LA Bantam Illustrated Covers Part I

One of the intriguing aspects to Bantam Publications is the illustrated covers seen on books 21 to 28 plus A1. Books 21 to 28 also had text only covers. Why illustrated? Were they published after the text versions, before or at the same time? Why only these nine books out of the total of 29 that Bantam published? Who were the artists?

The reason is likely an effort to boost sales. Pocket Books was producing colourful covers and the bland text only Bantams would look uninviting next to them in the bookstores or on the news stands.

There is evidence that books 21 to 28 were published separately from books 1 to 20. Books 1 to 20 have an ad on the back cover not seen on books 21 to 28. There are a couple of different ads on books 21 to 28 listing either 11 or 12 books. Some of books 1 to 20 have these ads as well and are likely later printings. Books 1 to 20 were in two April 1941 Publisher's Weekly lists of books published. See this post for the details. Finally, for those books in the Library of Congress's Catalogue of Copyright Entries, the ones from books 1 to 20 group are dated July through September 1940. The ones from the second group are dated April 1941. 

So it appears that only the later batch of books were given illustrated covers, perhaps at the same time as the text only variants were published. The last book, Red Threads (A1), was published with only an illustrated cover.

The art is unsigned.

LA Bantam 24

LA Bantan 28

LA Bantam A1