American westerns in the UK
DEATH OF THE UNKNOWN COWBOY

Keith Chapman

It seems the unknown cowboy met his death with the birth of the Black Horse Western series of novels published by the independent, family-owned British firm, Robert Hale Ltd, whose chairman and managing director is Mr John Hale.

Until that time, the company's western novels had been published with a series-identifying logo on title pages of a Stetson-wearing, loop-swinging cowboy riding a bucking black horse. When the line was re-branded as Black Horse Westerns, the cowboy went, the horse rose up on its hind legs in earnest and a wicked glint entered its eye.

Mr Martin Kendall, the Hale marketing director, says, "The Black Horse imprint was first used in 1986, although we had been issuing novels in this genre since the 1940s, if not before. The firm was started in 1936."

Westerns, then, had always had a strong presence on the Hale fiction list. During the 1960s and 1970s, Hale's cowboy and horse had graced the title pages of hardback books by Louis L'Amour, Max Brand, Lauran Paine (under countless aliases) and many, many British authors of western fiction, at least one or two of whom are still active in the field today.

The company, which currently publishes more than 100 westerns a year – exceeding any US publisher's total – was forced at one stage to launch a sister imprint. "The John Gresham imprint used in the '60s and early '70s was invented in order that our output could be increased without the feeling in the trade that there were just too many westerns coming from Hale," Mr Kendall says.

So if you're a fan of western fiction, live in Britain or a Commonwealth country, and borrow hardback books from libraries, you're sure to be familiar with the small, 160-page novels that today are Black Horse Westerns. Other readers, including Americans, will have come across the same stories reissued in large-print, trade paperback editions put out in the Linford Western Library and Dales Westerns series, both distributed internationally by the Ulverscroft group.

At the time the Hale horse threw off its cowboy, the books also lost their separate pictorial wrappers or jackets, which were carried over a red, or sometimes black, binding. The books became "paper-boards" with their colorful covers incorporated in a single attractive unit. With no more paper coverings – apt to become torn, crumpled and eventually discarded – the books looked better than ever. And their appearance is still attracting favorable comment worldwide.

The stories are traditional in tone – tales of action and gun smoke in the Old West – and the series has on occasion reprinted classic works by Ernest Haycox, William Colt MacDonald, Lewis B. Patten, T.V. Olsen and D.B. Newton. They offer the older person the chance to taste again the pleasures of the "pulp fiction" era, and introduce the younger reader to pleasures no longer to be enjoyed elsewhere.

The writers live around the globe, some researching the historical backgrounds to their stories using the latest in computer technology as well as personal libraries that sometimes run into hundreds of volumes. Black Horse Westerns are written by people in Britain, America, South Africa, Australia and New Zealand.

Although most BHW readers borrow from libraries, the books can also be ordered online at Amazon UK, WH Smith, and other retailers. For bargains, choose your title and author and set a good search engine in motion! Public libraries will also locate them for you via interloan agreements with libraries in other areas, or by buying them in. It's handy to have publication date and ISBN ready when you make your request.

And if anyone can find out more about the "lost" cowboy, let us know at Black Horse Express!