The Dusty Bookcase

07 June 2010

Allen Emergency Eye Wash

Beginning with the above, London publisher Grant Richards' 1897 first edition of An African Millionaire, six handsome Grant Allen books to flush away the harmful grit left by BiblioBazaar, Tutis and General.

Flowers and Their Pedigrees

New York: Appleton, 1884

Miss Cayley's Adventures

London: Richards, 1899

Flashlights on Nature

London: Newnes, 1899

Florence

Boston: Page, 1901

Belgium: Its Cities

Boston: Page, 1903

Related posts:

Awful Allens

What? No Tutis?

06 June 2010

What? No Tutis?

A correspondent wonders why I gave Tutis Classics a pass in the last post. The reason is simple: the greatest offence done to Grant Allen comes not from the perplexing POD publisher, but from rival BiblioBazaar. Need another example? Here, BiblioBazaar takes the author's most enduring work, botches the title, then repeats the error with an alternate cover featuring an image that it tries to pass off as Paris.

Those familiar with The Woman Who Did will remember Alan and Herminia's time in the City of Light.

No?

Here it is in full:

They took the club train that afternoon to Paris. There they slept the night in a fusty hotel near the Gare du Nord, and went on in the morning by the daylight express to Switzerland.

Fans of Tutis will be disappointed to learn that it offers only two Allen titles. These are not, as one might expect, The Woman Who Did and An African Millionaire, but The Great Taboo and The Science of Arcady. Lesser works to be sure – the latter is a collection of essays wrapped in a cover that resembles an old textbook – though the former might be of interest. The Great Taboo was the second of four novels Allen published in 1890; Peter Morton's The Busiest Man in England: Grant Allen and the Writing Trade provides a very good summary:

Washed overboard from a liner in the South Seas, Felix Thurstan and Muriel Ellis swim to a Polynesian island, where they are promoted to the status of gods of Rain and Clouds respectively. Their reign will be short, however; they can expect to be killed, eaten and replaced after some months. Fortunately they learn, from the babbling of an ancient parrot once owned by a sailor castaway, the exact process by which the reigning supreme god, Tu-Kila-Kila, is himself replaced; armed with this knowledge, Felix steals the golden bough from the sacred grove and kills the incumbent in single combat. Felix and Muriel then introduce a humane and rationalistic regime before escaping on a passing ship.

As I say, a lesser effort, though Tutis does offer two different covers. The first appears to depict Felix and Muriel windsurfing their way to freedom. Bit of a mistake there – they actually leave by lifeboat, courtesy of a gun-toting sea captain – but I wonder whether the second, placing Felix in Conan the Barbarian gear before the frigid, snow-covered mountains of Polynesia, is any better.

By Crom!

Related post: Awful Allens

04 June 2010

Awful Allens

Further to Tuesday's post. The cover of the Leadenhead Michael's Crag might not be as attractive as Rand McNally's (above), but is it not more interesting? "MR. GRANT ALLEN'S NEW STORY 'MICHAEL'S CRAG'" suggests.... what? Great anticipation? A long wait? Neither would have been true; even as Michael's Crag appeared, the author's next novel, The Scallywag, was being serialized in the weekly Graphic. What's more, it followed hot on the heals of Ivan Greet's Masterpiece etc. (1893), a collection of new and recently published short stories.

Allen was a busy man – in his opinion, the busiest in England – before dying of "liver related problems" at the grand old age of 51, he'd published seventy books. I know of only two that are in print today, The Woman Who Did and The Type-writer Girl, both fine scholarly editions from Peterborough's Broadview Press. These and nearly all the others are available from various print on demand firms. With few exceptions, they appear such nasty things, particularly when placed next to their Victorian counterparts. Compare, if you will, Ferro's 1896 edition of A Bride from the Desert to that offered by print on demand publisher BiblioBazaar.

Let's ignore the line-wrap and focus on the image. Intriguing, isn't it? What, one wonders, does a bamboo forest have to do with something titled A Bride from the Desert? The answer is, of course, nothing. The photo is one of several that BiblioBazaar places on their books. Look for no rhyme, consider no reason. Here the same photo is used on Allen's Flowers and Their Pedigrees (1884).

So, what we have is a cheap POD publisher with a set number of stock images. I get it. But is it not odd that BiblioBazaar uses two of these images, both appropriate for A Bride from the Desert, on their editions of Allen's Venice (1898)?

Ah, yes, Venice, the desert wasteland. BiblioBazaar also offers two different editions dealing with that maritime city we call Paris.

Lest anyone think I'm picking on BiblioBazaar, I end this rant by pointing to this beauty from England's General Books. Though I've never seen the first edition, I'm willing to bet a considerable sum that it is a far sight more attractive than this: