Betty Maxey FF 70's Hardbacks

[Wolfgang]

For award, Dorothy Hamilton Illustrated following books:
- on Finniston farm
- have a mystery to solve
- go to Demon’s Rocks
- go to Billycock Hill
- get into a fix
- are together again

For award, Jolyne Knox Illustrated following books:
- run away together
- on Kirrin Island again
- on a treasure island
- on a secret trail
- on a hike together
- have plenty of fun
- have a wonderful time
- go to smuggler’s top
- go to mystery moor
- go off to camp
- go off in a caravan
- go down to the sea
- go adventuring again
- get into trouble
- fall into adventure

[pete9012S]

Thank you very much for that info Wolgang - of course I was intrigued to see what Dorothy Hamilton's illustrations were like. I found this post from Poppy:

I thought the Dorothy Hamilton illustrations were quite similar to Jolyne Knox's depictions. I have two books illustrated by Hamilton, and I really quite like some of the interpretations of the children and Timmy. Here's some examples of the internal pictures in Five Go to Billycock Hill:

And also this helpful post from Tony:

Have we seen any of Dorothy Hamilton's Famous Five illustrations?

Under the Darrell Waters regime there was a strange arrangement where separate licences were issued for hardbacks and paperbacks for a series. A publisher only held onto that licence as long as they kept the books in print. Hodder let the hardback licence slip and lost it to Award in 1992. They initially released the last six books in the series, before any of the others, but when they issued further books in the series they all had a different style cover (the yellow-rimmed series), all 21 books were illustrated by Jolyne Knox, who had illustrated the previous series of hardbacks for Hodder in 1986 (the now scarce blue-rimmed covers which clearly had a very short life as I only have three illustrated in the Cave!). Award then decided that they wanted to make the whole series uniform and they redid the last six books with the yellow rim and these were all freshly illustrated by Dorothy Hamilton - so she actually only illustrated the last six books.

Licencing conditions have now changed completely (though I am not sure when this happened, but probably under Chorion) and a licence is issued for a series regardless of whether the books are hardback or paperback, so you will no longer get a series out at the same time with two different publishers.

[Wolfgang]

Annoying about the Maxey illustration in paperbacks is that the dimensions of the books differ. Sometimes the illustration are larger than the pages, so parts of the illustrations had been cut off. That makes me wonder if the illustrations had originally been intended just for hardbacks (usually the dimensions of these books are larger) and that it was too much trouble to resize the illustrations for the paperbacks.

[Courtenay]

You sure it's not a case of the artist herself leaving bits out as usual?


(sorry about the image quality and the Photobucket tag — I'm not sure if this one is in the Cave, so I copied it from where I remembered it being used in the Caption Competition)

[Wolfgang]

I am sure, Courtenay - I happen to have two different paperback editions of a Famous Five book with Maxey illustrions, one is slightly larger than the other one, and on one illustration there's more of Timmy's tip of the tail visible than on the other one, the page is simply not large enough to contail all details.

[pete9012S]

Annoying about the Maxey illustration in paperbacks is that the dimensions of the books differ.

That is most interesting information Wolfgang. Thank you.
I will now have to do a comparison with my own Maxey hardback and paperback editions.

Regards

Pete

[aminmec]

Hello Anita , I have mailed the address given on the website of Gary Rees, inquiring whether he would have donne the cover art .I hope they respond with some information

[Anita Bensoussane]

Let us know if you hear anything, Aminmec.

[aminmec]

I haven't got any reply to my mail..Sadly .