Description
Exceptional collection from the personal archives of dust jacket illustrator Jean des Vignes, who worked with various New York based publishers from 1937 to 1955. The collection includes 26 original drawings for dust jackets, 17 original drawings for illustrations (magazines and books), and over 200 printed dust jackets (for 97 different books).
Jean des Vignes archived the majority of his book cover work in two binders (one for publishers Phoenix and Gramercy, one for Dutton and Macmillan) which contain full or partial (front cover and spine) printed dust jackets. Some are pasted on cardboard, some are loose. Also included are a few curiosities, like partially unprinted dust jackets, completely price unclipped dust jackets featuring several possible prices for a book, photos of preparatory work, and clipped newspaper ads.
Also included in the archive are two personal family photo albums.
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308 x 252 m
2 original black-and-white drawings signed "Jean des Vignes" on the bottom, final projects with printer's marks and indications for rescaling.
Those illustrations were probably used for a magazine, Christmas card or children's book.
French illustrator Jean des Vignes emigrated to the United States, along with his Norwegian-born wife Lily, in the early 1930s. Though his work first appeared in magazines, by the year 1937, des Vignes had taken up book jacket design as his main trade.
In the United States, pictorial book jackets gradually replaced plain tan or colored paper wrappers from the 1890s onwards and, by the late 1910s, appointing specialized staff to book design had become standard practice. In the 30s and 40s, some artists and designers such as Gregory Brown challenged publishers to explore the potential of dust jacket design as an art form. The United States Book Jacket Designers Guild, founded in 1947, called for a stand against "the stunt jacket that screams for your attention, and then dares you to guess what the book is about... the burlap backgrounds, the airbrush dollies and similar cliches".
Jean des Vignes, we can gather, was hardly one to snub his nose at "airbrush dollies". Most of the 97 jackets in our collection were designed for mass-market pulp novels — crime, romance — some of them risqué.
Jean des Vignes' first contract seems to have been with New York-based Crown, with which he worked from 1937 to 1947 at least. Founded in 1933 by Emmanuel "Nat" Wartels and Robert "Bob" Simon under the name Outlet Books, the company initially dealt in the remainder business (other publishers' surplus books purchased at bargain prices). In 1936, it began publishing original non-fiction books as "Crown". Nat Wartels brought in Alice Sachs in 1937: a Sorbonne-educated translator of French art books, Sachs was also appointed as editor of two of Crown's subsidiary companies, Phoenix and Gramercy. Donald MacCampbell recalls : "[Phoenix] books were edited by a tireless young spinster named Alice Sachs who could process light fiction the way a baker turns out bread". (Don't Step on It -- It Might be a Writer, p. 35)
Both Phoenix and Gramercy produced hardcover books for lending-libraries (according to Bill Pronzini, "an average of only two thousand copies of each book were printed") as well as digest-format paperbacks reprints which used the same cover illustration as the lending-library copies. Phoenix press, in particular, published close to a thousand titles before its absorption into Arcadia House in 1952. On the quality of Sach's selection, Pronzini humorously notes:
Phoenix published a large quantity of books and yet paid absolute minimum royalties to its writers. In an article for the Writer’s 1941 Year Book, novelist and screenwriter Steve Fisher says that he received the handsome sum of $125 for all rights to his first novel, Spend the Night, in 1935. Rates escalated dramatically to $300 for all rights – and even to $500 for some of Phoenix’s more prolific contributors –in the late thirties; where they remained for many years to come. This policy of paying rock-bottom prices allowed Phoenix to buy manuscripts that had been rejected by the major publishers and by some of the other lending-library outfits as well. And the preponderance of these manuscripts were, to put it in charitable terms, only marginally publishable by most standards. Thus, by a combination of design and accident, were so many classics given life in the kingdom."
From the mid-1940s, Jean des Vignes went on to work with slightly more "highbrow" publishers E. P. Dutton and Macmillan. Though the last of his dust jacket we were able to document appeared on a 1955 book, in the early 1960s, Jean des Vignes still placed ads in Literary Marketplace selling his services for "book design, illustration, jacket design, layout".
