Random colouring in early Famous Five books

[Blytonboy]

The illustrations by Eileen Soper are, of course, so appropriate. I'm reading the 1940's editions of the first books in the famous five series. The quirky random partial colouring of many illustrations intriques me but what exactly was the purpose? I'm currently reading Smugglers Top 2nd 1948 and a mixture of blue and red is used. Any opinions?

[pete9012S]

I'm sure we covered this in a thread somewhere. I will try and locate it.

ps. Welcome back after a long absence Blytonboy.

[Anita Bensoussane]

There's some discussion of that in the following thread, though it's part of a more general look at different editions of Famous Five and Secret Seven books:

viewtopic.php?p=151084#p151084

There may well be other threads that cover the same sort of thing.

I suppose the partial colour (usually red, green, blue or orangey-brown) was intended to enhance the pictures (it meant that streaky skies, patterned fabrics, etc. could be more boldly represented), though sometimes the colour patches didn't quite match up with the line drawings! If you scroll through the illustrations for Secret Seven Adventure, you can see four pictures where the colour and the drawings are not properly aligned:

https://www.enidblytonsociety.co.uk/boo ... +Adventure

[Blytonboy]

Thanks for the welcome and reply.
The random colours do add some strange but charming interest to the B&W drawings. I'm looking at "Smugglers" (2nd 1948) and the drawing to page 154 shows George with a fully coloured red jumper and partially coloured right shoe, Dick with a dash of red on his right cheek and Anne with a red hair band. Overleaf, the torch light emblazoned in red, looks as if a bottle of ink has tipped over partially covereing the children! It's quirky and odd but I look forward to seeing these peculiar partially coloured pages. The frontispiece is a fully coloured illustration and very attractive.

[Boodi 2]

I noticed it too in various books, but never liked it as it always seemed "wrong" and out of place to me!

[pete9012S]

Thanks for that link Anita. I found this post from Tony most informative:

I do have some fairly thorough details in my own files, Michael, and if you wanted to know about one or two editions I could probably help, but it is quite complicated and there is no hard and fast rule for this. It is worth remembering that none of the illustrations in the first two Fives books had two colour printing in any editions

Treasure Island had no colour frontis at all and no coloured endpapers for the first seven editions. There were blue pictorial endpapers from the 8th edition in 1951 and these were in all editions up to the 16th edition in 1963.

Adventuring Again had a colour frontis up to the 12th edition in 1961, but it had no colour endpapers for the first five editions, pink ones for the 6th edition in 1951, and then blue endpapers until the 12th edition in 1961, but the 9th edition in 1955 was a much darker blue.

If you have any specific questions I might be able to answer them, but I can't go into full details for all books unless there are more than 24 hours in a day!

[Anita Bensoussane]

For years I was puzzled by the Gilbert Dunlop illustrations in my 1983 Armada paperback of The Mystery That Never Was. Some of the pictures seemed incomplete, with gaps where parts of a chair, bed or coat were supposed to be. Years later, I saw the original illustrations in the Cave of Books and realised what had happened. The pictures had originally had a red overlay which completed the chair, bed, coat and various other things - but the red overlay was missing from the paperback version.

[Courtenay]

For years I was puzzled by the Gilbert Dunlop illustrations in my 1983 Armada paperback of The Mystery That Never Was. Some of the pictures seemed incomplete, with gaps where parts of a chair, bed or coat were supposed to be.

You sure it wasn't actually illustrated by Betty Maxey??

[Anita Bensoussane]

[Moonraker]

I loved the two-colour illustrations, and remember being intrigued and fascinated by them reading as a child. I imagine it was a cheaper option of printing colour illustrations. Here is one of my favourites:



Now say you prefer the B&W one!

I remember once buying the copy that didn't include this illustration - my favourite in the book. Needless to say, I soon found a copy in which it was included.

[Irene Malory Towers]

I love the random colouring in the earlier versions of the books. It was a real bonus when I started buying earlier editions that not only did they include a few extra illustrations but also some of them are partly coloured - either red or blue. It bring them more to life somehow and makes them more dramatic.

[GloomyGraham]

Little me saw a hard-back of a FF story at a 2nd hand fair once (Off to Camp?) and just grabbed it without looking inside. Think I'd only owned Enid paperbacks until then and this title was a paperback I didn't have.

I was thrilled to open it up at home and see the inside covers illustrated with blue.

[Lenoir]

It's good how a little colour makes the illustrations more evocative. I think it's because they are only partially coloured in, and it makes them more striking somehow. Also, most of us are probably more familiar with the black and white pictures so that also makes them special.

[Anita Bensoussane]

The blue colour certainly enhances your atmospheric avatar picture from Five Go to Smuggler's Top, Lenoir!