, Paperback
First published October 1, 1993
16 people want to read
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
April 5, 2021
This splendid book, the title of which derives from the fact that a mushroom spore can generate thousands more mushrooms, rather like the book publishers of the lurid paperbacks of the immediate postwar period that sprang up all over the country very quickly, surveys the world of paperback publishing, its huge success and the problems that it encountered as the years rolled on. It was a relatively short-lived adventure but it has a definite place in the world of book publishing in the United Kingdom and Steve Holland's recording of it is a worthy addition to our literary and publishing history.
Briefly touching on the Victorian Gothic novel, Penny Dreadfuls and the American pulp boom of the 1920s and 1930s so as to give a background for what is to follow, Steve Holland then embarks on a superbly researched and detailed history of the emergence of the hundreds of small-time publishers that flourished immediately post World War II. He looks at publishers such as Ace Books, Scion, Gannet, WDL, New Worlds, Fiction of the Future, Muir-Watson, Brown Watson, Consul Books, Fantasy Books, Cherry Tree Books and many more as well as including the major publishers such as Panther, Corgi Books and even Penguin. These major ones survived but all the smaller ones disappeared after having trouble with paper shortages and then obscenity laws.
Authors, writing crime, science fiction, westerns and romance, were employed at extremely cheap rates being paid from 15 shillings to £1 for each thousand words submitted. And the authors were clamouring for the work! For many authors, pseudonyms were the order of the day and it was reputed that one of them used as many as 57 different pen-names! Examples of the names used were Griff, Ben Sarto, Vector Magroon, Volsted Gridban, Roland Vane, Dale Bogar and perhaps one of the best well-known, Hank Janson.
The attraction of many of the titles were the lurid covers that were painted by a whole host of talented artists such as Reginald Heade, Ron Turner, Denis McLoughlin, James McConnell and Perl. The book contains very many examples, plenty in full colour, of the work of these and other artists. And many of the books, originally published in smaller numbers. finally had print runs of 100,000 to 150,000.
As for Hank Janson, real name Stephen David Frances, born in London in 1917, his titles were the most popular - and he was perhaps the most prolific writer of this type of fiction - but their strap-lines on the covers and the scantily clad ladies that adorned them attracted the vice squad and thousands of them were taken off sale from any number of shops plus the warehouse. This situation got to such a pitch that there eventually was a Hank Janson obscenity trial in which the defendants were all found to be guilty and sent to jail. In the light of some of the material published in more modern times, this seems rather draconian!
Steve Holland's research is amazing and his presentation of the facts is superb, so much so that it is a great pity when one finishes the book ... but it is there for a later read, of course. It is no surprise to find that it was nominated for a Bouchercon Anthony Award in the Best Critical Work category.
Briefly touching on the Victorian Gothic novel, Penny Dreadfuls and the American pulp boom of the 1920s and 1930s so as to give a background for what is to follow, Steve Holland then embarks on a superbly researched and detailed history of the emergence of the hundreds of small-time publishers that flourished immediately post World War II. He looks at publishers such as Ace Books, Scion, Gannet, WDL, New Worlds, Fiction of the Future, Muir-Watson, Brown Watson, Consul Books, Fantasy Books, Cherry Tree Books and many more as well as including the major publishers such as Panther, Corgi Books and even Penguin. These major ones survived but all the smaller ones disappeared after having trouble with paper shortages and then obscenity laws.
Authors, writing crime, science fiction, westerns and romance, were employed at extremely cheap rates being paid from 15 shillings to £1 for each thousand words submitted. And the authors were clamouring for the work! For many authors, pseudonyms were the order of the day and it was reputed that one of them used as many as 57 different pen-names! Examples of the names used were Griff, Ben Sarto, Vector Magroon, Volsted Gridban, Roland Vane, Dale Bogar and perhaps one of the best well-known, Hank Janson.
The attraction of many of the titles were the lurid covers that were painted by a whole host of talented artists such as Reginald Heade, Ron Turner, Denis McLoughlin, James McConnell and Perl. The book contains very many examples, plenty in full colour, of the work of these and other artists. And many of the books, originally published in smaller numbers. finally had print runs of 100,000 to 150,000.
