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.

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7 comments:

  1. Ian Koviak30 March 2009 at 21:41

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

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  2. Natasha Rosen31 March 2009 at 20:14

    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?

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  3. JRSM1 April 2009 at 14:58

    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.

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  4. Ian Koviak1 April 2009 at 17:33

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

    Are the designers credited for most?

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  5. JRSM1 April 2009 at 18:41

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

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  6. Anonymous19 May 2009 at 01:33

    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

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  7. Alan28 September 2009 at 13:43

    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.

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