PHOENIX
Phoenix was one of the major players in the market of "love novels", a genre of erotic romance pioneered by Depression‐era circulating library publishers. Des Vignes illustrated the jackets for at least 33 of these risqué romances, most of them penned by half a dozen authors hiding under different pseudonyms.
Among them is Peggy Gaddis Dern (1895-1966), prolific writer of romances who could "produce a finished novel every three weeks" (Encyclopedia of Pulp Fiction Writers, Lee Server, 2002). For her book covers, Des Vignes portrayed "a blonde with a bad reputation" (The Blonde), a "bad girl in disgrace" (Not Bad), "a fabulously wealthy window whom every man wanted to know" (What Every Widow Knows)... Though Des Vignes seems to have illustrated none of her popular "nurse novels", he did design the jackets of some erotic "doctor" novels by Charles S. Strong (1906-1962). Explorer and student of Scandinavian literature, Charles S. Strong "has had more thrilling adventures than the hero of a dime novel" ("Long Island Man Kills Sharks from Airplane", Joan Crockett, Brooklyn Eagle, 1931); the "Long Island Man's" literary life was just as adventurous: in addition to detective novels featuring Royal Mounted Police, children's books with dog protagonists, and a Nancy Drew mystery, Strong signed with the name Carl Sturdy a number of racy doctor stories. Also included in the list of authors illustrated by Des Vignes are Florence Stonebreaker, who penned nearly a hundred romance novels, Leona Slottman, and James Noble Gifford Saxon, who signed with the pseudonym Eliot Brewster some of Phoenix's most risqué titles.
In addition to "love novels", Phoenix also offered a wide selection of mysteries. Jean Des Vignes produced book jackets for at least 3 of them: James O'Hanlon's Murder at Malibu (loosely based on the mysterious death of Hollywood actress Thelma Todd), Ann. T. Smith's Death in the Cards ("Inspector Green of Boston Homicide was given the thankless task of plucking a murderer out a group of suspects, any of whom could have been legitimately judged insane"), and Sidney A. Porcelain's Crimson Cat Murder, which Bill Pronzini cites, in Son of Gun in Cheek, as a prime example of "Novel Murder Method" (P. 58): "I believe Mrs. Leonard was murdered with a vacuum cleaner. [The murderer] simply plugged in the cord, affixed this chromium tube to the front of the cleaner and pressed the nozzle against the sleeping woman’s nose and mouth. . . . He held it there until he had drawn every drop of air from her body."
MAQUETTES PHOENIX :
1) Sewell Peaslee Wright - Childless Woman - 1947
A World War I Veteran, radio operator, and frequent contributor to Astounding Stories and Weird Tales, Sewell Peaslee Wright (1897-1970) was best known as the horror and science-fiction author of Vampires of Space. He did, however, dabble in other pulp genres.
The publishers' blurb for Childless Woman reads : "Women who do not have the natural outlet for their maternal instincts are warped and wrecked by the bottled up sex force."
2) Gladys Sloan (pseudonym of Leona Slottman) - Dance Team - 1937
Little is known about Leona Slottman, who penned a number of Phoenix "love novels" under the pseudonyms Gladys Sloan and Carlotta Baker. Dance Team tells the story "Jane Holden , her husband , Dr. Stanley Holden , and her sister who ran away with an adagio dancer"
Robert Carter - Easy Virtue - 1937
Little information is available about Robert Carter ; it may be one of numerous pseudonyms of William Arthur Neubaeur, who collaborated with Phoenix under the pen name "Ralph Carter" in the 1940s. Easy Virtue tells of "the love affairs of a house-to-house canvasser of a magazine".
3) Frederic Chace - Girl about Town - 1938
While some Phoenix authors feverishly produced dozens of books, Frederic Chace seems to have stopped at Girl about Town, which the publishers elegantly sold as "The story of popular Julie Barton, a Boston debutante with a job and an apartment of her own".
