Main Drag

Hans Vogel

About this Item

Scarce, pulp fiction Glasgow style in this collectible from the Muir Watson stable. A great example of the lurid, sensationalist paperbacks that saw the authorities clamp down on 'obscene' UK publishers and authors in the 1950s.

128 pages. Not dated but printed after 1949 & before 1952 when the rights were sold to London publisher, Scion. The book is staple-bound in the original graphically illustrated wraps, which are somewhat creased, marked and with dog eared corners but no paper loss or tears to the edges. The text block is age browned but clean with corner stain to fly title as pictured.

'I wrote The Merry Virgin by Nat Karta. Thorpe and Porter of Leicester approached me, and promptly agreed to buy fifty thousand Karta?s a month. That was it. I then invented Hans Vogel and Hyman Zore which added another eighty thousand a month. I was in the money.? (John Watson in The Mushroom Jungle, by Steve Holland,1993)

John Watson, the founder of the Glasgow Publishing house, Muir-Watson Ltd, in conjunction with silent partner John Muir, created the Hans Vogel name to capitalize on the growing market for American gangster fiction and wrote many of the early novels published under all three, beginning in 1949 and ending in 1952.

As with this book there was an attempt to create biographies behind the names, emphasizing the first-hand American low-life tough credentials, and adding authentically tough looking author photographs!

Seller Inventory # 0209

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Main Drag
• Condition: Very Good
• Dust Jacket Condition: No Jacket