As for Hank Janson, real name Stephen David Frances, born in London in 1917, his titles were the most popular - and he was perhaps the most prolific writer of this type of fiction - but their strap-lines on the covers and the scantily clad ladies that adorned them attracted the vice squad and thousands of them were taken off sale from any number of shops plus the warehouse. This situation got to such a pitch that there eventually was a Hank Janson obscenity trial in which the defendants were all found to be guilty and sent to jail. In the light of some of the material published in more modern times, this seems rather draconian!
Steve Holland's research is amazing and his presentation of the facts is superb, so much so that it is a great pity when one finishes the book ... but it is there for a later read, of course. It is no surprise to find that it was nominated for a Bouchercon Anthony Award in the Best Critical Work category.
October 8, 2019
The strange title of this book refers to the paperback industry that sprung up in London and other parts of Britain after the war to fill an appetite for mass-market consumer fiction. Moore’s survey (based in part on personal correspondence with some of the figures involved) includes the publishers and printers, the authors – who churned out westerns, crime and gangster stories, romances and science-fiction at an astonishing rate, in one instance allegedly as a semi-prisoner out of an office basement in Kensington – and the cover artists, whose lurid, titillating and sometimes surreal visions are reproduced throughout the volume.
Paperbacks, of course, were established in Britain in the 1930s, and pioneers such as Allen Lane remain hallowed by the literary minded. However, the “mushroom publishers” of the post-war years are less appreciated – the imprints no longer exist, many of the authors used house pseudonyms, and the myriad titles are often generic and arbitrary – but this is part of the context out which some of the better-known later paperback imprints emerged (in particular, the likes of Pan Books and Panther Books). There are also some other important links with broader historical memory: we all know about Penguin and the celebrated “Lady Chatterley” trial of 1960, but part of the backstory here must be the pulp obscenity trials of the previous decade, to which Moore devotes a chapter (Christmas Humphreys makes an appearance here, representing the defence).
Moore introduces many remarkable characters: these include Gerald Swan, a market bookseller turned publisher whose authors included the prolific Norman Firth; Binyimin Zeev Immanuel, a Latvian immigrant whose business was one of several publishing ventures operating out of 37a Kensington High Street; and Julius Reiter, a German anti-Nazi and book distributor who, along with the publisher Reginald Carter, were imprisoned for obscenity in 1954 as part of the anti-pulp crackdown (writers were also held liable for obscenity, although in this instance the author Steve Frances – a former communist who had written for the Daily Worker – avoided conviction). Dail Amber, an ex-journalist who had actually lived in Hollywood, produced a crime novel a week for Immanuel’s Scion Ltd, is a rare female author mentioned (Moore feels the need to describe her as “pretty, blonde”), although several of the publishers discussed by Moore appear to have been husband-and-wife partnerships.
A couple of authors whose names I did recognise are E.C. Tubb and Lionel Fanthorpe, and Moore makes a special reference to a novelisation of The Creature from the Black Lagoon by John Russell Fearn, writing as Vargo Statten. Moore notes that “the circumstances of its publication by such a small publisher [Dragon Books] means that few film buffs will know of its existence”. Fearn was one of the first British authors to provide science-fiction for US pulp magazines, and the name of Vargo Statten also provided the title for a British science-fiction magazine that turned down a story from Brian Aldiss because the publisher wanted material accessible for younger readers.
The author defends the output of the “mushroom publishers” against literary disdain, although he admits that many titles are collectable today primarily for their cover art. The production process often left little or no time for redrafting and editing, and one publisher was said to deal with manuscripts that were too long by arbitrarily removing a chunk from the middle. Stories of the Old West and Chicago gangsters were imagined by writers with no first-hand experience of America, and the science content of science-fiction works published by a publisher called John Spencer & Co. (later Badger) was frequently risible: “planets became stars, galaxies became universes, etc”. Moore singles out one effort, Pirates of Cerebus attributed to “Bengo Mistral”, as “the worst single piece of fiction ever published” for nonsensical terms such as “atomic molecules”, an underwhelming spaceship that travels “five times the speed of sound”, and the appearance of a wizard, among much else.
