Animals and their young by Raymond Sheppard (Part Four)

In my previous three articles we have seen all the pictures, from the Longacre Press book, 'Animals and their Young', taken from the series first published in Swift during 1957.

Now let’s look at how the reprinted artwork differs from their appearance in the original feature. The format of the 1962 book, has a comprehensive description of the animal on the left hand side of each page-opening, with the illustration taking up the complete right hand page. The Porcupine is shown below and, where possible, an accompanying copy of other features taken from Swift is also included with the original published artwork.

Page 60 showing text on the Porcupine

Swift 21 Sept 1957 The Crested Porcupine

Page 61 Porcupine

While it’s not especially obvious in this example, another artist has completed the drawing of the baby porcupine in the foreground, also adding the rocks and earth surface, to the bottom right hand corner of the reprinted illustration. On closer examination, the treatment of the boulders and ground area does vary slightly from Raymond Sheppard’s original handling of the remainder of the artwork. Each of the pictures included in the book contains a similar reworked section somewhere..

David Slinn who, as previously mentioned, worked for Swift in the late Fifties, provided this clearer explanation:

“All the illustrations for ‘Animals and Their Young’, and also ‘Birds and Their Nests’, incorporated a panel of flat colour to accommodate the short descriptive text. This would then be lettered on a thin cartridge overlay, attached by a small taped-hinge to the adjacent margin of the artwork. During the preparation of the four-colour separations at Eric Bemrose Limited [the printers based in Liverpool], the overlay was flapped aside, leaving the artwork fully exposed. Then, with the overlay back in place, a second black negative was made of the lettering in its correct position. This procedure ensured the printed caption would be on a solid area of colour, free of any reversed-out image of the lettering. If you examine the reproductions in the books closely, although the majority of these later additions to the artwork are very skilfully executed, it is possible to see where each of the original illustrations has been extended.”  


David’s informative revelations led me to publishing another article on my other blog Visual Rants. 

And here are some other featured animals where either – thanks to the kindness of Christine Sheppard – I have cuttings or, more recently, further scans from David. Now look carefully to see where each caption panel has been replaced, with an area of additional artwork, on these pages from the Longacre Press book.

p.73 Tapir (top left filled easily!)

Swift 2 Nov 1957 The Malayan Tapir

p.37 Leopard

Swift 31 Aug 1957 The Leopard

Cover of reprint book uses The Tiger and the box is easily filled in!

Swift 27 April 1957 Tigers

p. 11 Bison

Swift 13 April 1957 Bison

And lastly, particular thanks to David Slinn for this scan of the single example that I don’t own in any form – as it doesn’t appear in the reprint book – so, that’s the whole series reproduced for the first time in 57 years! Although, for followers of my Frank Bellamy blog, this won’t be the first time a missing Lynx from Swift has been provided by David – giving me the opportunity to acknowledge his collaboration, in both putting together and writing this series of articles.

Swift 5 October 1957 The Lynx

Animals and their young by Raymond Sheppard (Part Three)

Here's the rest of the alphabet from Animals and their young published by Longacre Press in 1962 based on the original series drawn by Raymond Sheppard in the Swift comic

Llama p. 41

Monkeys p.43

Okapi p.47

Orang-Utan p.51

Panda p.55

Platypus p.57

Polar Bear p. 59

Puma p.63

Rhinoceros p.65

Seal p.67

Tapir p.73

Wolf p.77

Zebra p. 79

NEXT: Part Four in which we investigate the differences between the reprinted art and that which appeared in the Swift comic

Animals and their young by Raymond Sheppard (Part Two)

In Part One of this subject we saw the Polar Bears and in this article we can see all the other Sheppard pictures which appeared in the Longacre Press book Animals and their young, which reprinted the series by Sheppard from Swift comic. In the final part of this topic we'll look at how the art in the book does not match that of the comic.

Animals and their young A-L

Anteater p.3

Armadillo p.5

Bison p.11

Brown Bear p.12

Camel p.15

Cheetah p.17

Gazelle p.23

Giraffe p.25

Gorilla p.27

Hippopotamus p.31

Kangaroo p.33

Koala Bear p.35

Leopard p.37

Lion p.39

Animals and their young M-Z next....

Animals and their young by Raymond Sheppard (Part One)

Raymond Sheppard: 'Animals and their young' Swift 6 April 1957.