4) Glen Watkins (pseudonym of Watkins Eppes Wright) - Designed for Love - 1940
A Virginia native, Watkins Eppes published under the name Allan Eppes novels of Southern life and stories "based on bible incidents" (The Layman's magazine of the living church, n°1, 1940). He reserved another pen name, Glen Watkins, for his regular collaborations with Phoenix : The Sinful Marriage, Immoral Marriage, Husband or Lover... and Designed for Love: "Gloria Gordon was going to have no dealings with marriage. Her much divorced mother had done marrying enough for them both, she said. So when she inherited the old Gordon mansion on Madison Avenue, she turned it into a gown shop, determined to devote herself to designing clothes-putting love and men out of her mind and heart... But that was before she met Barry Tomlinson, a play producer noted for his affairs."
5) Eliot Brewster (pseudonym of James Noble Gifford Saxon) - Past Sin - 1945
James Noble Gifford Saxon (1896-1957) was a regular Crown contributor, working with Phoenix under the pseudonyms Eliot Brewster, Warren Howard, Emily Noble and John Saxon ; his less risqué Gramercy stories were published under the pen name Gay Rutherford.
"After two or three wretched love affairs, Ann Carey was on the verge of a nervous breakdown. She didn't even care enough to refuse when Tad Nevil, who wanted to be rid of her, gave her money to leave town. Planeville offered a factory job and a measure of quiet, so Ann settled there. Once more the town's men on the prowl suggested that they might assuage her loneliness, but Ann had been bitten by wolves before and was wary. Then at last she met a man whose intentions were honorable. The future appeared rosy — when out of the blue and her past came Tad, ready to take up where he had left off."
GRAMERCY
While Phoenix Press' editorial line leaned on the racier side, Gramercy focused of "fluff". Jean des Vignes illustrated at least 19 of their dust jackets, all of them for light-romances. Publishers' blurbs tease the readers with the promise of " embittered hearts" melting before "shining hopefulness" (Until you come back), dashing Balkan diplomats (Embassy Ball), overbearing in-laws (A Home of their Own), a "pretty nurse" seducing a "brilliant young brain specialist" (Young nurse), "clear-eyes pilots and fabulously wealthy passengers" (Romance in the Sky)...
GAMERCY MAQUETTES
1) Gay Rutherford (pseudonym of James Noble Gifford Saxon) - Hideaway House - 1937
A regular contributor to Phoenix's "love novel" line, James Noble Gifford Saxon (1896-1957) also worked with Gramercy using the pseudonym Gay Rutherford.
"The romance of a girl who thought she loved city life until she was left a house in the country and a small income, provided she lived there for three years"
2) Gay Rutherford (pseudonym of James Noble Gifford Saxon) - Hearts at Sea - 1938
"When Crane Dorset told Kay Norman , on the eve of their marriage he was going to marry someone else , she packed her trousseau and hopped a tramp freighter as a substitute for the luxurious honeymoon cruise she had planned."
3) Allen Eppes (pseudonym of Watkins E. Wright) - Miss Busybody
A Virginia native, Watkins Eppes published under the name Allen Eppes novels of Southern life, stories "based on bible incidents" (The Layman's magazine of the living church, n°1, 1940), as well as Gramercy light romances ; his pseudonym Glen Watkins was reserved for his racier Phoenix contributions.
"A novel in which involvement in a mystery leads to involvement in love."
4) Bennie Hall - Poor Angel - 1944
A woman's magazine writer and editor — specializing in fashion, design, and the lonely hearts column — Bennie Caroline Hall (1887-1976) published her first novel in 1936 after another writer failed to meet the deadline. A prolific writer of nurse novels, Bennie Hall would go on to become an editor for Crown.
