Monday 30 March 2009

In the Family



My father's great-aunts, Ann "Nev" Neville Goyder Joske (1887-1966) and Margot Goyder (1907-1975), were crime writers. The sisters combined to write as ‘Margot Neville’, and with 20-odd novels to their combined name, were a reasonable international success at the time, though they are utterly out of print now.






In hunting around for more information about them, though, I came across a number of covers from the German translations of their books ('Kriminal-Roman'!), which have a very nice early Penguin feel to them.








These editions were published by Goldmann Taschenbuch during the late 1950s and early 1960s. The bright red/orange and black colour scheme seems to have been something of a trademark for them.

7 comments:

Ian Koviak said...

That's awesome. these are some fun covers too. Great little collection.

Natasha Rosen said...

These are amazing. My favorite is the cover for "Tafelrunde der Ueberflussigen." The people around the table all have jagged elbows and strange out of proportion breasts.:) Your aunts most have reached some notoriety if their books were translated into foreign languages. Any idea how they came to be writers?

JRSM said...

They seem to have been a formidable couple of women, if my grandfather's memories were anything to go by. I know they started off writing romances, but very quickly turned to crime as more satisfying.

Ian Koviak said...

Yeah, that Tafelrunde der Ueberflussigen cover almost looks like a Picasso or something.

Are the designers credited for most?

JRSM said...

No cover credits that I can find, unfortunately. I'll do some more hunting around and report back...

Anonymous said...

Hi,
I'm looking for informations about authors for http://serienoire.co.cc/
May be you have photos of Margot and Anne Goyder, birthday, birth place.

(Sorry for my so bad english)
s e r g e . j a m a r d @ l a p o s t e . n e t

Alan said...

That first one is so nearly properly great.

Looks like you'll have lots to inspire you if you're going to design new editions for them, anyway.