Adventure series by Armada

[aminmec]

Ive often wondered why Adventure series by Armada copies aren't so widespread as compared to the other Armada paperbacks of the Barney series and the Secret series.
There seems to be just one edition of them by Armada in the 60s and nothing beyond that down the years from the 70s .
Is it that the publication rights went to Picollo and there on to Macmillan and Piper?
Also the reproduction of the illustrations in Armada are quite dull and smudgy and nowhere as good as the ones printed in Picollo .The illustrations of the other series of Barney and Secret series do not been to be as bad .

[Anita Bensoussane]

Macmillan were the original publishers of the Adventure series and they still publish that series, as far as I know. The other names you mention were either imprints of Macmillan (e.g. Piccolo and Piper) or were given permission to bring out paperback editions (e.g. Armada). Armada belonged to Collins at some point, though I'm not sure of the dates.

[John Pickup]

The first book published by Armada in 1962 was The Adventurous Four, originally published in hardback by Newnes. In the same year they published The Naughtiest Girl, also done originally by Newnes. In 1963 the first six or seven FFO books were published in Armada paperbacks and these were originally done by Methuen.
The first Armada paperback I ever bought was in 1963, Strangers At Snowfell by Malcolm Saville and this was published originally by Lutterworth Press.
This doesn't answer the question about the Adventure series but it appears that other publishers were prepared to allow their authors to be used.
One other thing, a few years ago I was told, it may have been by the late John Allsup, that when Armada started they wanted all their books to be a uniform length and quite a lot of editing was required to enable this. Obviously, the Adventure books were far too long for this to work, to bring the book length down to Armada's requirements would have reduced the pages by half, ripping massive chunks of text out of the books and rendering the story more or less unreadable.

[Anita Bensoussane]

Interesting, John.

Remembering that Gordon Landsborough (publisher, writer and bookseller) established Armada books, I checked him out on Wikipedia. According to Wiki, he started Armada books in 1960 but Armada was sold to Collins in 1963. He also started Dragon in 1965, later acquired by Granada.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gordon_Landsborough" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

[John Pickup]

Thanks for that further information, Anita.

[aminmec]

Thanks Anita and John for sharing the information.
If you say that Armada paperbacks needing to be uniform edited the pages , could it be that the Adventure series have altered text. I do not have them all to compare .
Armada did proudly advertise in their books that they have 'bright colourful spines lovely to have on the shelf and affordable to buy every week '
Covers and spines were indeed well done . I think it was artist Peter Archer who did most of the covers with a painting in the front and also a tiny scene at the back left .Enid Blyton , Hardy boys , Three investigators , William all had this characteristic style . Is there more known about him ?
With the popularity that these series enjoyed then and also having a considerable fan base buying these used books to this day , I wonder why dont publishers give a thought to reviving the books by reprinting them in some form or other with the same covers etc...Rights issues I guess

[Anita Bensoussane]

We've got a couple of threads on Peter Archer, Aminmec:

https://www.enidblytonsociety.co.uk/for ... ter+archer" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

https://www.enidblytonsociety.co.uk/for ... er#p373980" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

[Fiona1986]

I had Armada paperbacks of Valley and Ship and I don't recall them being abridged in any way when I later got the Macmillan hardbacks.

[Anita Bensoussane]

From what I've heard over the years, I don't think the Armada paperbacks of the Adventure books were abridged either. However, references to Croydon Airport (in one or two titles in the series) were altered to Heathrow Airport by Armada.

Remembering that Gordon Landsborough (publisher, writer and bookseller) established Armada books, I checked him out on Wikipedia. According to Wiki, he started Armada books in 1960 but Armada was sold to Collins in 1963...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gordon_Landsborough" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

I'm quoting myself because I've since discovered that the Wikipedia entry for Armada Books contradicts the Wikipedia entry for Gordon Landsborough, saying that "Armada Books was a British publishing imprint used to publish paperback titles from 1962 until 1995. Created by Gordon Landsborough as the paperback imprint of May Fair Books Ltd, Armada Books focused exclusively on books for children to buy with their pocket money. Armada was sold in 1966 and eventually ended up in the hands of Collins..." I should've known better than to rely on Wikipedia!:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Armada_Books" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

There's more about Armada books on this Hardy Boys website:

http://www.hardyboys.co.uk/history/armada1.php" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

To quote from the website:

In the late 1950s, writer and publisher Gordon Landsborough (1913-1983) left his job to set up his own publishing company. He created May Fair Books Ltd, named after the central west London district where his offices were located (the initial address was 39 Upper Brook Street, London, then from 1963 until 1966 at Dorset House, 13a Old Burlington Street, London). The paperback imprint of May Fair Books Ltd was named Armada...