"Angel's predatory instincts had always obtained the best of everything for her , but there came a time when even Angel had to pay"
E. P. DUTTON
Most of Des Vignes's work on crime novels was done in collaboration with publishers E. P. Dutton (now part of the Penguin group). For the "Dutton Gilt Edge Mystery collection", Des Vignes designed the jackets of 4 of A. B. Cunningham's "Jess Roden" mysteries, as well as that of R. T. M. Scott's "Secret Service Smith" novel The Agony Column Murders.
His work also features on the cover of a number of Dutton books translated from the French: Henri Calet's Young Man of Paris and Monsieur Paul, Maurice Druon's The Rise of Simon Lachaume (laureate of the 1948 Prix Goncourt), Allegra Sanfer's Lovers and Mistresses... Des Vignes's French-ness might also have played a part in his being chosen to illustrate the jacket of Mrs. Robert Henrey's Madeleine Young Wife : "Madeleine Henrey [...] owed her mid-century success as a writer to the fact that she was a French woman writing in English for English readers. Both her ways of thought and her turns of phrase, like her accent in speaking English, were recognisably and piquantly French." (The Guardian, April 30th 2004).
Also of note is Des Vignes's illustration of the jacket of A Star's Progress, the only Gore Vidal novel to have been published under a pseudonym (Katherine Everard). Scrambling for money, Vidal wrote this female buildingsroman, speaking it into a dictaphone, in the course of a week. (Fred Kaplan, Gore Vidal, 2012). Des Vignes's work also features on the cover of In the Mink, Anne Scott-Jame's satirical memoire of her career as a vogue journalist.
Des Vignes designed at least 19 dust jackets for Dutton books between 1946 and 1954.
MAQUETTES DUTTON
1) Barnaby Dogbolt (pseudonym of Herbert Silvette) - The Goose's Tale - 1947
University of Virginia professor Herbert Silvette (1907-2002), author of The Doctor on the the Stage: Medicine and Medical Men in Seventeeth Century England and On Quacks and Quackery in Seventeenth Century England, also wrote several satirical novels under the pen name Barbaby Dogbolt. Amusingly, Silvette appeared to have been unhappy with Dutton's decision regarding his dust jackets; he indeed wrote to a friend: "Lord, don't get me started on the subject of dust jackets and publisher's blurbs!"
2) Henri Calet (translated by Jacques le Clercq) - The Young Man of Paris - 1950
Translated from the French Le tout sur le tout (1948), this largely autobiographical novel records the transformation of Paris from the Belle Époque to the postwar period. It is the first of only two novels by celebrated author Henri Calet to have been published in English.
3) Katherine Everard (pseudonym of Gore Vidal) - A Star's Progress - 1950
In spite of the success (and scandal) of his 1948 novel The City and the Pillar, Gore Vidal struggled to make ends meet. Finding himself unwilling to write for movies and television, he chose instead to turn to mass-market pulp fiction. Vidal completed A Star's Progress in the course of a week using a Dictaphone, and drew up a contract with Dutton for an advance of $1.000. The story of a Mexican-born dancer rising to Hollywood stardom, A Star's Progress was released about a month after his historical novel A Search for the King (also by Dutton). It is the only Gore Vidal book to have been published under pseudonym.
According to biographer Fred Kaplan, "Despite Vidal's efforts to write down, A Star's Progress is a classy piece of pulp fiction. The author's hand is evident throughout. Set mainly in Monterrey, New Orleans, and Los Angeles, it is a partly original, partly formulaic female bildungsroman [...]" (p. 315)
Sales were not as high as the author had hoped; nonetheless, the novel was later republished by Pyramid under the title Cry Shame!
4) Alert Benjamin Cunningham - The Killer Watches the Manhunt - 1950
While working as a teacher and a dean of studies, A. B. Cunningham (1888-1962) wrote over 40 novels, including the celebrated 21-volume "Jess Roden" mystery series, featuring a sleuth from rural Kentucky.
In The Killer Watches the Manhunt, 16th instalment of the series, Jess Roden investigates the death of store clerk John Elk, murdered as he ice-skated to work.
