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The first book published by Red Arrow Books is Thirteen at Dinner by Agatha Christie, first published as Lord Edgware Dies in 1933 by the Scottish-British publisher Wm. Collins. The American edition with the new title was published New York: Dodd, Mead, 1933.
Thirteen at Dinner is 288 pages long and is 111 mm (4 3/8") wide by 179 mm (7 1/16") tall, the same size as the early Penguins. The page collation is:
[1] half-title,
[2] BY THE SAME AUTHOR [list of seven books],
[3] title page,
[4] copyright page,
[5] about Red Arrow Books,
[6] blank,
[7-8] contents,
[9] dedication,
[10] blank,
11-283 Thirteen at Dinner,
[284-288] blank.
The copyright date is 1939.
There are variant covers: two text, a "Book Club" edition and an illustrated one. One text version has a red spine and back cover (see below), the other a brown spine and back cover.
The two early short-lived mass market paperback publishers that share this blog also share one author - Agatha Christie. With the 120th anniversary of her birthday just four days away this is a good time to compare her treatment by these two publishers.
It is not surprising Christie is the one author shared by the two publishers. Generally accepted as the second best selling author of all time (behind Shakespeare with an estimated 2 - 4 billion books sold) Christie's books are among the earliest published by the early mass market publishers. The early Dell version of The Tuesday Club Murders is below.
The LA Bantam is a collection of five stories chosen from an original 13 that were published as The Thirteen Problems in England and as The Tuesday Club Murders in the US in 1931. The Red Arrow is a novel originally published in 1934 as Lord Edgware Dies. Later that year it was published in the United States as Thirteen At Dinner. Both examples below are the text only covers. They exist in illustrated versions also.
Red Arrow 1 - 1939
Bantam 26 - 1940
Dell 8 - 1943
