The Flame Bringers (Searchlight: Adventure Stories For Boys)

[Marca]

I'm on a quest for early Moorcock at the moment, as my recent posts will show. While searching the web I found a reference to a story called The Flame Bringers in Searchlight: Adventure Stories For Boys that also contained Johnny Lonesome Goes To Town (which I've just read in Tales From The Texas Woods):

http://users.ev1.net/~homeville/paper/t309.htm#A12297 (scroll down to the Searchlight entry if necessary)

Is this listing correct? Was this another story called The Flame Bringers that preceded the Elric story...?

[Marca]

This is apparently a completely different story? What about the publication date? Johnny Lonesome is dated 1956 in Texas Woods... :?:

[Michael Moorcock]

I wrote a bunch of stories for the same publisher (who did Searchlight books) around 1956. The Flame Bringers was an historical story about the Goths, as I recall. There were quite a few others, but I suspect they were never actually published (though I was paid for them!) because the publisher went out of business. I also wrote the Johnny Lonesome story as a Kit Carson for Cowboy Picture Library. Around that time I had a habit (well, I haven't entirely lost it) of writing a comic as a short story or a short story as a comic, for different markets, usually juvenile. I didn't keep many of the comics I wrote, so I couldn't be entirely sure which was which. I tended to use similar titles, too. Thus The Flame Bringers in Searchlight and The Flame Bringers in Science Fantasy are entirely different stories. I tend to think the second was a bit better! :)

[GuyLawley]

This is apparently a completely different story? What about the publication date? Johnny Lonesome is dated 1956 in Texas Woods... :?:

A lot of those kids’ hardbacks from that period are undated (Boardman’s Adventure Annuals being a case in point, annoying to us Jack Trevor Story collectors!).

My copy of Searchlight has the frontispiece page missing, so may have carried a date originally, but I suspect not. John Davey, whom I have to thank for my copy of this book, may well have a complete copy.

Steve Holland, at the website you found, may have his own reasons for dating the book 1961. Why not ask him; he’s an approachable soul. If Mike’s date as given in Texas Woods is right and can be sourced, Steve will probably correct his listing. The book certainly looks more 1956 than 1961 at a glance.

Flamebringers certainly is a completely different story. With Mike’s permission I could scan the text and put it up somewhere.

[GuyLawley]

I have added 5 cover/page scans from the Seachlight book in their own album in the Image Gallery under Anthologies:

[broken link]

[Marca]

Thanks for the scans Guy. Yes, it looks much more like 1956 than 61. I might email Steve to ask about the date. What's the value of the book these days? I've found a copy with a dealer but they want quite a lot for it...

[Pietro_Mercurios]

This site is really shaping up rather nicely. :)

[GuyLawley]

Thanks for the scans Guy. Yes, it looks much more like 1956 than 61. I might email Steve to ask about the date. What's the value of the book these days? I've found a copy with a dealer but they want quite a lot for it...

Couldn’t tell you what the value is, AV.

Anything from 5 to 42 pounds by the looks of it (see ABE link below)

http://www.abebooks.co.uk/servlet/Se...magefield.y=12

Admittedly the آ£5.00 copy is pretty beaten up.

I didn’t pay for mine... it was a gift! I didn't know the book existed at the time. Thanks again, John.

BTW I have also put up a couple more Tarzan Adventures scans, including a short article on the famous gunman Dutch Cassidy. Waddayamean ya never heard of him? You have, I assure you.

[broken link]

[Marca]

This site is really shaping up rather nicely. :)

Indeed it is. Well done again Guy.

[JohnDavey]

Hi, y'all,

When -- longer ago than I care to think about -- I joined forces with Ian Covell to begin collating some sort of definitive M.M. bibliography, he already had 'Searchlight' listed as circa 1960-'61.

I can't remember where he got that information from -- I doubt if he can, either; I'll ask -- but I'm fairly certain that subsequent research backed up that date.

(Did Ian get it from Steve, I wonder, or Steve from Ian?)

The missing page in Guy's copy -- did I really give one away? You must've caught me on a good day! -- cites "Published by SPRING BOOKS, SPRING HOUSE . SPRING PLACE . LONDON NW5", with a code of "T-729". If anyone cares to track that data down to a precise date, they're a braver man or woman than I.

That's all, f'now.

Best,


John.