5) Albert Benjamin Cunningham - Skeleton in the Closet - 1951
In Skeleton in the Closet, 17th instalment of the "Jess Roden" series, two boys dig out a skull on the banks of the Wild River. The Kentucky sleuth's investigation stirs up tensions as the names of some Green Acre's most well-to-do families are brought up.
6) Alexandra Phillips - Blessing of the Hounds - 1952
A historical romance, Blessing of the Hounds is set in small town Virginia, where a retired paper columnist purchases a dilapidated farmhouse to restore — before falling in love with twenty-year-old Gogo Amblis.
Saturday Review critic Edward J. Fitzgerald (who translated some Dutton books from the French) writes: "Miss Phillips resolves [the characters' dilemma] with the aid of a hunting accident in which Gogo is partially crippled, a flood that wipes out a number of secondary characters, and a few other plot devices which help straighten out the thinking of Fritz and Gogo. It's all written with skill and seriousness and the plot tricks are less obvious than might appear from this. They're there, though."
Alexandra Phillips had previously published, also with Dutton, the novel Forever Possess.
7) Maurice Druon (translated by Edward Fitzgerald) - The Rise of Simon Lachaume - 1952
Translated from the French Les Grandes familles, laureate of the 1948 Goncourt prize, The Rise of Simon Lachaume is the first volume of a trilogy set in the interwar period. Though Simon Lachaume gives his name to the English edition of the novel, he is but one of its many vicious, corrupted characters.
8) Lewis Arnold (pseudonym of David Evans) - Sand Against the Wind - 1954
In this rather bizarre novel, an angel-faced woman cursed with a misshapen body attempts to murder her twin sister — before being cured of her evilness on a pilgrimage to Lourdes.
A successful playwright and author of two novels, David Evans turned to television in the late 1950s, penning 30 screenplays.
MACMILLAN
While working with Dutton, Jean Des Vignes simultaneously dealt with rival publishing group Macmillan, designing 21 of their book jackets mainly for historical fiction. When evaluated in terms of sales and posterity of the novels rather that on pulp appeal, Des Vignes's work with Macmillan was by far his most successful. From Drivin' Woman, a Gone with the Wind inspired bestseller whose movie rights were sold for $60.000 before the book was even published, Jean des Vignes went ont to illustrate the cover of Kathleen's Winsor's Forever Amber, one of the most successful novels of the decade. Set in 17th century England, Amber sold a hundred thousand copies on the week of its release despite being banned in fourteen US states. Otto Preminger's 1947 film adaptation further contributed to its popularity - Des Vignes updated the jacket art to ressemble actress Linda Darnell. When Winsor died in 2018, some three million copies had been sold.
MAQUETTES MACMILLAN
1) Jeanette Seletz - Hope Deferred - 1943
This novel follows the career of Doctor Jone Brent, from medical school to his surgical practice. The American Mercury praised it for the accuracy of its "medical details and background".
Des Vignes' project for the dust jacket included the portrait of a beautiful young woman which was eventually deleted, presumably in alignment with the publisher's efforts to market Hope Deferred as a "more serious" doctor novel, not to be mistaken for a "doctor and nurse" romance.
2) Kathleen Winsor - Forever Amber - 1945
Frequently cited as the original "bodice-ripper", Kathleen Winsor's novel Forever Amber sold 100.000 copies on the week of its release and featured on the New York Times bestselling list for 75 consecutive weeks in spite of — or thanks to — being banned in fourteen US states.
Set in 17th century England, the novel tells the story of Amber St Claire, an orphan who relies on her charms to climb up the social ladder. Winsor had thoroughly researched her subject, claiming to have read 365 books on Restoration England in the five years that her husband was at war. Publishers edited her two and a half millon-word manuscript to a fifth of its original size, producing a still impressively thick 972-page volume. In the course of its eventful plot, Amber is imprisoned for debt, falls into prostitution, becomes an actress, survives the plague and the Great London fire, bears the illegitimate child of King Richard II... all the while entertaining numerous lovers. "Adultery", the protagonist famously declares, "is not a crime, it is an amusement."
