Pelican Part I

After a 30 year pause Penguin revived the Pelican imprint in 2014. Their current list is now up to 33. In a nice touch each book is numbered.

Here is number one plus examples of early Pelicans.

Pelican 1 - 2014

Pelican 1 back

Pelican A133 - 1944

Pelican A133 back

Pelican A114 - May 1943

Pelican A114 back

Pelican A280 - 1953

Pelican A280 back

Perry Mason Part IV

In addition to the 82 novels (and a few short stories) Perry Mason succeeded in TV. For nine seasons and 271 episodes Raymond Burr created the Perry Mason most people remember. There were a few comics in the 1940s and 1960s, a short lived comic strip in the early 1950s and a radio series. Plus a failed 1970s reboot of the TV series.

Not hard to see why the comic books and comic strip failed. There is a great deal of talk in the novels with complex plots and very little that would help the creators of the comics produce something appealing to kids or adults for that matter. But they tried.

Here is one of the two 1940s comics from David McKay. They are part of a Feature Book series which rotated King Features comic strips such as Blondie, The Phantom, Popeye, Dick Tracy and Rip Kirby. The other Mason book is The Case of the Shoplifter's Shoe.

I've read about 20 of the novels and Mason has yet to hit anyone. The Case of the Lucky Legs is the third Mason novel. The art is by Vernon Greene.

David McKay - Feature Book 49 - 1946

David McKay - Feature Book 49 back

Perry Mason Part III

In Parts I and II of this Perry Mason series I've discussed the nearly 900 Pocket Book printings of the 82 PM novels. There were, of course, many other publishers of the PM books - Penguin and Pan in the UK, Ballantine in the US and smaller publishers. But, with one exception, the covers on all of these editions never showed Perry Mason. The one exception is an odd Australian hybrid of two publishers. Described as "published by Penguin Books ... in conjunction with Horwitz Publications", the seven PM novels have Penguin text and Horwitz covers. 

Perry Mason aka Raymond Burr is seen on five of the books and one has Paul Drake aka William Hopper. There is one Horwitz Gardner book that has Burr on the cover and is advertised as a Perry Mason story. But it isn't. It is TCOT Smoking Chimney.

Below is one of the Raymond Burr covers plus an earlier edition from UK publisher British Publishers Guild. 

Penguin/Horwitz H965 - 1961

British Publishers Guild 418 - second printing 1952

Perry Mason Part II

In my last post I introduced the Pocket editions of Erle Stanley Gardner's Perry Mason novels. From 1940 until 1977 Pocket published all 82 novels in nearly 900 printings. The first decade's covers are illustrated. From 1950 to 1957 most of the covers are photographs. From 1958 to 1964 they are illustrated and after 1964 photographs again.

The photograph covers are, by and large, awful. The 1958 to 1964 illustrated covers are among the best ever produced in US paperbacks. Here are three by the one of the best of the best. Robert McGinnis is still working at 92 - see Hard Case Crime.

Pocket 4505 - July 1962 - 8th printing

Pocket 4519 - May 1963 - 4th printing

Pocket 4521 - July 1963 - 4th printing

Perry Mason Part I

Erle Stanley Gardner (1889-1970) wrote over 140 books in a 38 year career. Eighty-six of the books were novels with his most famous character, Perry Mason. My focus in this blog will be the astonishing fact that every one of those novels was published in paperback by Pocket Books. This may be the longest, and most profitable, publishing relationship of this sort. 

The first, The Case of the (TCOT) Velvet Claws, was published in 1933 with Pocket's edition dating from 1940. The last, TCOT Postponed Murder, was published posthumously in 1973, the Pocket following in 1974.

The 82 novels were reprinted many times by Pocket. I estimate there are around 900 printings. The covers on the reprints show the changing approach to catching the reader's attention at the drugstore. Some are awful and, I will argue in a later post, some are the best ever produced. For example - 

Pocket 223 - 1st printing - May 1943

art by H. Lawrence Hoffman

Pocket 223 - 21st printing - January 1948

art by Paul Kinnear

Pocket 242 - 16th printing - July 1953

Photograph cover

Pocket C-378 - 1st printing - November 1959

art by Charles Binger

Nana's Mother

One of the pleasures of mid-century mass market paperbacks is comparing them with current editions. Title renaming, abridgements and cover art are all points of change. Here's a good example. 

Nana's Mother was published by Avon Books in 1950. The title is, unusually, not an Avon creation. It is seen on the title page of the first American edition (Philadelphia: T. B. Peterson, 1879). But the cover is most definitely an Avon - a 1940s Hollywood version of mid nineteenth century France.

L'Assommoir is the seventh in Zola's Rougon-Macquart cycle of twenty novels, published in 1877. The Oxford edition is approximately 2 1/4 times longer than the Avon. 

Oxford - 2009

Oxford back

Avon 271 - 1950

Avon 271 back

Armed Services Editions Part IV

In my last post in this series I talked about the Armed Services Editions published by Reader's League of America, a New York publisher. There are actually three different versions of these editions. 

The first I describe in the last post. The second isn't called an Armed Services Edition but has the Reader's League as publisher. The third is described as "Special edition for free distribution to members of the armed services by the American Red Cross" and looks like the regular ASE edition.

Here is an example of each of the first and second types.

Reader's League "The Pocket Book of Boners",  nn, nd

Reader's League "The Pocket Book of Boners", back

Reader's Legue "Red Harvest", nn, nd

Reader's League "Red Harvest", back