Editor: Kaye Webb

By DAPHNE LEE

 

From Tots to Teens, StarMag

 

WHEN I was a child growing up in the 70s and 80s in Segamat and Batu Pahat, Johore, I often received books as gifts. Many of them were Puffins, but I don’t think the publisher’s name was something I was really conscious of then. What I did notice, after a while, was the name Kaye Webb. It appeared on the synopsis page, above the book’s title – Editor: Kaye Webb.

 

I didn’t then know what an editor was or did, but I supposed she must be quite important to have her name appear even before the author’s own. Somehow, I decided that Kaye Webb was the name that guaranteed a good read – not Puffin Books, but Kaye Webb.

For years she remained merely a name, but when, in 2005, I reviewed Penguin Special, the biography of Allen Lane, founder of Penguin Books, I found Webb listed several times in the book’s index. I was thrilled to finally learn more about her and so you can imagine my delight and excitement when I found out that Webb’s biography was to be published in conjunction with Puffin Books’ 70^th anniversary this year.

 

Webb, as it turns out, was quite the star of Puffin Books. She joined the imprint 20 years after its creation in 1940, and stayed on another 20, during which time she published a formidable list and founded the famous Puffin Club.

 

Webb had had no previous publishing experience (she was previously a journalist and children’s magazine editor) but she made up for this with enthusiasm, energy, determination, and a strong and irresistible personality.

 

Anyone who is interested in the history of publishing, and especially children’s book publishing, will find So Much To Tell (Viking Books, 302 pages, ISBN: 978-1846142000), Valerie Grove’s biography of Webb, fascinating. The names that fill its pages read like a who’s who of British children’s literature. I have a Puffin Annual with articles by and interviews with authors/illustrators like Elisabeth Beresford, Joan Aiken, Quentin Blake and Raymond Briggs. I’d always been impressed by all that talent present in one publication, and the biography reveals the secret of the annual’s illustrious list of contributors: Webb became close friends with many of the authors and illustrators published by Puffin, and good-naturedly bullied them into writing for the Puffin Post (the Puffin Club’s magazine) and its annuals, often gratis.

 

Something else I had not registered before reading this biography is that Puffin Books did not initially publish original work. Like its parent, Penguin Books, it specialised in producing affordable (paperback) editions of quality books. However, Webb started publishing original fiction, including Clive King’s Stig of the Dump, which had, until she accepted it, been rejected by several other publishers (this book was reissued in 1993 as the first Puffin Modern Classic).

 

It had seemed to me that Kaye Webb (Puffin, really) published the best children’s books, but, in fact, Webb and the imprint simply made many books accessible to readers. The biography states how many publishers were reluctant to see their titles released in paperback format, fearing that it would have a negative effect on the way the public perceived the books’ quality. Many publishers (including Oxford University Press and Macmillan) who at first denied Puffin re-printing rights, eventually capitulated, but think of how many books we might have missed reading as children if Puffin had not managed to secure the rights to publish them in soft cover. Thankfully, there is no longer a stigma attached to paperbacks.

 

Webb joined Puffin Books when she was 46, and of course, So Much to Tell is Webb’s biography and not a history of Puffin Books, so a fair bit of the book is unrelated to Puffin. However, the imprint took up so much of its editor’s time and energy that it dominates the book – the cover shows Webb cradling a pile of Puffins, and the opening chapter is a crash course in the history of Penguin and describes the burying of the Puffin Time Capsule in 1978. Also, the reason why this biography was written in the first place is because of Webb’s role as Puffin’s most famous editor. I admit that I fairly raced through the pre-Puffin parts and then slowed down to savour each line once she was offered the job.

 

It came at a low point in her life, just when her husband, the artist Ronald Searle, had left her. It seems to me that the breakdown of her marriage (and the manner of Searle’s leaving) played a significant part in the development of the Puffin imprint. From that point on, Webb sounds like a desperately lonely woman whose work, and the people who came with it, became her whole life. Would Webb have given herself, body and soul, to her job had she had the distractions of a happy marriage? How differently would Puffin have developed in that case? 

 

All I know is how Puffin (and Webb) have provided me with hours of reading pleasure. Even now, I am soothed and gratified simply by the sight of my old tattered Puffins on my bookshelves. And I continue to search second-hand bookshops and jumble sales for editions of Puffins published while Webb was still editor.

 

I wish So Much to Tell had included images of some of the books she published. The good news is that we can enjoy those pictures in Puffin by Design, another book published to celebrate Puffin’s 70^th anniversary. Happy birthday, Puffin!