Though Winsor protested that she had only written two "sexy passages", both of which were edited into ellipses, the book was stilled banned in fourteen US states as well as in Australia, triggering boycott campaigns as far as Canada. As John Charles artfully puts it, "it was not so much what Amber did in bed as the number of people she did it with." (Encyclopedia of Romance Fiction). During the trial for obscenity that began two years after the novel's publication, the Attorney-General of of Massachusetts said that he had counted 70 references to sexual intercourse, 39 illegitimate pregnancies, seven abortions, 10 descriptions of women undressing in front of men and 49 "miscellaneous objectionable passages". He added: "The references to women's bosoms and other parts of their anatomy were so numerous I did not even attempt to count them." In spite of these impressive tallying efforts, Judge Donahue declared Forever Amber not obscene, explaining : “The book by its very repetitions of Amber’s adventures in sex acts like a soporific rather than an aphrodisiac [...] While conducive to sleep, it is not conducive to sleep with a member of the opposite sex.”
Though it failed to entertain Judge Donahue, the novel remained of the decade's greatest literary successes. A favorite of middle-class women, Amber was also popular among soldiers: a condensed 512 pages version was published as an Armed Services edition. A GI testifies: "If you've ever seen books that were completely worn out by reading, it was the copies of Forever Amber on our Landing Ship Tank." (Best Years. Going to the movies, 1945-46, p. 144). Forever Amber would go on to sell three million copies — a fine outcome for Macmillan, which had invested $20.000 in its promotional campaign.
Certainly scandal, along with advertising, contributed to Amber's fame: a mere days after the novel was released, the Motion Picture Producers and Distributers of America had released a statement that Forever Amber would not be approved for a film. In addition to boosting book sales, this announcement triggered a bidding war among studios, so that 20th Century Fox ended up paying a record $200.000 for movie rights.
The film, directed by Otto Preminger and starring Linda Darnell and Cornell Wilde, premiered in 1947. Though it had cost the studio an impressive $6.5 million (nearly twice the budget of Gone with the Wind), Forever Amber was not as successful as might have been hoped. On can think of a few reasons for the public's lack of enthusiasm: in order to get past censorship, the script had to be extensively revised, so that the number of Amber's lovers, for instance, dwindled down for thirty to a mere four. Perhaps more importantly, the ending had been amended for the protagonist to be "punished" for her transgressions: in the novel's last few pages, Amber leaves for America, hopeful that she will be reunited with her one-true-love. The movie, on the contrary, ends with Amber abandoned and heartbroken.
Relative box office failure notwithstanding, Macmillan saw the movie as another marketing opportunity, and commissioned Jean Des Vignes to rework the Amber from cover illustration into a portrait of actress Linda Darnell.
3) Vaughan Wilkins - Being Met Together - 1944
Vaughan Wilkins (1890-1959) published, in addition to two fantasy novels inspired by Celtic mythology, a number of historical dramas — among which Being Met Together, a revenge tale set in the Napoleonic era.
4) Frances Gaither - Red Cock Crows - 1944
Based on the Mississippi slave insurrection scare of 1835, Red Cock Crows is the second volume of a trilogy beginning with Follow the Drinking Gourd (1940) and ending with Double Muscadine (1949). Dashiel Hammet, in a 1945 letter to Lillian Hellman, wrote : "For no reason at all except that it was available , I felt like reading and was too lazy to go to the library , I'm now reading a thing called The Red Cock Crows, about which there's no reason for anybody ever to have heard." Recent scholarly research, however, cites the novel as a kind of counter-narrative to Gone with the Wind worthy of academic interest.
5) Ernest Robertson Punshon - There's a Reason for Everything - 1946
The twenty-first installment of the celebrated Bobby Owen mystery series (which would go on to include 35 novels), There's a Reason for Everything was first published by Gollancz in 1945. Bobby Owen, now Deputy Chief Constable of Wychshire, finds himself investigating a haunted mansion, home to a lost Vermeer painting, in order to solve the murder of a paranormal researcher.
