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 Back Covers

Anyone reading this blog knows that Bantam Publications books come in many variants. Making sense of them bibliographically is a challenge as the text is always identical and only the last book, Red Threads, has printing information.

One important difference between variants is the back cover where all of the books, excepting the last one, have house ads for Bantam. There were four different ads. Can they help sort out the variants? Perhaps. I haven't seen all of the books and their variants but here's some preliminary analysis.

The first ad appears only on books 1 to 20 which, based on other information, I believe were published before books 21 to 28. The text cover versions of books 21 to 28 have either ads 2 or 3. However some variants of books 1 to 20 also have either ads 2 or 3. The illustrated cover versions of books 21 to 28 have ad 4 only.

The difference between ads 2 and 3 is one more book (Spanish Cape Mystery) is listed in ad 3. The same books are always listed in the ads. Note that the lists include a selection of books from 1 to 28. In ad 4 the other books in the illustrated series are listed, leaving out the book in which the ad appears.

One conclusion from this is that books 1 to 20 with ad 1 were the first published. Then some or all of books 1 to 20 were republished with ads 2 and/or 3 at the same time as the text versions of books 21 to 28. Finally the illustrated versions of books 21 to 28 were published. I'll leave the speculation there for now.

ad 1 - LA Bantam 2

ad 2 - LA Bantam 18

ad 3 - LA Bantam 25 - text variant

ad 4 - LA Bantam 27 illustrated variant