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PAPERBACK NOVELS
CRIME
While the archetype for a murder mystery dates back to the "The Three Apples" in the One Thousand and One Nights,[1] crime fiction began to be considered as a serious genre only around 1900. The earliest known crime novel is "The Rector of Veilbye" by the Danish author Steen Steensen Blicher, published in 1829. Yet more known are the earlier dark works of Edgar Allan Poe (e.g., "The Murders in the Rue Morgue" (1841), "The Mystery of Marie Roget" (1842), and "The Purloined Letter" (1844). The evolution of locked room mysteries was one of the landmarks in the history of crime fiction. The Sherlock Holmes mysteries, probably based upon C. Auguste Dupin and Émile Gaboriau's Monsieur Lecoq, are said to have been singularly responsible for the huge popularity in this genre. A precursor was Paul Féval, whose series Les Habits Noirs (1862-67) feature Scotland Yard detectives and criminal conspiracies.
The evolution of the print mass media in the United Kingdom and the United States in the latter half of the 19th century was crucial in popularising crime fiction and related genres. Literary 'variety' magazines like Strand, McClure's, and Harper's quickly became central to the overall structure and function of popular fiction in society, providing a mass-produced medium that offered cheap, illustrated publications that were essentially disposable.
Like the works of many other important fiction writers of his day — e.g. Wilkie Collins and Charles Dickens — Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes stories first appeared in serial form in the monthly Strand magazine in the United Kingdom. The series quickly attracted a wide and passionate following on both sides of the Atlantic, and when Doyle killed off Holmes in The Final Problem, the public outcry was so great, and the publishing offers for more stories so attractive, that he was reluctantly forced to resurrect him.
Later a set of stereotypic formulae began to appear to cater to various tastes.
MORE: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crime_fiction
Art by Rudolph Belarski
Art by Samuel Cherry
MORE: http://www.vintagepbks.com/covers_by_artist.html
The first Popular Library title, Leslie Charteris’ Saint Overboard, was labeled as being a Popular Book. It was published in 1943 by Ned L. Pines and Leo Margulies. The stylized cover art was created by Lawrence H. Hoffman, who would later collaborate with Sol Immerman; their covers were signed “Im-Ho”.
Perhaps the best-known and most collectable cover artist for Popular was Rudolph Belarski, whose GGA (Good Girl Art) cover paintings graced some of the most luridly colorful titles for PopLib. The Doll’s Trunk Murder by Helen Reilly, Popular #211, is an outstanding example of his work. His speciality was in depicting beautiful women in deadly danger and revealing costumes; these covers all have a lushly comic-book quality coupled with skillfully rendered and nearly photographic technique.
MORE: http://vintagepaperbackbooks.com/
GOLD MEDAL BOOKS:
Fawcett was also an independent newsstand distributor, and in 1945, the company negotiated a contract with New American Library to distribute their Mentor and Signet titles. This contract prohibited Fawcett from becoming a competitor by publishing their own paperback reprints. In 1949, Roscoe Fawcett wanted to establish a line of Fawcett paperbacks, and he felt original paperbacks would not be a violation of the contract. In order to test a loophole in the contract, Fawcett published two anthologies -- The Best of True Magazine and What Today's Woman Should Know About Marriage and Sex -- reprinting material from Fawcett magazines not previously published in books. When these books successfully sailed through the contract loophole, Fawcett announced Gold Medal Books, their line of paperback originals. It was a revolutionary turning point in paperback publishing. Fawcett's editor-in-chief was Ralph Daigh, who had been hired by Captain Billy in 1928, and the art director for Gold Medal was Al Allard, who also had been with Fawcett since 1928.[8]
MORE: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fawcett_Publications
Gold Medal Books, launched by Fawcett Publications in 1950, is a U.S. book publisher known for introducing paperback originals, a publishing innovation at the time. Fawcett was also an independent newsstand distributor, and in 1949 the company negotiated a contract with New American Library to distribute their Mentor and Signet titles. This contract prohibited Fawcett from publishing their own paperback reprints.[citation needed]
Roscoe Kent Fawcett wanted to establish a line of Fawcett paperbacks, and he felt original paperbacks would not be a violation of the contract. In order to test a loophole in the contract, Fawcett published two anthologies -- The Best of True Magazine and What Today's Woman Should Know About Marriage and Sex -- reprinting material from Fawcett magazines not previously published in books. When these books successfully sailed through the contract loophole, Fawcett announced Gold Medal Books, their line of paperback originals. Sales soared, prompting Ralph Daigh to comment, "In the past six months we have produced 9,020,645 books, and people seem to like them very well." However, hardcover publishers resented Roscoe Fawcett's innovation, as evidenced by Doubleday's LeBaron R. Barker, who claimed that paperback originals could "undermine the whole structure of publishing."[1]
It was a revolutionary turning point in paperback publishing. William Lengel was the Gold Medal editor, and the art director was Al Allard, who had been employed with Fawcett since 1928.[2]
MORE: http://bogus-boggess.blogspot.com/2007_02_01_archive.html
Beginning their numbering system at 101, Gold Medal got underway with Alan Hynd's We Are the Public Enemies, the anthology Man Story and The Persian Cat by John Flagg. Writing about the demise of pulp magazines in The Dime Detectives, Ron Goulart observed, "Fawcett dealt another blow to the pulps when, in 1950, it introduced its Gold Medal line. What Gold Medal specialized in was original novels. Some were merely sleazy, but others were in a tough, hard-boiled style that seemed somehow more knowing and more contemporary than that of the surviving pulps. Early Gold Medal authors included John D. MacDonald, Charles Williams, and Richard S. Prather."
