EXTRACTS: Illustrators Crime Comics Special © 2020 Book Palace Books (144 pages in full edition)

8 a younger audience, gave rise to fictionalised accounts of amateur sleuthing, with Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes as the source of inspiration. One of the most successful of these reworkings of the great Baker Street detective was Sexton Blake . Created by Harry Blyth, writing under the pseudonym of Harry Meredith, Blake rose to fame through the pages of Union Jack magazine from 1894 onwards, and later appeared in his own pocket library series, which ran from 1915 to 1968, with the majority of the ABOVE & FACING PAGE: Fictionalised crime in the form of Sexton Blake , an amateur sleuth very much in the mould of Sherlock Holmes provided ideal fodder for juvenile and not-so juvenile readers of illustrated fiction papers such as the Union Jack and his own Sexton Blake Library , which ran from 1915- 1968 and featured the illustrations of Eric Parker, one of the finest UK artists of the time.