“Draw, Old Chap”
Pulp Westerns in Piccadilly.
By: James C. Work 08/01/2009
In England, that island where Sir Walter Scott popularized historical romances with action-driven yarns about horsemen, savage warriors, rebels and outlaws.
Robert Hale Ltd. of Clerkenwell Green in London started the presses in 1936 and, according to the founder’s son John, “has always published Westerns.” In the 1980s the British company began a line known as Black Horse Westerns. “There are about 200 Westerns in print at any one time, and we publish 72 titles per annum at the moment,” John Hale says. “The chief virtue of these stories is that they should make a gripping read.”
You won’t find Black Horse Westerns in many bookstores or revolving racks at truck stops, because they’re manufactured for distribution to public lending libraries in the U.K. “Each title is borrowed an average of 5,000 to 6,000 times in its first year on the shelves,” one researcher reports. Book collectors like them: each 160-page Black Horse Western is printed on library quality paper with ample margins and readable type, bound between collectible “paperboard” hard covers. At least two British online booksellers keep Black Horse Westerns in stock: Amazon.co.uk and WHSmith.co.uk.
Black Horse authors come from England, Australia, Scotland, Canada and the U.S. Several of them keep up the pulp pen name tradition too. Last year, more than 50 different pseudonyms appeared on 72 new Black Horse titles.
In the Robert Hale Ltd. Internet catalog you’ll find noms de plume like “Owen Irons,” “Jack Sheriff,” “Chap O’Keefe” and “Lance Howard.” Irons and Howard are pen names for American authors, respectively, Paul Lederer and Howard Hopkins. One fifth of the writers of Black Horse Westerns hail from the United States.
“One American,” writes Hale, “sadly now dead, had [more than] 40 live pseudonyms on books he wrote for us, which I have always regarded as a remarkable achievement.” That author was Lauran Paine, whose more than 900 books included The Open Range Men, which was adapted for film as 2003’s Open Range.
Some of the pen names are used by women. “Terry Murphy,” for example, or “Ty Kirwan” and “Gillian F. Taylor.” BlackHorseWesterns.com ran an article about Irene Ord, born in Darlington, UK, who died at 83.
She was a grandmother who wrote dozens of Westerns under pen names such as “Tex Larrigan,” “Curt Longbow,” “James O. Lowes” and “Newton Ketton.”
If you’ve thought about writing a Western yourself, you might wonder what happens to a submitted manuscript. Or “typescript” as it is called at Robert Hale Books. When it reaches the offices on Clerkenwell Green, it is read by John Hale or an editor and is accepted or rejected. If accepted, it is sent on to a copy editor “well versed in Westerns” who has “quite a library of reference books” to draw upon. After the editor has corrected your mistakes and double-checked to be sure you didn’t use smokeless powder in a cap-and-ball Remington, the typescript goes into the Production Department to become a Western novel of about 160 pages, bound in paperboard covers with a colorful action picture on the front.
Comments (3)
Enjoyed reading this article, I've been a fan of Black Horse Westerns for years. The books are very nicely produced and are generally fast, action packed, reads.
I've reviewed lots of them on my site:
http://westernfictionreview.blogspot....
Steve M
Excellent overview of a much-admired and -loved publisher. My first book was accepted by Mr Hale and I've now had seven published (3 westerns) so he definitely brought me luck! The turnaround from receipt of a manuscript to a decision is phenomenal, too - usually about a week, which has to be the best in the industry. I'm a Brit but live in Spain, not far from the movie badlands in Almeria!
Nik (Ross Morton)
Many thanks for spreading the word about Black Horse Westerns. To your list of countries that are homes to BHW writers you can add Spain and New Zealand. And pocket-book paperbacks of the kind you mention just might make a comeback yet. The Black Horse Extra ezine has just embarked on a trial venture you can read about at www.blackhorsewesterns.com
More briefly, it's mentioned here:
http://beattiesbookblog.blogspot.com/...
Best regards
Chap O'Keefe
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