MORE: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gold_Medal_Books
In 1952, when their contract with NAL expired, Fawcett immediately began doing reprints through several imprints. Red Seal started April 1952 and published 22 titles before it folded a year later. Launched September 1955, Premier Books offered non-fiction titles, such as The Art of Thinking by Ernest Dimnet. Crest Books, which also started September 1955, spanned all genres with an emphasis on Westerns and humor, including Best Cartoons from True and Lester Grady's Best from Captain Billy's Whiz Bang, and one successful Crest title was their movie tie-in edition of Robert Bloch's Psycho. The managing editor of Crest and Premier was Leona Nevler.
MORE: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fawcett_Publications
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Post-World War II American publishing was transformed by the introduction of the paperback. By 1946 there were over 350 softcover titles in print (three times as many as in 1945), with Pocket Books, Avon, Popular Library, Dell and Bantam all publishing in the paperback format and replacing the pulp magazines on the newsstands. Several of the best postwar crime novelists - David Goodis, Jim Thompson, John D. MacDonald, Gil Brewer - were about to begin writing paperback originals.
The great boom in paperback publishing, however, was initiated by the novels of Mickey Spillane. Needing a thousand dollars for the materials to build his own house, Spillane wrote I, the Jury in 1947. The novel only sold about seven thousand copies in hardcover but, as a Signet paperback, sold over two million copies in two years, an achievement that 'electrified and inspired the softcover book industry' (Lee Server, Over My Dead Body).
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DELL BOOKS
The Dell Mysteries had the juicy cover art and a
'crime map' on the back cover to aid the reader in tracking clues and
postulating their 'whodunnit' theories. I love the little 'eye in the keyhole'
logo, too.
Most of the Dells in this set are from the first half of the '40's. Towards the
end there's also a few Popular Library covers from the same period, with cover
art in a very similar style.
By the late, post-war 1940's you can get an idea of how the style had changed a
bit, as evidenced by the final two items; a Pocket Book mystery and a later
Dell.
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MORE: http://fiveprime.org/hivemind/Tags/crime,paperback
In June 2003 Telos introduced a new range of reprinted Classic Crime thrillers by Hank Janson. Controversial in their day, and as 'near to the knuckle' as the censors would allow, original examples of these books have become sought after collectors editions. The Telos range of reprints feature the highly sought after original cover artwork and in some cases, where this artwork was censored, the cover artwork as originally intended.
MORE: http://74.54.78.50/~telosco/crime/crime-main.htm
NEW AND REPRINT PAPERBACKS
http://www.hardcasecrime.com/about.shtml
Twentieth-Century Crime Fiction aims to enhance understanding of one of the most popular forms of genre fiction by examining a wide variety of the detective and crime fiction produced in Britain and America during the twentieth century. It will be of interest to anyone who enjoys reading crime fiction but is specifically designed with the needs of students in mind. It introduces different theoretical approaches to crime fiction (e.g., formalist, historicist, psychoanalytic, postcolonial, feminist) and will be a useful supplement to a range of crime fiction courses, whether they focus on historical contexts, ideological shifts, the emergence of sub-genres, or the application of critical theories. Forty-seven widely available stories and novels are chosen for detailed discussion.
MORE: http://www.oupcanada.com/catalog/9780199253265.html
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