The fourth comic in the Hulton Press stable, a companion title to Eagle, launched in April 1950, Girl in November 1951, and the nursery comic, Robin, in March 1953 – Swift was first published on 20 March 1954. Raymond Sheppard’s involvement with the Hulton children’s papers, began with a full-colour adaptation of the Anna Sewell classic, “Black Beauty”, for the newly-launched Girl; a brief spell, in April 1952, on ‘Advice on Your Pets’ in Eagle, was followed by a 26-week Girl series, ‘Elizabeth Cruft’s Pets Corner’. A regular contributor to the various associated Hulton annuals, he also returned to Eagle, during 1954, illustrating seven episodes of the colour feature, ‘Famous Horses’. All of which will be explored another time. In this article we want to concentrate on the first of his two series appearing in Swift: ‘Animals and their Young’, which began in Volume 4:14, dated 6 April 1957. Raymond Sheppard was fully credited in the title, of both this series and its successor, ‘British Birds and their Nests’. The feature formed part of Swift’s colour centre-spread, and commenced with the Polar Bear.

Animals and their young: Polar Bears p.59

If it hadn’t been for David Slinn, who had freelanced on Swift around this time, I’d have remained unaware that this series had ever been reprinted. When providing me with a complete listing of Sheppard’s Swift illustrations, he’d made a passing reference to the existence of these two books. Causing me to enthusiastically seek a copy of a Swift book called ‘Wild Birds and Animals of Britain’. But, disappointingly, this turned out to have entirely photographic contents, as did many other similar titles produced under the Swift banner during the early 1960s. Nevertheless, as it is now in my possession, it seemed worth scanning the cover to include here.

Wild Birds and Animals of Britain: A Swift Picture Book

I reported my sad little misadventure, and David wrote back:

I

“Having, inadvertently, caused you to purchase the “wrong” Swift Picture Book; bearing in mind it was so long ago, I feared maybe I’d just imagined that these series had been reprinted in two collected volumes. It was a bit of a relief – after initially searching in error through earlier filed issues – to find the hazily-recalled advertisements really did exist.”

And he kindly attached this scan as evidence

SWIFT 8th December 1962

With rather more to go on, than faulty guesswork based on “animals”, “birds” and “Swift”, I recommenced the search with renewed optimism. Soon I discovered it was Longacre Press that had published these reprints and, after receiving the books, found why they had previously eluded me – in both instances, neither book has a title verso page containing the publisher’s details, printing history or other obligatory information. No author’s name appears on the title-page, neither are the artists credited and, oddest of all, there’s no acknowledgement whatsoever of the content having originally been published elsewhere!

Cover to the 1962 reprint of the Swift series

Title page of the reprint

With David’s full listing to hand, covering Sheppard’s first Swift series between 6 April and 2 November 1957 I was able to check this against the animals featured in the reprint volume. Interestingly, the animals weren’t grouped according to their species, but assembled alphabetically – slightly reminiscent of a nursery picture-book. For some reason the Lynx is missing, otherwise all twenty-nine of his original illustrations are included – together, incidentally, with a further eleven species required to complete the 80-page book.

Here's the full list of Raymond Sheppard's "Animals and their young" as they appeared in Swift: 

Date	Animal	In the book?
6 April 1957	Polar bear	Yes
13 April 1957	Bison	Yes
27 April 1957	Tigers	Yes
4 May 1957	The Hippopotamus	Yes
11 May 1957	Giraffes	Yes
18 May 1957	The Lion	Yes
25 May 1957	Kangaroos	Yes
1 June 1957	Rhesus Monkeys	As 'Monkeys'
8 June 1957	The Llama	Yes
15 June 1957	The Puma or Mountain Lion	Yes
22 June 1957	Thompson’s Gazelle	Yes
29 June 1957	The Koala	Yes
6 July 1957	The Cheetah	Yes
13 July 1957	Gorillas	Yes
20 July 1957	The Kodiak or Alaska Brown Bear	Yes
27 July 1957	Zebras	Yes
3 August 1957	The Platypus	Yes
10 August 1957	The Wolf	Yes
17 August 1957	The Common Seal	Yes
24 August 1957	The Okapi	Yes
31 August 1957	The Leopard	Yes
7 September 1957	The Bactrian Camel	Yes
14 September 1957	The Great Anteater	Yes
21 September 1957	The Crested Porcupine	Yes
28 September 1957	The Giant Panda	Yes
5 October 1957	The Lynx	No
12 October 1957	The One-horned Indian Rhinoceros	Yes
19 October 1957	Orang-utan	Yes
26 October 1957	The Nine-banded Armadillo	Yes
2 November 1957	The Maylayan Tapir	Yes

In discussing these books with David, a good deal of additional background information, regarding the animals that were not drawn by Sheppard, came to light – and this is covered separately on my other blog Visual Rants.