THE MARCH OF CRIME

An original advertising poster for the White Circle Crime Club series. Measuring 23 x 36cm. Printed in green and black on white card. In excellent condition with just a little rubbing to the edges.

A scarce early advertising poster for Collins' White Circle Crime Club series. Launched in May 1930, Collins' Crime Club quickly became one of Britain's most successful detective fiction imprints, riding the immense popularity of Golden Age crime writing. By 1936, the series had published around 200 titles and boasted a mailing list of approximately 20,000 subscribers. While Agatha Christie was undoubtedly its star author, the list also featured many distinguished writers, including John Rhode, Freeman Wills Crofts, E. C. R. Lorac, Nicholas Blake, Philip Macdonald, and G. D. H. Cole and Margaret Cole. The books were priced at seven shillings and sixpence, standard for new hardbacks in Britain at the time, though still beyond the reach of many ordinary readers. Collins had already experimented with cheaper paperback editions on the Continent through the Albatross Books imprint, but these editions were unavailable in the UK. The success of Albatross famously inspired Allen Lane to found Penguin Books in July 1935, offering popular fiction in paperback at the revolutionary price of sixpence. In response to Penguin's success, Collins launched the White Circle Crime Club series in March 1936, debuting with Murder on the Orient Express by Agatha Christie. By the outbreak of the Second World War in September 1939, the Crime Club paperbacks had grown to around 80 titles, while the wider White Circle series expanded to roughly 200 volumes spanning crime fiction, westerns, romance, general fiction, and a small selection of non-fiction works.