Tintin Forums

Hello.
I have just seen photos of a first edition French copy of 'Coke en stock' (The Red Sea Sharks) for sale online.

The book was published by Casterman in 1958 but on the inside title page Methuen has stuck a piece of paper or sticker over the area where the word Casterman is printed which is underneath the picture of the boat seen through the periscope. On this piece of paper or sticker it says 'Methuen London catalogue number 2/6270/5'.

I should also point out that this book has an inscription dating from Christmas 1962.

I am presuming that back in the 1950's (and perhaps later) Methuen bought (or were given) and sold French editions by Casterman alongside the English editions they were printing and all Methuen did was add their information within the book. Does anybody have any further information?

I've not seen any French editions published by Methuen myself, but it wouldn't surprise me if they did publish them at one time. Or, more likely given what you have seen, reappropriate Casterman editions into Methuen editions.

Perhaps there might have been a demand for other Tintin books that Methuen hadn't yet translated. However, this might not be true of the The Red Sea Sharks you saw, given that it was published in English in 1960 so was quite soon after the first English books appeared in 1958. (Also, the 1962 inscription you mention dates it a bit later).

I've also seen some of the English language books fully published by Casterman - as part of their 'Tintin in a foreign language' range - so Methuen may have been thinking along those lines at one time, offering the books in their original language to be used a language tool.

Hello Harrock. Did you mean it was published in English in 1960 so was quite soon after the French books appeared in 1958?

At a guess perhaps they did think of using them as a language tool. Perhaps they thought the British public would like the books in French also. Maybe Casterman said to Methuen ok we will give you the publishing rights but you need to sell all these French versions as well as part of the deal. Who knows?

My thinking is that Methuen published it's English hardback version of the book in 1960 and at the same time put the Casterman French hardback 1958 first edition on the market or perhaps they tried to sell the French version first before they translated it.

As for the later 1962 inscription. This particular French first edition may have been sitting on a book stores shelf for a couple of years or had been sitting in a warehouse until it was sold in a shop two years later. It's all guess work I know but having seen an old (but new) paperback of Explorers on the Moon in W.H Smiths the other week which wasn't an Egmont publication. I think it was a Magnet or a Mammoth book. I can see how books can be sold at a much later date than their release.

All I can say is that I've never seen a Methuen sticker in a Casterman book. It just seemed interesting and unusual. Perhaps not that unusual. I wish someone who worked at Methuen would give people some insight as to what happened in the way their Tintin books were published and distributed and why they sold French Casterman editions. So many questions!

Again, this is just educated guesswork, but obviously Methuen wouldn't have been reappropriating or claiming the French-language publishing rights to Tintin books with this sticker, since those rights were already held by Casterman. Rather, I'd guess that this sticker indicates that Methuen had acquired the sales and distribution contract for selling Casterman's French-language Tintin books within the UK market. This kind of deal would have made sense to both parties, since Casterman wouldn't have had any of their own sales reps in Britain to supply British book shops with their books.

The fact that the sticker has a Methuen catalogue number suggests that these Casterman French-language Tintin books were in that year's Methuen trade catalaogue, from which retailers would have been ordering stock.


It's not unusual for publishers to handle another publisher's sales, even within the same country. For instance, there are quite a few small UK publishers who contract out their sales and distribution requirements to a bigger publisher that has its own in-house sales department. But I think you're right that it is unusual to see such a sticker inside a book. Maybe it was necessary in this case so that bookshops and warehouses knew that these French-language comic books (which were presumably something of an oddity and being stocked in fairly small numbers) were to be treated as Methuen stock.