The history of the British editions of "If" is more complicated than any other; I have identified no less than five separate series at different stages of the magazine's life. In summary, they are
I cannot be absolutely certain that my count of the last two series is complete. I base it on what is in my own collection; Tuck mentions WIF4 but the only reference work that lists the fifth series at all is CN95 and it omits the fourth series altogether. From 1959 onwards, If was a companion magazine to Galaxy and the reprint editions of the two magazines closely parallel one another.
This was published by Strato Publications and distributed by Thorpe & Porter, both of of Leicester, and printed in Holland. The fifteen issues ran monthly from November 1953 to January 1955. The British magazines do not show dates anywhere and those used here are the dates assigned by Tuck. They corresponded with the US original issues as follows:
So far as I can determine without having the corresponding original and reprint side by side, the front covers are the originals, the only changes being the price and number overprinted, usually in a small white box. In most cases, even the symbol of the US distributor (a tiny map of North America labelled "ID") has been preserved; this tends to reinforce my view that the original artwork was used, as there is no conceivable reason why it should otherwise have been copied onto the front of the British edition.
Many of the original covers were full wrap-arounds but these, unfortunately, were not preserved in the reprint editions; only the front half was reproduced, while the back cover carried the ubiquitous advertisement for International Correspondence schools. #7-15 carried British advertising inside the covers as well, though #1-6 reproduced inside both front and back a series of illustrations, mostly on exploring the solar system, by Ed Valigursky, at that time If's Art Director.
There is a slight mystery around the contents of If that again I cannot entirely resolve without seeing both original and reprint side by side, but the lists of contents in SFFWF provide some help. The reprint carried most (in a couple of cases, all) of the original contents. In every issue, the lead story was the same so there was no need to change the cover. Usually, one short story or article amounting to about six pages was omitted, suggesting that the BRE had less space to work with. But the page count was the same, or sometimes slightly higher than the original. Moreover, the story lengths do not exactly correspond. This leads me to believe that the BRE may have been reset with a different type face or page format allowing fewer words per page, so something had to be dropped to make space.
This series, like the first, was published by Strato and distributed by Thorpe & Porter - or so it appears from information given on the title page of the first two issues. These two were printed in England, having the entire contents of the original except that the advertisements were changed, both on the back and inside covers and in the body of the magazine. The remainder from #3 onwards (Tuck says from #5 but, by my copies,this clearly isn't correct) were simply the US original imported. The only changes from then on were the price (2/-) and the addition of a triangle with the letters "TP", which I take to be the mark of the UK distributors; also the date was omitted from the cover and spine up to #12. The UK issues corresponded to the US issues as follows:
#1 and 2 were September and November 1959 respectively, v9#4 and 5; the UK #1 actually shows September 1959 inside, but #2 shows no date. Tuck dates it as January 1960; it may well have appeared then in the UK, but it was the 11/59 issue and the US 1/60 was never used
#3-18 were March 1960 - September 1962, bimonthly and in the correct sequence, i.e. v10#1 - v12#4. They all showed the US date inside and, on later issues, on the cover and spine as well.
There were ten issues in this series, monthly from January to October 1967. The magazines carried only a month, no year, but it is clear from, for example, the advertising that they came out in 1967. They reprinted in sequence the originals from March to December 1966, v16#3 - v16#12 or whole numbers 100-109. The distributor in the UK was Gold Star Publications, the same company that distributed the last two paperback-sized issues of New Worlds, and from the same address in Dock Street, London. This was also the address of Roberts and Vinter, who published the rest of the paperback format NWs in 1964-67. Several of these Gold Star "If"s carried adverts on the back cover for New Worlds "with its new large-sized format", subscriptions from the same address in Dock Street - which is very odd as, by the time NW assumed its new format, Roberts and Vinter no longer had any involvement in it.
The WIF3 issues have the same page count as the US magazine and appear to have identical contents. The only apparent change is to the date on the index page and the addition of the UK distributor's address. Even the advertisements are unchanged in the main body of the magazine. Those on the inside and back covers, though, have been replaced with UK advertisements. The artwork on the front cover looks to be the same as the original; only the date and price have been changed in the top right hand corner. Since this is in white space on most of the issues, it does not affect the cover design.
This series seems almost completely to have escaped the attention of bibliographers and indexers. Tuck mentions the existence of the first issue, dated November 1969, but says no more about it as it was late information at the time that his book was compiled. No other reference source that I am aware of mentions it. I have nine of the series, dated November 1969 monthly to May 1970, then June/July and August/September 1970, and my information is based on these copies. I have no reason to believe that any others exist, but no decisive evidence that they do not.
This series was published by Universal-Tandem Publishing Company and distributed by the Magazine Division of New English Library, both of London. Each issue corresponds to the US original dated one month before, thus October 1969 (v19#4, #141) to July/August 1970 (v20#6, #149). Without checking the contents exhaustively, it appears that they are identical inside and carry all the stories and features of the original, except only that some British advertisements appear. Since the contents are the same, it has not been necessary to alter the covers in any significant way and, so far as I can tell, they carry the original artwork. The only changes are the date and UK price and they all carry a small star with the inscription "ALL NEW". The inside and back covers, however, carry British advertisements and the contents page has been amended with the UK date and publication information.
Of all of the series, this is the oddest and most confusing owing to the strange numbering scheme. It, too, was published by Universal-Tandem, which it appears was a subsidiary of UPD, the US publishers of the original. There were 15 in the series corresponding to the US issues v21#5 to v22#7, May/June 1972 to Sept/Oct 1974. They were numbered #1-9, then 11, 1, 13, 3, 4, 5 - I have no idea why. Where there is duplication, I have used both the UK number and the US number to identify the images. CN95 says "the last issue of If was never distributed in the UK"; I presume by that it means v22#8, the last of the main series, and I have certainly never seen a UK version. The very last issue of If was the single number published in 1986 in a short-lived revival.
Like the fourth series, this reproduced the entire contents of the US magazine, changed only on the front cover and contents page to show the UK price and publication information. In fact, I'm not sure the contents page is different. The one copy of the US magazine I have from this period also shows the UK publication data side-by-side with the US information, just as in the UK edition. No date is shown on the cover of the UK issues, but the date given inside is as for the corresponding US number. In this series, even the original US advertisements have been used.
Most of the images are from copies in my own collection, with a few gaps plugged by Alistair Durie and Phil Stephensen-Payne. Note that some of the issues in WIF2 were badly marked or damaged by damp and it was necessary to undertake some digital repair work on the scans, even in one case to make up a composite image from two copies. Please contact me if you can provide better images.