On the other hand, though, some publishers had quality control: in particular, Moore describes Gordon Landsborough at Hamilton & Co. as an “excellent editor”, whose efforts led to the company attracting “authors of some quality”. Hamilton’s eventually established the Panther reprint imprint, producing paperback editions of bestselling authors from either side of the Atlantic: “The works of Hans Habe and Nicholas Monsarrat mingled with popular science fiction writers Isaac Asimov and A.E. Van Vogt, the gangster novels of James Hadley Chase… and the novels of John O’Hara and Sinclair Lewis” (Moore could have added Ian Fleming to the list). A Manchester publisher called World Distributors established a reprint brand in London that evolved into Consul Books and published both reprints and new books, including collectable TV tie-in novels for series such as The Avengers. Meanwhile, company called Brown Watson (actually run by a family called Babini) changed their name to Digit Books and their reprint policy “would bring Harold Robbins, Henry Miller and William Burroughs to the UK before they became famous”.
Moore’s work is a labour of love, and the reproduction of numerous pulp covers brings the “mushroom world” to life in livid colour. However, the presentation of the text could have done with more attention – there are too many typos, and some vexing block quotes that are not set out at such (“why is the author suddenly writing in first person?”, I found myself asking). The cursory index is also a disappointment, given the reference value of the work.
Paperbacks, of course, were established in Britain in the 1930s, and pioneers such as Allen Lane remain hallowed by the literary minded. However, the “mushroom publishers” of the post-war years are less appreciated – the imprints no longer exist, many of the authors used house pseudonyms, and the myriad titles are often generic and arbitrary – but this is part of the context out which some of the better-known later paperback imprints emerged (in particular, the likes of Pan Books and Panther Books). There are also some other important links with broader historical memory: we all know about Penguin and the celebrated “Lady Chatterley” trial of 1960, but part of the backstory here must be the pulp obscenity trials of the previous decade, to which Moore devotes a chapter (Christmas Humphreys makes an appearance here, representing the defence).
Moore introduces many remarkable characters: these include Gerald Swan, a market bookseller turned publisher whose authors included the prolific Norman Firth; Binyimin Zeev Immanuel, a Latvian immigrant whose business was one of several publishing ventures operating out of 37a Kensington High Street; and Julius Reiter, a German anti-Nazi and book distributor who, along with the publisher Reginald Carter, were imprisoned for obscenity in 1954 as part of the anti-pulp crackdown (writers were also held liable for obscenity, although in this instance the author Steve Frances – a former communist who had written for the Daily Worker – avoided conviction). Dail Amber, an ex-journalist who had actually lived in Hollywood, produced a crime novel a week for Immanuel’s Scion Ltd, is a rare female author mentioned (Moore feels the need to describe her as “pretty, blonde”), although several of the publishers discussed by Moore appear to have been husband-and-wife partnerships.
A couple of authors whose names I did recognise are E.C. Tubb and Lionel Fanthorpe, and Moore makes a special reference to a novelisation of The Creature from the Black Lagoon by John Russell Fearn, writing as Vargo Statten. Moore notes that “the circumstances of its publication by such a small publisher [Dragon Books] means that few film buffs will know of its existence”. Fearn was one of the first British authors to provide science-fiction for US pulp magazines, and the name of Vargo Statten also provided the title for a British science-fiction magazine that turned down a story from Brian Aldiss because the publisher wanted material accessible for younger readers.
The author defends the output of the “mushroom publishers” against literary disdain, although he admits that many titles are collectable today primarily for their cover art. The production process often left little or no time for redrafting and editing, and one publisher was said to deal with manuscripts that were too long by arbitrarily removing a chunk from the middle. Stories of the Old West and Chicago gangsters were imagined by writers with no first-hand experience of America, and the science content of science-fiction works published by a publisher called John Spencer & Co. (later Badger) was frequently risible: “planets became stars, galaxies became universes, etc”. Moore singles out one effort, Pirates of Cerebus attributed to “Bengo Mistral”, as “the worst single piece of fiction ever published” for nonsensical terms such as “atomic molecules”, an underwhelming spaceship that travels “five times the speed of sound”, and the appearance of a wizard, among much else.
