A most interesting contribution to the Spill archive is a collection of WWII era New Yorker “Excerpts.” The Spill is so grateful to the donor for this wonderful addition.
For some time, I had confused this run of publications with the New Yorker Pony editions, also produced during the war, thinking they were part of the Pony run. But they are quite different. Here’s how are they are similar, and how are they different:
The similarities:
- Both ponies and excerpts are very close to the same size: the excerpts are 6″x 8.5″, the Ponies are a quarter inch longer in length.
2. Neither contains advertising.
The differences:
1.The Ponies were produced weekly (there are a few instances where a Pony covers more than one week’s issue, but the vast majority of the Pony run are weekly issues). The Excerpts, as you see on the cover of the one shown above, cover more issues — a month’s worth.
2. The Pony covers were published in color; the Excerpts covers are all black & white.
3. The paper stock is slightly heavier for the Excerpts (I believe I read somewhere that the Pony editions were produced thin enough to be able to be easily folded and stuffed in a pocket).
4. While the Ponies were sent out to our armed forces around the world…
5.The contents/layout of the Pony editions and the Excerpts are completely different. The Ponies reproduced the contents of each issue (the cartoons were, however, sometimes not identical). The Excerpts, were, well, excerpts, or samples of work found in a month’s worth of issues. The Excerpt type size was produced larger than the Pony edition type, thus, much less material was provided.
I do not have a copy of the earliest Excerpt issues, but using the one above as a guide (because it was the first numbered issue), the run looks to have begun in January 1943. The issues from the Fall of 1943 (Sept., Oct., Nov., Dec.), which are in the Spill archive, are not numbered but otherwise follow the same format as later issues.
Now here’s where it gets a little confusing. The Spill archive does have the June 1943 Excerpt (courtesy of yet another generous donor). The cover does not follow the format of later Excerpts, cover-wise. It shows, as you see here, a drawing (by Alain) instead of any of the New Yorker covers that appeared on the regular issues in June of that year. Once the Spill gets hold of the outstanding issues we’ll be able to see when the format settled in to using New Yorker cover art (according to this issue’s donor, the red “R” you see is Harold Ross’s “R” — the “R” one finds on OKed art throughout Ross’s editorship, from 1925 through 1951, noting Ross’s final approval).
To give you a look at the three kinds of publications: here are three, all using the Helen Hokinson cover found on the “regular” issue of April 22, 1944. Next to it is the Excerpt covering the entire month of April 1944, and then the Pony edition for the week of April 22, 1944.
