Ephemeral Assays: Pulp Frisson

There are many excellent print and internet resources on pulp magazines, and I wont rehash the essential features here, but just take a look at http://thepulp.net sometime if you want a good crash course in all things pulp. Ill use this space instead to relate some personal stories about the genre.

I kind of liked staying at Grandma Elizabeths in a small upstate New York town hard by the side of the Upper Delaware River. It was a landmark house, centrally located at the bottom of a slight incline leading up to Main Street, well shaded with a wide turnaround in front for horses, though by then the old stone hitching post was just ornamental. It was filled with brooding antiques, however, particularly Victorian furniture and cut crystal, and we always felt in danger of breaking things. Even years later, when the contents were sold in an onsite auction our branch of the family did not get enough advance notice on, I had no remorse whatsoever. Looking back now, I sorely wish I could have attended for the family heirlooms and the bargains, as this was all pre-Antiques Roadshow. Years later some jackass installed a wood stove where it didn't belong and the whole thing burned down.

Anyway, old pulps my Dad and his three brothers collected back in their youth were lined up along a second floor landing in a pile two deep, and about four feet high by twenty feet long. He did manage to score about fifty of those before the auction, where the whole massive pile probably went for well under $100, and I remember him trying to market them back in the 1980s by laboriously sending lists to collectors and dealers advertising for same in the backs of magazines. Invariably, they just wanted one or two famous cover artists like N. C. Wyeth, and they only wanted to pay $5 or so each. I have one left from the original horde, with our family name in pencil on the front cover as that is how they were held at the country store.

In the intervening years I would see these puffy and nicely musty missing links between magazines and comic books at auction, usually in poor condition due to their cheap manufacture, and I followed the prime pulp market from afar, as prices and interest went through the roof. I received a very fortuitous though expensive phone call not long ago from a family that wanted to clear out two full van loads of pulps, magazines, and newspaper comic sections, primarily from the 1920s through the 1950s, and this opened a rare and thrilling door into the lost world of pulpdom which I had missed all those years before.

In this case, the boy whose name was penciled on many of these was lying in a hospital bed at an angle in the middle of the living room, attended there by various machines and visiting doctors and nurses, well toward the end of his long road. He fixed one rheumy eye on me somewhat balefully, as in a Poe story, as I whisked out load after load on a very hot summer day. I could not tell if he was taking note of this, or was long past such earthly concerns, but I enjoyed my visits with this family, which drove a hard but fair bargain.

For a paper and periodical freak, it was great fun cracking open these dirty old cardboard boxes out on my gravel driveway work tables and sorting the hundreds of pulps by title and year. While I had been hoping for top of the food chain titles like The Shadow, I was well pleased with what emerged anyway, and they were all basically new to me. Many of them were in fairly long runs, which is the best way to understand any periodical. They were in good to very good condition with the covers attached, though edgewear on old pulps is almost inevitable, as the covers overshot the text block. Some even showed up in duplicate and triplicate for some reason. A large portion of the lot (which must have been his favorites) was composed of Ace-High Magazine, largely western and pretty collectible, and Short Stories, which is less sought-after but interesting. Every Short Stories cover had to have a large red orb . . . usually the sun but sometimes a gigantic crystal ball or something along those lines. Dozens of people associated with this pulp from artists to ad men must have discussed and dealt with that red orb branding mandate, but does a scrap of that publishing history survive?

Research quickly proved that the monetary value was in the titles themselves, the cover artist or art, prominent contributors such as Edgar Rice Burroughs, and, as always, these factors were all leavened by condition. Some of the common titles with boring covers died on eBay, but most went for an average of $25 or so, with some of the coolest detective examples up around $100. I quickly learned who the core group of pulp buyers were at that time, their bidding habits, etc. I accommodated them by running up long tallies, in order to save on shipping and bookkeeping efforts. Once I sent collecting rivals the wrong issues, but instead of swapping they just kept them, as the price was about the same and they were just upgrades anyway. All the lesser examples were consigned to paper auctions, and eventually it was over.

I saved the images though, and some are presented here. Once again, they are not the most spectacular examples ever published, but by the same token their covers may be more unfamiliar. Pulps had only a few moments to sell themselves, like comic books did years later when people like my other Grandmother tapped her foot while we quickly decided how to spend our small change. The best covers were lurid, colorful, and full of the promise of action, adventure, and mysteryproviding an almost pleasurable sensation of fright. Youngsters were transfixed by images of the Wild West, the Far East, the steamy south, the frozen north, inner cities, and outer space, not to mention beautiful women who seemed to be in peril or bondage more often than not. Though pulps had their origins at the turn of that century with the publication of Argosy, many consider the 1920s and 30s the true zenith of the art form.

When I hit the boxes from the 1940s, when paper rationing and sanitized patriotic themes held sway, I felt a bit like boys such as my Dad must have back then when the thrills of childhood and promise of adventure were replaced by drab uniformity and duty. Some of the pulp titles sputtered through the late 1940s, but the world was a much smaller place after WW II, and TV dealt the fatal blow. The exotic mysteries and adventures of pulp readers receded from the mind and back into the earth, save for those happy cases where they were physically preserved for future generations to enjoy.

Shawn Purcell operates Balopticon Books & Ephemera and can be contacted at http://www.balopticon.com.

#ephemera

Ephemeral Assays: Genealogical Ephemera

Many in the book and paper trade have had occasion to ponder early family history items that come our way. Family Bibles, journals, letters, and images are fairly common at auctions and estate sales. We have all wondered if this material is worth anything in general, and some of us would even like to find interested descendants in particular. When profit and genealogy intersect, that’s even better.

I’ve been working with amateur and professional genealogists for many years now. They tend to be patient and persistent, plowing through early vital records and making pilgrimages along the ancestor trail, which typically runs from places like Connecticut where younger sons felt stifled, through gateway states like New York, and on to good farmlands in Ohio and other parts west. Experienced researchers generally find all the big shiny nuggets early on, and are simply panning for gold dust by now. Some wear tee shirts with sayings like, “My ancestors must have been part of a witness protection program.” When seasoned family researchers stumble upon rich, unexpected finds, they are sublimely delighted.

How to unite widely scattered family history objects and those who would covet them? More often than not, it’s a lost cause. Large charcoal portraits and stern photos of ancient couples are seldom identified by surname. The auctioneer makes a joke about buying yourself some instant relatives, the pair gets knocked down for $20.00, and the winner finally lays them to rest as the gilt frames are busted out for resale. Old country store journals from the mid-1800s which report what dozens of townspeople bought every week were pasted over with Victorian cutouts fifty years later and are rarely restored a century after that. Dealers will go through large boxes of images looking for a few handsome figures before discarding the rest. A common Lincoln CDV or something out of the ordinary like a Saint Bernard standing on a tavern table is worth more than dozens of nondescript head shots. I’ve known several in the trade who chuck any ephemera relating to family history as a matter of policy. No market for it, they tell me. Not worth the effort. When you perform extended research for a lousy extra ten bucks, or are altogether rebuffed by contemporary relatives who accuse you of hucksterism, thick skins result. If this kind of marginal field work does not appeal to you, read no further. No harm, no foul. Just don’t throw this stuff out though, okay?

For anything from single images to large hoards of family lore, the more unique the name in question, the better your chances. John Smith or Michael Sullivan from early 1900s New York City is probably not worth your time. If you can’t sell that piece on its own non-genealogical merits, gently return it to the stream and hope it finds its way back home some day. Cornelius Van Slyke from 1700s Schenectady County, on the other hand, will be fairly easy to place. A retired math teacher turned genealogist told me that in math you need two points to describe a line, but in genealogy you need three…a name, a time, and a place. Unique names improve the efficacy of that equation.

To start at the top of the genealogy food chain, in terms of what booksellers come across most often, old family Bibles can be mother lodes of information. Examples from the 1800s are typically leather bound, wonderfully illustrated, and run to 1,000 pages or so. Find the hidden cache contained in the family register pages between the Old Testament and the New Testament.

If the recipients did their job, it will record marriages, births, and deaths in several nice hands as it was passed from generation to generation. Sometimes these notations overflow onto any available blank pages. I’ve been battling with a couple of local Bible collectors at auction for years now. I argue that most Bibles say pretty much the same thing, so why lock up that important family history for another thirty years just to gain a new imprint?