On the other hand, though, some publishers had quality control: in particular, Moore describes Gordon Landsborough at Hamilton & Co. as an “excellent editor”, whose efforts led to the company attracting “authors of some quality”. Hamilton’s eventually established the Panther reprint imprint, producing paperback editions of bestselling authors from either side of the Atlantic: “The works of Hans Habe and Nicholas Monsarrat mingled with popular science fiction writers Isaac Asimov and A.E. Van Vogt, the gangster novels of James Hadley Chase… and the novels of John O’Hara and Sinclair Lewis” (Moore could have added Ian Fleming to the list). A Manchester publisher called World Distributors established a reprint brand in London that evolved into Consul Books and published both reprints and new books, including collectable TV tie-in novels for series such as The Avengers. Meanwhile, company called Brown Watson (actually run by a family called Babini) changed their name to Digit Books and their reprint policy “would bring Harold Robbins, Henry Miller and William Burroughs to the UK before they became famous”.
Moore’s work is a labour of love, and the reproduction of numerous pulp covers brings the “mushroom world” to life in livid colour. However, the presentation of the text could have done with more attention – there are too many typos, and some vexing block quotes that are not set out at such (“why is the author suddenly writing in first person?”, I found myself asking). The cursory index is also a disappointment, given the reference value of the work.
November 16, 2020
Steve Holland wrote this when he was 31 years of age, but more importantly he compiled the information before the Internet age had kicked in. He includes interviews with authors, publishers and also outlines the famous obscenity trials of the mid-50s. This overview of the 'mushroom' publishers of the pre- and post war is fascinating even if you've never read any of the titles concerned. The appendix contains an overview of the UK horror comics campaign. Companies covered include Swan, Gaywood, Scion, and many more. A brilliant overview of this very specific time period in British publishing
December 2, 2016
I've long been a collector of American paperbacks from the period of roughly 1939 to 1960 and have also been interested in the evolution of publishing to meet the explosion of book-hungry, literate souls in the middle 20th Century, so I'm happy to have found this guide to the strange "mushrooms" that sprang up in Britain after the war. This book is really two books -- one, an obsessive history of paperback publishing and the other, a story of the transformation of cultural values from traditional to popular, especially at the sensational and violent end of the best-seller list. Prior to reading this book, I knew almost nothing about the campaign against gangster novels in the UK, though there were similar, more localized efforts in the US. The dichotomy of focus -- between a collectors guide to publishers and a collection of appalling anecdotes -- makes a sometimes uneven mix but, given that the history covered here is largely unchronicled elsewhwere, this slim volume is essential if one has any interest at all in the subjects. Plus it's full of cool pictures of amazing covers, some of them rendered in lurid color, these books shocking only in the innocence of their imagery to modern eyes and in the realization that people went to jail for publishing them.
February 9, 2025
Welcome to the truly wonderful world of British post-War Pulp, where the cover art ruled, where authors could produce a book (with no thought of an ending that made sense) on request in 48 hours to pay their bills and where unscrupulous publishers, deciding that the word-count was too long for their commercial needs, would just leave out the middle twenty pages if necessary.
A jungle indeed, but some of these were beautiful books in their way, even if the paper was so cheap that it now disintegrates in your hands on the rare occasions you can find an original copy of one of these treasures at a price you can afford.
And if you can't track down the originals, with the world of second-hand and used bookstores now decimated, then 'The Mushroom Jungle' is the next best thing. It's well-researched and very entertaining.
A jungle indeed, but some of these were beautiful books in their way, even if the paper was so cheap that it now disintegrates in your hands on the rare occasions you can find an original copy of one of these treasures at a price you can afford.
And if you can't track down the originals, with the world of second-hand and used bookstores now decimated, then 'The Mushroom Jungle' is the next best thing. It's well-researched and very entertaining.
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews