Favourite Book Jacket

[David Filsell]

Most kind, hope I got it all correct!

Copy of the book has now gone.

[Dust Jacket Collector]

A couple more favourites. Firstly this War novel, largely set in Salonika, of an English soldier with a German mother who inevitably encounters one of his German cousins on the battlefield with unfortunate consequences. Published by Ernest Benn in 1929.

Secondly this POW memoir. The author was captured whilst leading a company of the Drake Battalion, Naval Division. He was imprisoned in the camps of Karlsruhe & Mainz. Published in 1930 by a little known publisher, Morley & Mitchell Kennerley.

[Black Maria]

'Behind both lines' is one of my favourite jackets but I doubt I will ever find one, it took me years to even find a copy without it's jacket.

[Dust Jacket Collector]

'Behind both lines' is one of my favourite jackets but I doubt I will ever find one, it took me years to even find a copy without it's jacket.

I rather dispaired of ever finding one until I looked on Amazon and there it was for £30. Always worth taking a look occasionally.

[barkalotloudly]

seek and you shall find!

[Black Maria]

Another of my favourite jackets and a chance to ask a question to Dust jacket collector. When you acquire a book in it's jacket that you already

have unjacketed and you dispose of the spare copy, do you inspect each copy first and swop the jacket over if the original copy is in better

condition than the one just purchased ?. I ask this because it's what I sometimes do , the only quandary I have sometimes is that the jacketed

book usually has a nicer cloth covering ( having been protected by the jacket), even if internally it may be poorer than the unjacketed copy.

[Dust Jacket Collector]

Fabulous jacket, John. One of my favourites too.

Always a difficult one. Collectors who operate in a different universe to us and pay tens or even hundreds of thousands for a book are said to be very averse to a 'marriage' i.e. Merging a jacket from another book. Personally I'm always happy to do it but as you say the copy under the jacket is usually the best anyway. I'd certainly hang on to a signed copy & give it a nice jacket.

I have a lovely 'With the Black Watch' which is longing for a jacket!!!

[Black Maria]

Yes Alan, I often wonder if a' marriage' is made in heaven or hell , I suppose if it's the same edition and the cloth is in good condition then nobody

would be any the wiser. Although I sometimes feel a bit guilty because the jacket and the book have been together for many years it feels a bit

wrong to separate them, I'm just a sentimentalist at heart . To give an example of one of my dilemmas , I managed to acquire a copy of quite

a rare memoir ' They also serve' by Cecil Thomas ( 2nd imp) which was also signed but quite worn , later I acquired a jacketed copy ( 2nd imp)

which was an x-lib copy but in unread condition. I originally swapped over the jacket and was going to sell the x-lib copy , but the jacket had a

small library number on the spine so it really was a 'marriage' and it seemed a shame to sell a book in such nice condition, so I decided to keep

both in the end. Funnily enough I have a lovely signed copy of 'There's a Devil in the Drum' which is also longing for a jacket !!!

Anyway here is another of my favourites , and it's got a tank on the front !

 

[Dust Jacket Collector]

That's another one I'm still after. Is it the American edition? (Don't know if there was a UK one). 

An even more contentious issue is whether to take the jacket from a later issue and put it on the first. I suppose it's as much about available shelf space as anything.

[Black Maria]

Yes, it was published by Houghton Mifflin Company in June 1918 and as far as I'm aware it wasn't published in the U.K as it was a bit

of a propaganda exercise by the British for the U.S market, I believe. I must admit I have put a later issue on an earlier edition but I

usually will only do this when there is no indication on the later jacket that it is any different from the original one, for example I put a

second imp jacket on my first edition 'Twelve Days' and reading the blurb on the jacket flaps there is no indication that it's a later issue

so it's probably only me that knows it's any different. Yes shelf space is part of the problem, there are some modern reprints I would

have liked to have kept when I found the originals , as they often have new introductions in them with interesting information about the

book, but I just don't have the room to keep them all.

[Black Maria]

I think this one is one of my favourites more for it's rarity value than for it's image which is very plain, as you can see.

I purchased it on e-bay for around £30 and was the only bidder, the book was listed as a first edition, although later

impressions were printed within months. When it arrived it was indeed a first edition but I assumed it's jacket must

have been a later one , as I went on the Great War Dust jacket site to check and displayed there was a similar jacket

but with different coloured titles. It was only later when a request was put out on this forum for an image of the first

edition jacket on behalf of the B.B.C that I realised that the image on the site was in fact a third edition copy and I had

indeed purchased a first edition copy complete with jacket. A restored copy of my jacket appears on the B.B.C programme

'War of words soldier poets of the Somme' , soon to be reshown on 3/7/16 on B.B.C 4.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Black Maria]

Hurst & Blackett Ltd 1916, written by A. Clifton -Shelton ( A.S.C )

[Dust Jacket Collector]

What a good find, John. Fairly common without the jacket, I think, but that's only the second one I've seen with one. Glad to know who wrote it as well.

[Black Maria]

22 minutes ago, Dust Jacket Collector said:

What a good find, John. Fairly common without the jacket, I think, but that's only the second one I've seen with one. Glad to know who wrote it as well.

Cheers Alan, yes I was very pleased to find it .

[Dust Jacket Collector]

I particularly like this lightly fictionalised account of the author's time as a Lt. in the 7th London RFA. It was published by Hamilton in 1929.

Edited 6 August , 2016 by Dust Jacket Collector
Failed to add image first time round.

[David Filsell]

Superb.

[Black Maria]

Yes, it's a great jacket ,one of my favourites too . Shame it's rarity rating is on a par with rocking horse poo

[Dust Jacket Collector]

I thought I'd show these 2 versions of a rare Canadian novel by W. Redvers Dent called 'Show me Death'. It's a novel loosely based on the author's own experiences at the front. It tells of a Canadian young man in the 'Suicide Squad' operating Machine Guns under heavy bombardment. Some listings for the book suggest it was actually written by a Canadian poet called Raymond Knister. For once the presence of the jacket is important as the rear of the UK version carries a full biography of Mr. Dent rather putting that suggestion to flight.

The US edition from Harper Bros has one of the most striking designs I've seen on a jacket. The even rarer UK one from Constable is decidedly low key!

     

[Ghazala]

Thanks DJC.

[Broznitsky]

On 8/11/2016 at 01:20, Dust Jacket Collector said:

 W. Redvers Dent

     

There is no person of this name listed in the LAC database.  We do find 219164 Walter Raymond DENT.  There may be some porkies involved here . . .

[Dust Jacket Collector]

9 minutes ago, Broznitsky said:

There is no person of this name listed in the LAC database.  We do find 219164 Walter Raymond DENT.  There may be some porkies involved here . . .

You may be right. Here's the biography from the rear of the jacket.

[Broznitsky]

The biography tallies with 219164 Dent.  He appears to have lied about his age when enlisting.

[IPT]

 

 

Knister died in 1932 though?

 

Walter Gilbert Dent - http://www.cwgc.org/find-war-dead/casualty/232134/DENT, WALTER GILBERT

Edited 24 August , 2016 by IPT

[Dust Jacket Collector]

Thanks Broznitsky & IPT. We may be getting close to the truth. I think Knister is definitely out of the running anyway.

[David Filsell]

There really is something very special about the quality - the graphic design - of many book jackets produced between the wars and, sadly most of the artists are not named.

Edited 24 August , 2016 by David Filsell