New Life for Pullman’s First Series

By John A. Sellers, Children's Bookshelf -- Publishers Weekly, 7/24/2008

Billie Piper as Sally Lockhart
in The Ruby in the Smoke.
Photo: © BBC 2006 for Masterpiece.

This September, PBS’s Masterpiece Mystery! will air two 90-minute Sally Lockhart Mysteries, based on Philip Pullman’s four-book series, coinciding with new trade paperback editions of the titles from Knopf. The first TV movie to air will be The Ruby in the Smoke on September 21; the film previously aired in U.S. markets in early 2007 and is also available on DVD. The second, The Shadow in the North, makes its U.S. debut on September 28 on PBS. Both films are co-produced by WGBH in Boston and the BBC. Actress Billie Piper, star of Showtime’s new series Secret Diary of a Call Girl, appears in the title role.

Pullman’s series, set in Victorian London, stars a 16-year-old protagonist who quickly becomes familiar with the city’s sinister side—her father is murdered in the first book, and magicians, clairvoyants and persecuted Jewish immigrants figure into later plots. The series marked Pullman’s introduction to an American audience; Knopf published The Ruby in the Smoke, in hardcover in 1987, followed by the three additional titles—The Shadow in the North, The Tiger in the Well and The Tin Princess—over the next seven years.

FSG’s Frances Foster, who was a senior editor at Knopf at the time, originally acquired the series, and says that she was drawn to them immediately. “I don’t remember ever having read anything, as far as a manuscript, that struck me so deeply,” she recalls. “They are complex mysteries, these Sally Lockhart books. I didn’t see how anyone could possibly resist them.” Foster believed that the books had the potential to reach a diverse group of readers. “I thought it would appeal enormously to teenage girls,” she says, “but I thought it would also appeal to anybody interested in Victorian times or anyone who likes mystery.”

The four Sally Lockhart Mysteries, originally published between 1987 and 1994, are being reissued in trade paperback this September.

The books were well-received upon publication—receiving starred reviews, appearing on book-of-the-year lists, some being named ALA Best Books and receiving Edgar Award nominations—if not to the same degree as Pullman’s later His Dark Materials trilogy. “[Sally] was appreciated, but the world didn’t just suddenly fall over her,” Foster says. “It was a time when the YA novel was sort of languishing. I think if the books had been published now, there would have been a lot more excitement about them, but people couldn’t help but notice that these plots were terrific.”

The books, which have remained in print, have sold consistently over the past two decades, according to Joan Slattery, senior executive editor at Knopf Books for Young Readers and Pullman’s current editor. Mass market paperback editions followed for each title, and Knopf’s forthcoming editions mark the first time they will appear in trade paperback. “We thought about it in earlier years, but trade paperbacks hadn’t quite taken hold in our business,” says Slattery. “Now that [the format is] so successful, the time was right.” To date, Random House has sold more than 700,000 copies of the Sally Lockhart novels.

According to Slattery, 2007 was “a record year” for Pullman’s His Dark Materials, due in large part to the attention surrounding the feature film, The Golden Compass. But it wasn’t just that trilogy that received a boost from the movie: combined sales of Pullman's books with Random House were six times higher in 2007 than in the previous year.

Replacing the previous mass market editions, the four Sally Lockhart trade paperbacks will arrive September 9 with new cover art by Mark Stutzman that includes period-inspired typefaces and depicts scenes from the novels. “We were basically trying to capture a look that Philip Pullman himself wanted,” Slattery says. “I’ve heard him call these old-fashioned, Victorian blood-and-thunder books.” Knopf worked to convey the books’ historical setting and a sense of drama and mystery with the new cover art. “These are not quiet romances—they do have a lot of action and melodrama in them,” Slattery says. “We want the action in the books to be obvious to the reader.”