The first titles under the Armada banner were published in 1962 (the official launch of the imprint took place on the Cutty Sark in Greenwich, London). Armada reprinted in paperback successful titles that had previously only been available in hardback, such as the Enid Blyton mysteries, Billy Bunter, and Biggles, as well as new tie-in novels based on then-popular television series such as Bonanza, Stingray, Thunderbirds, and Doctor Who.

After several successful years, Landsborough found himself facing difficulties with distribution. Often seen as an interloper in what was predominantly a very snobbish industry that frowned upon and considered cheap mass-marketed paperbacks as being for the poor and common people, Landsborough found it difficult to maintain a presence in an ever-changing market. As a result, he was forced to sell a majority share of May Fair Books to his biggest printer-creditor, Love & Malcomson Ltd (who were based at Brighton Road, Redhill, Surrey) sometime in mid-1966. Within a few short months, Love & Malcomson on-sold its shares to another publisher with whom they had a printing contract. The name of the publisher? William Collins Sons & Company Limited.

[John Pickup]

For those interested, there is an Armada paperbacks website created by John Allsup. You can view the covers of the books they published from 1962 onwards. Some of the images were provided by our own Tony Summerfield.
I don't know how to provide the link, maybe Anita could do it please.

[Anita Bensoussane]

The link is below, John. To add a link, you go to the page you want to link to and then you copy what's in your browser and paste it into your post on the forums.

John Allsup's website is very useful and he had intended to add a lot more (for those who don't know, sadly John Allsup died in 2020). I don't know what will happen to the site in the long run.

http://www.armadas.uk/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

[Lucky Star]

That's a wonderful site which I've had bookmarked for some time. I'm sorry to hear that John Allsup has died.

I had the first four Adventure books in the Armada editions and they were not abridged. I agree that the illustration quality was poor compared to the Macmillan hardbacks. I still loved them though.

[Anita Bensoussane]

Of all the paperbacks I had as a child (Knight, Dragon, Piccolo, Armada, Puffin, Lions, Carousel and a few others), I think the Armada ones probably had the lowest-quality paper.

[timv]

I agree that the Armada paperbacks were fairly poor-quality paper compared to some others, at least from my own experience; not many of my own hordes of Blyton Armada PBs bought in c. 1967-9 (Enid's Secret, Adventurous Four, Five Find-Outers, Six Cousins, and Barney series plus Family At Red-Roofs, Those Dreadful Children, and Hollow Tree House) lasted beyond the late 1970s! Ditto my Monica Edwards, Malcolm Saville, Mary Gervaise ('Georgie' pony school series) and Pullein-Thompson sisters books - I replaced most of the ME series with copies from the John Goodhild reprints in the 1980s, ditto Malcolm Saville's Lone Pine series. I think only a couple of my original ME paperbacks and Malcolm Saville 'Lone Pine' books have survived.

it would be interesting to work out which authors the Armada editors selected and why, and who was left out of the reprints of mainstream post-1945 authors - Mabel Esther Allan being an obvious omission. The non -Chalet School Elinor Brent Dyer books were also all left out, and the initial Armada 'run' of Chalet School books did not start with the first books chronologically, but with examples from different periods from the 1930s to 1950s - to see which was most popular? At a guess, the Armada/ Collins editors honed in on longish 'series' books as easier to set up a long-running market from them, thus putting authors of individual books or short series (eg David 'Severn', author of the well-written 1940s family/farm/ rural adventure 'Crusoe' series) at a disadvantage. Also, they only chose the best-known school series authors from an earlier era, eg the 'Frank Richards' Bunter books but not the more rarified and 'dated' Dorita Fairlie Bruce books ('Dimsie school series,a bit cliched, and well-written but fogotten Scots family/ career girl adventures) and Elsie J Oxenham ('Abbey' series of school and family stories, c. 80 books long, set in the Chilterns/ Sussex but full of country house living). Possibly DFB and EJO were seen as too dated in tone but Bunter wasn't, as Frank Richards was unlike them a regular comic serial writer and so had a more accessible style?

MEA and EJO also published with a lot of different publishers - too much trouble to hunt them all down and negotiate copyright issues? Malcolm Saville and Monica Edwards usually published with only one or two publishers. In Mary Gervaise's case, the Armada reprint only took on one of her three longish school/ ponies series, and at that the best-known one; far more of the Pullein-Thompsons' books were taken on,? as appealing to the Pony Club set with their concentration on competitions and fox-hunting.

Also it would be interesting to see who some of the 'uncredited' cover illustrators really were; I think we still have a few later Blyton editions' covers marked as uncredited.

[pete9012S]

Yes, I always wonder about all the uncredited artists too, timv.

I often refer to Ian Regan's site for Blyton Armada's too:

Series Book Art - Internal Illustrations
Enid Blyton:

http://seriesbookart.co.uk/blyton/index.php" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;