In 1941, following the success of Pocket Books, American News Company, the largest distributor of periodicals in the United States, decided to start a paperback company of its own. It modeled Avon Books so closely after Pocket Books, even using the words “pocket book” on the covers, that Pocket Books sued. Several years of litigation ensued but Avon soldiered on.
American News Company hired a brother and sister, Joseph Myers and Edna Myers Williams, to run Avon, buying out their pulp magazine company. Myers earlier had published low-cost, well-bound illustrated classics, including a line for Macy’s. The gentlemen publishers considered Joseph Myers, whose education had stopped at the fifth grade, a tasteless vulgarian. But he was also a skillful competitor who soon made Avon a major force in making paperbacks the successor to the pulps, cheapening the perception of the format in the process.
The new company operated a lot like the pulps. It was more interested in marketability than in literary merit and it acquired titles on the cheap. Avon books usually had flashy, often lurid, covers. They were cheaply constructed and would often come apart as you read them. The initial publication runs were smaller than the other majors and Avon kept no backlist. However, Avon also published popular and well-respected authors like Raymond Chandler, Agatha Christie, James M. Cain, John O’Hara, D.H. Lawrence and Rex Stout, as long as their titles were marketable; often it was their lesser titles or early works that Avon could acquire cheaply.
Avon also published comic books and digest magazines that anthologized short stories, including mysteries and science fiction.
Avon’s pulp roots are evident in this list of novels it released early in 1946 and even more so by the racy illustrations on their covers:
To Step Aside by Noel Coward (1939): A collection of short stories by the famous British wit and playwright about the scandalous lives of theater folk and London and Manhattan society.
Catherine Herself (1920), an early novel from popular novelist James Hilton, whose prior paperback sales had proven him to be a highly saleable commodity. He was only 20 and a student at Cambridge when this book was first published.
You Can't Keep the Change (1940) by Peter Cheyney, a British crime writer who wrote in the American hardboiled style, was one in a series involving tough guy private eye Slim Callaghan. The books were very popular in England and France. Several were made into movies in both countries. Some American fans of the genre found his novels so full of over-the-top cliches to read as unintentional parodies.
Bad Girl (1928) by Vina Delmar, now all but forgotten, was one of the top bestsellers when it was first published. It was made into a Broadway play and the 1931 movie adaptation won two Academy Awards and was nominated for best picture in the pre-code days. The novel had been banned in Boston. It is about a young couple, average New Yorkers, struggling to trust each other after giving in to the sexually pro
miscuous atmosphere of Jazz Age New
York. Delmar, born Alvina Croter in New York City to a husband-and-wife team who played vaudeville and the Yiddish theater, followed up with Loose Ladies and Kept Woman. In 1946 she was in Hollywood working as a screenwriter. She was nominated for an Oscar for “The Awful Truth.”.
The Red Box (1937) by Rex St
out featured Stout’s popular detective, Nero Wolfe. It was originally published in 1935 as a serial in The American Magazine. A suspect in a murder case asks Wolfe to handle his estate, particularly the contents of a red box, but then drops dead before revealing the whereabouts of the box. Stout was a political activist, an outspoken member of the anti-Communist left.
Sight Unseen and the Confession (1921) was by Mary Roberts Rinehart, sometimes called “the American Agatha Christie,’ although she actually predates Christie and did not only write mysteries The first short novel is about a murder at a seance and the second is about the psychological breakdown of a woman consumed with guilt.
Mistress Wilding (1910) by Rafael Sabatini , the Anglo-Italian adventure writer best known for Scaramouche, Captain Blood. and The Sea-Hawk, was a historical potboiler. The main character is involved in the Duke of Monmouth’s failed rebellion of Protestants against the Catholic King James II. The title character is the woman he woos, who is uncertain if he is a roguish villain or a dashing hero. There is a thematic similarity here with the Daphne du Maurier bestseller of the moment, The King’s General.
The Regatta Mystery (1939) is a collection of short stories by Agatha Christie featuring Miss Marple. Hercule Poirot and Parker Pyne.
The Private Affairs of Bel Ami (1885) by-Guy de Maupassant was originally titled Bel Ami, but the later title was also used for the 1947 George Sander’s movie based on the novel. It is about a journalist who caddishly uses several women to advance his career and position in Paris society.
Five Sinister Characters, an anthology of Raymond Chandler short stories.
Death in the Air (1935) by- Agatha Christie. Hercule Poirot solves the murder of a fellow passenger on a cross-channel flight.
Avon Ghost Reader, an anthology of supernatural tales.
The French Key Mystery (1940) by pulp mainstay Frank Gruber . Con men Johnny Fletcher and Sam Cragg are locked out of their hotel room for non-payment and when they get back in, they find a body clutching a valuable coin. Gruber was also churning out screenplays for Hollywood.
Loose Ladies (1929) by Vina Delmar was her follow-up to her smash hit Bad Girls. It was a collection of fictio
nal portraits of New York women of the Jazz Age.
The Dark Street Murders (1944) by Peter Cheyney was another hardboiled novel, this one featuring FBI agent Lemmy Caution.
Butterfield 8 (1935) by John O'Hara was inspired by the sensationalist newspaper accounts about a beautiful young woman whose body was found washed up on a Long Island beach in 1931. It was never determined if her death was murder, suicide or an accident. O’Hara’s protagonist is a boozy beauty using her sexual attractiveness to navigate Depression era New York. When she takes a mink coat belonging to the wife of a lover, it sets off a chain of events that bring her down. The 1960 movie that won an Oscar for Elizabeth Taylor is a glossier version of the more sordid story told in the novel. O’Hara was considered a major writer in 1946 but his reputation plummeted in later years.
Black Orchids (1942) by Rex Stout contains two Nero Wolfe novellas that had appeared earlier in abridged form in The American Magazine. The title story involves a murder at a flower show. In Cordially Invited to Meet Death, the murder victim is a socialite who had hired Wolfe to find out who was sending her intimidating letters.
Black Angel (1943) by Cornell Woolrich was a novel based on two earlier short stories by a master of noir. In the novel. a devoted wife attempts to save her philandering husband from the death sentence for murdering his mistress by wreaking revenge on four of his associates, one of whom may have been the true culprit. Woolrich hated the 1946 film adaptation that starred Dan Duryea, June Vincent and Peter Lorre for making changes to his story.
Wedding Ring (1930) by Beth Brown is the story of a promiscuous young woman who becomes a famous ballerina.
The Virgin and the Gypsy (1930) by D. H. Lawrence is about two daughters of an Anglican vicar who look to escape their dreary lives in an Edwardian English village.
The Embezzler (1944) by James M. Cain. Cain was hot in 1946 after the movie adaptations of Double Indemnity, Mildred Pierce and The Postman Always Rings Twice. This story originally appeared in Liberty Magazine in 1938. In this novel, one of Cain’s trademark scheming hussies plans to embezzle money from the bank where her husband works. Scheming hussies were popping up in a lot of books and movies at this time, thanks in part to Cain’s popularity.
The Secret Adversary (1922) by Agatha Christie was her second novel and the first of her works featuring the characters of Tommy and Tuppence. In the novel, the young couple, both out of work, advertise their services as “adventurers,” planning a career of petty crime, but find themselves inadvertently caught in the middle of a plot to overthrow the British government.