Serials in Princess

[Bunty Girl]

Elsewhere on these Forums I was interested to see a scan of a page of a serial in Princess, Chocky by John Wyndham illustrated by Leslie Caswell. Oddly Chocky is considered an adult novel so it was unusual for it to be serialized in a children's publication, I found it quite scary at the time. I was an avid reader of Princess back in the 1960s and this got me thinking of other text serials in the comic.

I remember a couple of pony stories; Trekkers' Trail by Carol Vaughan and Come Down the Mountain by Vian Smith, also one about a piebald pony called Carnival, but this may have been an episode in a serial called A Year with Grandma. There was a long series called The Golden Talisman by Sylvia Thorpe about a famous jewel being passed down through generations and affecting the lives of the characters.

One of my favourites was a story called The Apple Orchard Summer set in Brittany, can't remember the author of that one but it was followed by another by the same writer; The Print of Time which had a girl finding a cave painting and pressing her hand onto it and finding herself back in the Stone Age. This serial was oddly truncated and had only 5 episodes, I think. It was just before the merger with Tina and had to come to a sudden end perhaps.

There was also a series about a girl called Dorinda who wrote letters to her cousin Belle regaling her adventures.

If anyone can give me any info on any of the above text stories I would be grateful, especially the author of The Apple Orchard Summer, if it was published as a book I might be able to track it down as I would love to read it again. If you can add any other written stories to the list it might jog the memory again. Many thanks.

[philcom55]

Your memory is really astonishing after all these years Bunty Girl!

The author of The Apple Orchard Summer and The Print of Time was Jennifer Farley. Here's a page from the first of those:



- Phil Rushton

[Bunty Girl]

Thank you so much for that Phil. Great to see that story again. I checked ebay, Abebooks and the British Library Catalogue but it doesn't seem to have made it to book publication. Regarding the memory I can recall a lot from my formative years in the 60s especially reading matter, but what happened last year or last week...

I may be wrong but the illustrator looks like Richard Rose, who had a lot of material published in Princess. His work also appears in the annual Princess Gift Book, I have quite a few of those.

If you come across any 'A Year with Grandma' or 'The Golden Talisman' I would love to know when they were published, I think they were earlier than The Apple Orchard Summer which was serialized not long before the comic morphed into Princess Tina.

Thanks again.

[Bunty Girl]

Something I meant to add to my post but forgot to do so!!, was to say that several early serials in Princess were by Enid Blyton, there is some interesting information on the Enid Blyton Society website:

http://www.enidblytonsociety.co.uk/blyt ... y=Princess

Enid Blyton ran her own magazine throughout the 50s but it closed in 1959 and so serializations of Famous Five, Secret Seven and Mystery books appeared in Princess, School Friend and June.

http://www.enidblytonsociety.co.uk/blyt ... 27+Crystal

http://www.enidblytonsociety.co.uk/blyt ... egory=June

[stevezodiac]

I was going through a bag of comics at the weekend and most of them were issues of Princess. I did notice that the title changed to Princess Magazine around 66/67. Maybe to reflect the material aimed at older readers?

[philcom55]

I know just what you mean about remembering what you read as a child more clearly than what you did last week Bunty Girl!

Having said that I haven't been able to find out where Carnival appeared. I'm afraid my comics are a bit mixed up at the moment so I can't check them all, but I did dig out a sampling of issues from the last few years before Princess became Princess Tina and I have to agree that the serials are a definite highlight. In addition to John Wyndham's Chocky and Enid Blyton's Famous Five and Secret Seven stories, other famous authors to be represented were P.L. Travers (Mary Poppins), J.R.R. Tolkein (The Hobbit), T.H. White (Mistress Masham's Repose), Noel Streatfeild (White Boots) and Joan Aitken (Black Hearts in Battersea).

Of the text stories written especially for Princess Sylvia Thorpe's cycle of tales featuring the Golden Talisman seemed to continue for years, with a variety of artists being called upon to illustrate the different storylines. Here are representative pages from two of them: 'The Hawk and His Vengeance' (illustrated by Leslie Caswell) and the final tale in the series 'An Act of Charity' (illustrated by FR Exell). Exell's detailed linework has a nicely reflective quality, though I can't help thinking that Caswell's steamy embrace would have attracted the attention of more than a few mums...!





Looking at those illustrations for 'The Apple Orchard Summer' I must admit that Richard Rose was the first artist I thought of as well. Having since compared a few more examples I'm less sure about it though: in spite of the similarities in style they lack something of Rose's inimitable visual wit to my eye. Here's the very first page of that serial, followed by an example of 'Wendy's Wizard' - a series that he definitely did illustrate:





...And while I'm at it, here are some more of the serials you've mentioned.

Dorinda's final letter to her cousin (printed in the very last issue of Princess before it merged with Tina and had to find room for a whole new lineup of features):



A page from the unfortunately short-lived 'The Print of Time':



And an episode of 'A Year With Grandma' (illustrated by Gwen Touret - one of the very few female artists to work on British comics during the 1960s):



- Phil Rushton

[Phoenix]

Probably just a slip of the finger on the keyboard, Phil, but in case it wasn't, the author of Black Hearts In Battersea was Joan Aiken. I have read other novels by her such as The Wolves Of Willoughby Chase, Night Birds On Nantucket and The Stolen Lake. If you don't know them, I can recommend them. I do enjoy her writing.

