William Godwin, Inc.

    William Godwin, Inc. was best known for the softcore sex novels they published from 1931-38, by such well-known practitioners as Jack Woodford and Fan Nichols; these had provocative cover art and were considered pretty steamy for their time, though they are tame today.

    The first mystery to carry the Godwin imprint was Wesley Price’s Death Is a Stowaway (1933), a title inadvertently left out of the Godwin listing in Murder at 3c a Day. The three Timothy Trent (Carl Malmberg) titles are excellent hardboiled tales, as is Alan Williams’ Cainesque Room Service.

    In 1935 Godwin published several British mysteries on a cooperative deal with the king of the U.K. lending library publishers, Wright & Brown; these all used the original W&B dust jacket art, most of it by Micklewright. The Godwin editions had very poor sales, as evidenced by the fact that copies are extremely difficult to find today, and the arrangement with W&B was abandoned after only a single year.

– Bill Pronzini