[Michael Moorcock]

Spring Books! They were run by Paul thingy -- a guy who came to own a whole lot of publishing houses by the 80s. His name's gone straight out of my head. He started as a remainder merchant, realised he could actually publish his own 'remainders' -- i.e. books with a higher price on them than they were actually meant to be sold at -- and did a whole lot of Frank Richards material, including Tom Merry's Annual. I got a lot of enjoyment out of Spring Books. The guy buying material for them was
Jonathan Burke -- a sometime sf writer and ghost writer. Nice bloke.
I think he bought a larger inventory than he could manage -- or that Spring could manage. Their heyday was the fifties, but it's quite possible they went on into the 60s. I didn't get copies of anything I sold them and it was some years after selling the stories that they turned up. I think quite a few people sold them stories, including Syd Bounds, Ted Tub, Ken Bulmer and Barry Bayley -- pretty much everyone who attended The Globe pub sf meetings in the 50s! The payment was about the same as Carnell's.

[Marca]

Spring Books! They were run by Paul thingy -- a guy who came to own a whole lot of publishing houses by the 80s. His name's gone straight out of my head. He started as a remainder merchant, realised he could actually publish his own 'remainders' -- i.e. books with a higher price on them than they were actually meant to be sold at -- and did a whole lot of Frank Richards material, including Tom Merry's Annual. I got a lot of enjoyment out of Spring Books. The guy buying material for them was
Jonathan Burke -- a sometime sf writer and ghost writer. Nice bloke.
I think he bought a larger inventory than he could manage -- or that Spring could manage. Their heyday was the fifties, but it's quite possible they went on into the 60s.

Paul thingy must be Paul Hamlyn? I have a copy of Shakespeare's Complete Works from the late 70s that was done by Spring Books. By that time they were an imprint of the Hamlyn group. The book itself is chunky, printed on cheap paper in Czechoslovakia, with an intro by Donald Wolfit. I still have great affection for it. The first edition was indeed done in the late 50s. Looks like Mr Hamlyn couldn't put Spring Books to rest.

Jonathan Burke must be John Burke, who did all those film and TV tie ins in the 60s:

http://www.fantasticfiction.co.uk/au...John_Burke.htm

[Whiskers]

Has it been lost on the contributors these threads that, well, this may be the first time any of this stuff has been on The Internet any where, except as tangential references in book lists, catalogs and weak magazine biblios? You guys are doing BIG work.

[JohnDavey]

Hi!

Here's this, an e-mail from Steve Holland, via Ian Covell:-

*

"... The date of 1961 comes from the British Library but it's a believable
one. Spring Books put out other large collections of children's stories
in 1959 and 1960, so this could be the last batch of titles. I've not
seen the BL copy, so I don't know when it was date stamped...

The individual stories from the Searchilight volumes, however, might
date from a couple of years earlier.

In 1956-57, Spring Books were called Beaver Books (all part of Paul
Hamlyns early publishing empire) and Beaver put out 34+ annual-style
hardbacks. I only have a smattering of the contents (and they're not in
the BL), but they include a couple of Chesman Scot yarns:

Dicing with Danger (by Chesman Scot, The Speed Story Book for Boys,
1957) The Underwater Specialists (by Chesman Scot, The Ace Story Book
for Boys, 1957; reprinted, Searchlight, 1961)

The Ace Story Book for Boys also had William Temple's The Mechanical
Mole. Some other stories in Searchlight were reprinted from the Raymond
Glendenning's Book of Sport for Boys series which, again, I have only
one or two examples indexed.

Given the above, I suspect that perhaps *all* the contents of
Searchlight are reprints; or perhaps the volume gathered up a mixture of
reprints and previously purchased yarns that Beaver hadn't gotten around
to using. I've yet to see any evidence (like an inscription) to suggest
that the volume itself appeared earlier. But it's worth noting that the
BL has the Boys Searchlight, but doesn't seem to have the companion
girls volume that (presumably) appeared simultaneously.

Hope that helps. Or at least doesn't hinder..."

*

Seya,


John.

[Marca]

Very interesting, nice to hear where the dating came from. 1961 may well be the correct date, but if so it means Mike had an old childrens story called The Flame Bringers published just a year or so before the Elric story appeared in Science Fantasy. Wonder if anyone ever noticed at the time...