[Tammyfan]

Probably just a slip of the finger on the keyboard, Phil, but in case it wasn't, the author of Black Hearts In Battersea was Joan Aiken. I have read other novels by her such as The Wolves Of Willoughby Chase, Night Birds On Nantucket and The Stolen Lake. If you don't know them, I can recommend them. I do enjoy her writing.

I love The Wolves of Willoughby Chase.

[philcom55]

Aaaarrrggghhhh!!!!!

Thanks Phoenix - I do know Joan's work ('Black Hearts' is, of course, a sort-of sequel to 'The Wolves of Willoughby Chase'), but I keep on getting her name mixed up anyway. As a matter of fact I think one of her stories took up a surprisingly large part of one of the Princess annuals

(...I blame it all on Jonathan Aitken and his 'sword of truth'! )

- Phil R.

[Bunty Girl]

Wow! Thanks awfully Phil for all your hard work at the scanner. What a classy comic Princess was. One series that slipped through the memory was Wendy's Wizard. I think you are correct about the illustrations for the Jennifer Farley stories, whilst there are similarities to Roses's work it has a more Quentin Blake quality in Wendy's Wizard. The other serials that popped back into the ageing brain were White Boots and Black Hearts in Battersea. Phoenix is right, Joan Aiken is a brilliant writer.

There are two Joan Aiken stories in Princess annuals, Jehane of the Forest appeared in the 1966 edition and Dragon's Castle in 1967, other gems were The Borrowers by Mary Norton in 1964, a couple of Oscar Wilde fairy tales in 1968 and the first appearance of two Famous Five stories Good old Timmy and Happy Christmas Five in 1961 and 1962 respectively. I'm sure you know all this, Phil, but I am so chuffed at seeing these scans from Princess, it has really made my day. Thank you.

I particularly like the F R Exell illustration for The Golden Talisman, it is a beautiful piece of artwork. Seeing it sparked a recollection of a feature called something like Royal Daughters? by Marjorie Coryn which also had lovely illustrations. I must have a root through my annuals as I know they appear there.

I had the good fortune to read most of the comics published in the 1960s, thanks to a brevet 'Uncle' Eric who worked at a wholesalers and passed all the out of date comics on to me, so I read Girls', Boys' and the humour comics too. Sadly, my mother insisted I had a clear out circa 1969 (they were taking over the bedroom rather) and I had grown out of them, little was I to know that a few years later I was to grow back into them, so I started collecting girls' annuals.

I shall enjoy reading through all the scans you have posted.

[philcom55]

...I particularly like the F R Exell illustration for The Golden Talisman, it is a beautiful piece of artwork. Seeing it sparked a recollection of a feature called something like Royal Daughters? by Marjorie Coryn which also had lovely illustrations. I must have a root through my annuals as I know they appear there.

As far as I can tell 'Famous Royal Daughters' appeared on the centre pages of Princess Tina just after the two titles merged. All the examples I have are illustrated by the amazing John Millar Watt who usually signed his work with a stylized 'MW'.

Here's an example from February 1968:





- Phil Rushton

[Bunty Girl]

I am sure Royal Daughters (usually, but not exclusively written Marjorie Coryn) appeared in Princess much earlier. There is one about Eleanora of Castille wife of Edward I in the first Princess Gift Book, two further stories are in this annual, one by Mary Lee, and the other by Alan Ivimey. The 1962 Gift Book had a variant Daughters of Adventure with Joan of Arc by Coryn. 1963 saw another story about Anita de Jesus Ribeiro, wife of Garibaldi, our Marjorie cast her net wide looking for famous women of history. There is a late addition in the 1972 Princess Gift Book, I think that her work appeared in other Fleetway annuals too, but most of mine are packed away at present.

I always enjoyed Marjorie Coryn's stories and I think they started my interest in historical novels. And they had such beautiful illustrations like the one you have posted.

[philcom55]

You're quite right Bunty Girl. Marjorie Coryn's 'Royal Daughters' series did indeed appear in the very earliest editions of Princess. Here's an example from way back in February 1960:



The artwork is by Millar Watt again, making me think that the later Princess Tina centrespreads may have been reprints.

Incidentally, the first year or so of Princess was particularly impressive for the number of 'big name' writers it employed - not just Enid Blyton but also such luminaries as Pat Smythe and David Attenborough!

- Phil Rushton

[JT Mirana]

The OP mentioned 'Chocky' by John Wyndham illustrated by Leslie Caswell. I had no idea a comics version of this had been done. It's one of my favourite John Wyndham tales. Does anyone have the complete comic? To post here? Please?

[philcom55]

Unfortunately the serialization of 'Chocky' that appeared in Princess wasn't adapted into a comic strip, JT. As with the other serials covered in this thread it reproduced the original text along with spot illustrations. If it's any help here's the first episode, including a nice mini-biography of the author.





- Phil Rushton