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

Abridged Expurgated Revised Bowdlerized - Part II

In part I of this series of posts I discussed Export Publishing Enterprises Ltd.'s approach to abridging their books. Here is an example from another publisher of the era - Alval Publishers of Canada Ltd. of Toronto and their Crow imprint. Twenty-four (numbers 21-44) books were published in this series.

Many of the books had recently been published as paperback digests by Astro Distributing Corporation of New York. For example Crow 28, Party Wife, had been published by Astro as Confessions of a Party Wife, number 11. The Astro book was published in 1948 and the Alval book in July 1949. The book was originally published as Love Must Be Gay (New York: The Macaulay Company, 1935).

The Astro edition states that "this book has not been abridged or condensed in any way." The Alval edition makes no such claim for a good reason - approximately 45% of the book has been cut. The Astro edition has 24 chapters. The Alval edition eliminates chapters 21 and 22 and cuts most chapters in the last half of the book anywhere from 50% to 75%. The first half is relatively untouched. One gets the sense that the editor of the Alval edition realized half way through the text that he needed to get busy to fit it into 160 pages and started cutting everywhere. It is hard to imagine the book making much sense in the last 80 pages.

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. Note the minimalist approach to the car. Also the young Mrs. in the Crow edition appears to have her eyes completely closed. Many of the covers on Crow books are done in the same way.

Crow 28

Astro 11

Travellers Pocket Library Part II

In Part I of the Travellers story I discussed the series and whether it might have been published in Canada. I also showed three of the six books in the series. Here I'll show the other three and make a few more comments. The three other books are:

Books 100 to 104 have similar design features on the front cover and spine. Book 105 doesn't exist and 106 has important differences. The book number appears to be handwritten, the text feature at bottom right is gone and the spine has differences. In fact book 106 has features identical to those of another publisher, Alval Publishers of Canada. Compare Travellers 106 with Alval's Crow Pocket Edition 27 Published in July 1949. Alval is Alexander Valentine of Toronto - more on him later.

The artist is the same and the author name is written in the same hand. Even the title is a "Crow" type title.

So what does any of this mean. One interpretation is that the first five Travellers were published by persons unknown (Canadian?) and Valentine tried to continue the series, mistakenly thinking that there had been a number 105. What the books stated publisher, Ward-Hill of New York, has to do with any of this a question that likely will never be answered.