La Bantam Bibliographically Speaking Part II

In part I of the blog I discussed the differences between various issues (variants) of the books published by Bantam Publications. Here I'll look in detail at one of the books.

Book 22, The Green Death and other stories by Brett Hutton, has five variant covers, four with text and one illustrated. The text covers are strong blue/light blue, strong blue/light gray, strong blue/light green and strong yellowish green/light blue.

Aside from the colours, there are two sets of text covers. The strong blue/light blue and strong yellowish green/light blue versions have the following:

• "Green Death" all in capitals
• the cover blurb not italicized and large type face
• a blank Bantam eye
• the title in small type face on spine
• list of 11 books on back cover.

The strong blue/light gray and strong blue/light green versions have the following:

• "Green Death" capital and lower case with a smaller "G" and "D"
• the cover blurb italicized and small type face
• a black Bantam eye
• the title in large type face on spine
• list of 12 books on back cover with the book titles in slightly larger type face.

The text block is identical in all variants. So far I have seen no way to establish any printing priority for the text cover issues of the second group of books - 21 through 28.

The difference in the blue colour below is not evident on the books.



La Bantam Bibliographically Speaking Part I

There are five differences between the many Bantam variants - three for the front covers with text, the illustrated covers for issues 21 to 28 and the ads on the back covers. The three front covers differences are the colour combinations, the "eye of the bantam" and the text font. So far I've seen no differences in anything between the covers for any of the book variants.

There are ten colour combination for the text covers and I can't see a pattern. But there are patterns for the ads, the eye and the text font. So far all books I've seen with ad 1 have a black bantam eye and italic font. Also all books with ad 2 have non-italic font and do not have the black eye. The first pattern is seen only on books 1 - 20, the second on books from the first group (1 - 20) and the second (21 -28). Below are examples from the two patterns.

There are no illustrated cover variants. All have the black eye, same font and ad 4.

Bantam 14

Bantam 14 back

Bantam 22

Bantam 22 back

Bantam 22

Bantam 22 illustrated back

LA Bantam - the Eye of the Bantam

Bantam Publications published most, if not all, of its books (except the last one) with variant covers. There were different colours on the text covers and, for eight of the books, illustrated covers. However the one consistent feature was the large red bantam logo. But even here there were two variants - one with a black dot for the eye and one with the eye showing the background colour. Approximately 3/4 of the 40 some variants I've seen have the black dot. Is there any bibliographic significance to this? Don't know - need to see more variants. One interesting feature is that books with the dot have an italicized front cover blurb; those without the dot have a non-italicized blurb. All nine illustrated covers have a dot. And to confuse matters there is one book, Humorous Anecdotes, with no eye - although other copies of the book with an otherwise identical cover have the eye without the dot.

LA Bantam 19 with dot

LA Bantam 18 with dot

LA Bantam 18 without the dot

LA Bantam 24 with no eye