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http://www.philsp.com/resources/KRJ/gaddis.htm
rk was confined entirely to two closely related genres, virtually all of it written for lending library publishers. For thirty years she wrote traditional romances, almost entirely for one publisher, Arcadia House. For the last ten of those years she wrote principally nurse novels. She also wrote “love novels,” a somewhat sleazier form of romance that was invented by the lending library publishers. In the 1930’s she wrote them for William Godwin, Inc. and in the 1940’s for Phoenix Press. By 1951 this genre had been abandoned by the hardcover publishers and found a new home in the proliferating digest-size paperbacks. These publishers faded away by 1955, those that survived shifting to soft core porn. Most of the older authors, like Peggy Gaddis, chose not to follow this direction and fell back on writing traditional romances. In the early 1960’s Arcadia House found that there was a mass-market audience for their romances, especially the nurse novels. A flood of Gaddis’s novels were reprinted, some of them several times, under a bewildering array of titles and bylines.
https://www.yesterdaysgallery.com/
https://pulpinternational.com/pulp/entry/vintage-cover-for-dr-randolphs-women-by-thomas-stone/
Henri Calet : https://www.themodernnovel.org/europe/w-europe/france/henri-calet/
Florence stonebraker
Stonebraker once was one of California’s busiest genre writers. For more than thirty years (1937 to 1969) she cranked out around 90 novels of unsanctioned sex. Married or single, her characters were tempted by and often surrendered to their lustful desires. Stonebraker had a conventional side, too, and wrote a couple dozen stories of chaste young women finding love. But her forte was the risqué. Adding to the problem is Stonebraker’s fondness for pseudonyms. Besides writing under her own name, she used Florence Stuart, Fern Shepard and Florence Sweet for her romances and Florenz Branch and Thomas Stone for her sex stories.
http://www.lendinglibmystery.com/Phoenix/Pronzini.html
Forever Amber
LIFE · Vol. 17, n° 18 · Magazine
https://books.google.fr/books?id=DUIEAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA41&dq=forever+amber+copies&hl=fr&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjD-c_mv_GOAxXrUaQEHVoMI6cQ6AF6BAgHEAM#v=onepage&q=forever%20amber%20copies&f=false
DAY OF JUDGMENT : https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/vera-mary-brittain
Originally titled “Day of Judgment,” Account Rendered (1944) fictionalizes this “strange and tragic story which linked the First War with the Second,” allowing Brittain to demonstrate clearly the destructive effect of war on mind and spirit.
While in prison the convicted man—Leonard Lockhart, a Nottingham doctor—readily gave Brittain permission to use his story as the basis of a novel which Brittain began to write in the autumn of 1942. Unfortunately, when the text was submitted to him in April 1943, Lockhart, by then out of prison, withdrew his permission. Typically, Brittain did not give up; she set about rewriting the novel to remove any material that might make the protagonist, Francis Halkin, identifiable as Lockhart. Halkin became a musician instead of a doctor, for instance. In the process of rewriting, Brittain added several new minor characters, including—a felicitous stroke—Ruth Alleyndene, Brittain’s fictional representative in Honourable Estate, who now, as a Labour MP, fulfills Brittain’s role as observer at the trial. Perhaps the least satisfactory elements of the novel are the sentimental romance between Halkin and the self-abnegating, hero-worshiping Enid Clay and Halkin’s climactic opportunity to prove himself a conventional hero through his courage after a bomb falls on the prison while he is still a prisoner. Significantly, both of these episodes are Brittain’s own invention, and both are thematically damaging.
Published first in the United States, Account Rendered received some negative reviews (one termed Brittain an “unapologetic propagandist”); these were fueled, she was convinced, by political hostility. When the novel appeared in England some months later, it was much more successful, selling out its entire first printing of 50,000 copies before publication and receiving better reviews.
