Robert MAGUIRE - Cover art for "Nurse in the Tropics", 1971

My second Maguire acquisition, brokered by George Hagenauer. (Thanks, George!) Not signed, but a known Maguire piece. His daughter, Lynn, was kind enough to sell me the small preliminary pencil sketch for the cover which he did sign.

My first thought upon seeing this was: "What the heck is a nurse doing in the middle of a jungle at night??" My second was: "I must have that painting!" This piece was painted for a 1971 reissue of an old romance novel written in 1957 and first published under the Arcadia House imprint, then later under MacFadden Books (the last printing for which this painting was rendered). The 70’s saw the large scale reissue of paperbacks originally issued by Belmont Books, MacFadden Books, and Lancer Books, including the latter’s romance imprint, Valentine Books. Reprints of the first two were issued under the imprint of Unibooks, without book numbers. The Unibook release of this book featured a tightly cropped image of Maguire's nurse rather than the full painting. Interestingly, the Unibook imprint was an “instant remainder” publication, marked to sell at 25 to 50 cents, while carrying a higher “cover price” at which it was never sold. These types of books were sold to discount department stores, like Woolworth’s, at a much lower wholesale rate, on a non-returnable basis. (Some information taken from the Bibliography of Erolie Pearl Gaddis Dern written by Kenneth R. Johnson.)