Abridged Expurgated Revised Bowdlerized - Part IV

In the second post in this series I discussed one of the Crow books from Toronto's Alval Publishing. Here is another example of an abridgement effort from Alval.

Week-end Girl by James Clayford (pseudonym of Peggy Gaddis) was first published as Lovers No More by Godwin (New York, 1934) as by Joan Sherman. The new name and author were first seen in 1948 when published by Astro Publishing Corporation of New York as #2 in its two book digest reprint series. Next up was Alval's edition under the same names in July 1949 as Crow 26. A final edition was published in 1950 under a new name, Beach Party, by New York's Star Guidance, Inc. as Venus Books 104. The author name was changed for a third time as well to Peggy Gaddis.

The Astro edition is described as "slightly revised" from the Godwin edition. The Crow edition, based on information on the copyright page, uses the Astro edition. But it's not all there. The Crow edition is approximately 30% shorter with chapters 15, 19 and 20 gone and other chapters cut. As usual no mention of the abridgement is made.

One last interesting comparison is the cover. The Alval edition is a direct copy of the Astro edition (artist - Rodewald) by a less talented artist.

Astro 2

Astro 2 back

Crow 26

Crow 26 back