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An early Avon Books edition, #71 from 1945, of the Simon Templar mystery short story collection, The Saint Intervenes.
An early Avon Books edition, #71 from 1945, of the Simon Templar mystery short story collection, The Saint Intervenes. Overview Simon Templar is known as the Saint because of his initials (ST and also because of his heroic exploits that fly in the face of an otherwise nefarious reputation The short story is a literary genre of Fictional Prose Narrative that tends to be more concise and to the point than longer works of fiction such Boodle is a collection of short stories by Leslie Charteris, first published in the United Kingdom by Hodder and Stoughton in 1934

Avon Publications was an American paperback book and comic book publisher. The United States of America —commonly referred to as the Paperback, softback, or softcover describe and refer to a Book by the nature of its binding. A comic book (often shortened to simply comic and sometimes called a comic paper or comic magazine) is a Magazine or Book of narrative As of 2007, it exists as an imprint of HarperCollins, publishing primarily romance novels. In the Publishing Industry, an imprint can refer to two different things It can mean a Brand name under which a work is published HarperCollins is a Publishing company owned by News Corporation. A romance novel is a literary Genre developed in Western culture, mainly in English-speaking countries [1]

History

Avon Books was founded in 1941 by the American News Corporation (ANC) to create a rival to Pocket Books. Pocket Books is a division of Simon & Schuster that primarily publishes Paperback books They hired brother and sister Joseph Myers and Edna Myers Williams to establish the company. ANC bought out J. S. Ogilvie Publications, a pulp magazine publisher partly owned by both the Myers, and renamed it "Avon Publications". Pulp magazines (or pulp fiction; often referred to as "the pulps" were inexpensive Fiction magazines They also got into comic books. A comic book (often shortened to simply comic and sometimes called a comic paper or comic magazine) is a Magazine or Book of narrative "The early Avons were somewhat similar in appearance to the existing paperbacks of Pocket Books, resulting in an immediate and largely ineffective lawsuit by that company. Despite this superficial similarity, though, from early on Myers differentiated Avon by placing an emphasis on popular appeal rather than loftier concepts of literary merit. "[2] The first 40 titles were not numbered. First editions of the first dozen or so have front and rear endpapers with an illustration of a globe. The emphasis on "popular appeal" led Avon to publish ghost stories, sexually-suggestive love stories, fantasy novels and science fiction in its early years, which were far removed in audience appeal from the somewhat more literary Pocket competition.

As well as normal-sized paperbacks, Avon published digest-format paperbacks (the size and shape of the present-day Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine) in series. Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine is a monthly Digest size fiction magazine specializing in Crime fiction, particularly Detective fiction. These included Murder Mystery Monthly, Modern Short Story Monthly and Avon Fantasy Readers. Many authors highly prized by present-day collectors were published in these editions, including A. Merritt, James M. Cain, H. P. Lovecraft, Raymond Chandler and Robert E. Howard. Abraham Merritt ( January 20, 1884 &ndash August 21, 1943) who published under the byline A James Mallahan Cain ( July 1, 1892 &ndash October 27, 1977) was an American Journalist Howard Phillips Lovecraft ( August 20, 1890 – March 15, 1937) was an American author of horror, fantasy Raymond Thornton Chandler ( July 23, 1888 &ndash March 26, 1959) was an American Author of crime stories and novels Robert Ervin Howard ( January 22 1906 &ndash June 11 1936) was an American pulp writer of Fantasy,

In 1953, Avon Books sold books in the price range of 25¢ to 50¢ (for the Avon "G" series, the "G" standing for "Giant") and were selling more than 20 million copies a year. Their books were characterized by Time Magazine as "westerns, whodunits and the kind of boy-meets-girl story that can be illustrated by a ripe cheesecake jacket. " [3] At around this time, Avon also began to publish under other imprints, including Eton (1951-1953), Novel Library, Broadway and Diversey. Avon's 35-cent "T" series, introduced in 1953, also had strong mass-market appeal and contains many outstanding examples of the then-popular juvenile delinquent story. Juvenile delinquency refers to criminal acts performed by juveniles Most Legal systems prescribe specific procedures for dealing with juveniles such as The T series also contained many movie tie-in editions and the stand-bys of mysteries and science fiction.

Avon was bought by the Hearst Corporation in 1959. Hearst Communications Inc is a privately-held American -based Media conglomerate based in the Hearst Tower in New York City, USA [4] In 1999, the News Corporation bought out Hearst's book division, and merged Avon with HarperCollins. News Corporation (often abbreviated to News Corp) (,,) is one of the world's largest media conglomerate companies by Market capitalisation

Avon Comics

From at least 1945 through the mid-1950s, Avon published comic books. A comic book (often shortened to simply comic and sometimes called a comic paper or comic magazine) is a Magazine or Book of narrative Its titles included horror fiction, science fiction, Westerns, romance comics, war comics and funny-animal comics. Horror fiction is broadly Fiction in any medium intended to scare unsettle or horrify the audience Western fiction is a genre of literature set in the American Old West between the years of 1860 and 1900 Romance comics are a Genre of US Comic books that were most popular during the Golden Age of Comics. War comics is a genre of Comic books that gained popularity in English-speaking countries following Funny animal is a Cartooning term for the Genre of Comics and Animated cartoons in which the main characters are Humanoid or Most titles lasted only a few issues, with the six longest-running detailed in the complete list below:

Footnotes

  1. ^ Avon home page. Accessed 1/6/2007.
  2. ^ Canja, Jeff. (2002) Collectable Paperback Books, Second Edition, East Lansing, MI: Glenmoor Publishing. ISBN 0-9673639-5-0
  3. ^ "Highbrow Smorgasbord," Time Magazine, August 10, 1953.
  4. ^ "Quiet Deal," Time Magazine, Augusut 31, 1959.
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