Like all good ephemera, the genealogical variety comes in a myriad of forms. We are only scratching the surface in this consideration. Journals, diaries, documents, scrapbooks, billheads, postcards, captioned photo albums, and even the movies Grandpa shot can tell a lot about those who came before, though not always. What a disappointment it is to find a daily diary that does little more than record the weather or complain about ailments. The best journal I ever had contained more family history tidbits and printed ephemera than would ever be admitted into a rigid Bible. It even included full page dress and vest fabric samples from half a dozen weddings going back to the 1700s, and several locks of young hair in all colors. DNA! One of my neighbors hosts a trendy scrapbooking club where you buy all the products through her, and they were astounded at this early example of their craft. I worked hard to find the right descendants for this one. When it comes to old letters in their original envelopes, the pertinent information is more inherent and you often stand a good chance of determining where to market them. Seemingly valueless pieces like little illustrated business cards can still ring the register all these years later if you promote them properly. Scarce privately printed genealogies may benefit from some marketing, but simply pricing them a bit below market value and listing them in your catalog is usually good enough. Stellar items like graphic Civil War diaries generally gravitate toward the specialist collector with deep pockets, regardless of family ties.

Next in the cavalcade of common family history treasures comes images. Daguerreotypes, tintypes, cabinet cards, cartes de visite, and snapshots, to name a few. Early cased images sometimes contain a note or lock of hair behind the glass. You can carefully lift it out with a small suction cup to check. It is very common for cabinet cards-rectangular commercial studio photos mounted on thick stock-to carry name and date inscriptions on the reverse.

If the small home town or city of the studio is printed on the front, you have your three points. Untethered images are perhaps the most bittersweet example of lost family history. Current and future family researchers would swoon over such pictures that are worth a thousand words. I’d love to find one of Martin Purcell, the first over from Ireland in the 1840s, as no image is known to exist. There’s probably about a 3% chance one is floating around somewhere, but I would never stumble on this myself. It would have to be brought to my attention somehow, and I would pay dearly for the effort.

Ten years ago, before the internet was widely up and running, I came across a large box of material which was obviously the work of an early genealogist. It all had to do with the Brooks family and ten or so related lines, including one all the way back to William Bradford, who came over on the Mayflower and served as the second governor of Massachusetts. The first compiler was trying to join the Daughters of the American Revolution and several other blue blood societies around the turn of the century. Her daughter took up the cause right into the 1930s. These applications require careful documentation. All their notes, charts, deeds, wills, newspaper obituaries, church, military, court and census records, and correspondence with distant relatives and researchers was included. There were charming New England research trip postcards which detailed how the owners of ancestral homes asked why they were taking photos and then invited them to stay when they discovered who they were, or how museum curators gave them access to closed parts of the collections relating to their lines. Among the treasures in this box was a well executed silhouette portrait of husband and wife probably from the early 1800s or so, which would exceed the wildest expectations of most family researchers. This mother and daughter team would surely have been dismayed to learn that all their hard work ended up in boxes on the dusty floor of an auction hall. It was much easier to market/repatriate this material in 2005 than it would have been in 1995 when I found it, and that gets us back to the How.

Keeping in mind that we must put business before philanthropy and librarianship, I try to flip such items over pretty quickly these days, without a lot of time-consuming marketing. EBay is one of the best venues for this. Rather than seeking out and approaching individuals with hat in hand and arbitrary price in mind, let the huge open marketplace decide. The eBay category for genealogy is rather convoluted (Everything Else/Genealogy, which is not far from Everything Else/Weird Stuff). Very few people search large eBay categories any more, as there are too many listings and too much dreck, so it’s just as effective to list items under Photographic Images or whatever rather than worrying about the best category. The key words in your 55 character title are how interested parties can find your item. Include the family name, variant spellings where applicable, an indication that the item is old (either a date if known or “early”), a town or city, and both forms of the state (e.g., Iowa IA) when possible. There are lots of new duplicate items being hawked to family researchers these days, like CDs full of stuff they have already, and lots of reproductions of historic photos, so make sure you note down in the description field that your offering is original. This field is searchable for live auctions, by the way, though many shoppers are not aware of this option. Give the dimensions, number of pages, and any other details. Needless to say, a good scan or digital picture is paramount as well. I run ten day auctions, which gives people more time to find things. Dedicated researchers check eBay all the time, but not everyone is so diligent.

Pinning all your hopes on eBay eyeballs would prove somewhat unproductive, so you need to do a little outreach. This is where Cyndi’s List comes in handy. Although the name does not sound all that promising, Cyndi’s List has become the premier destination for free online genealogical research. It currently provides nearly 250,000 links. Go to the homepage at http://www.cyndislist.com, pull down to the Surnames, Family Associations & Family Newsletters section, and click on the appropriate letter. When it comes to family associations, there is wide variety. Most are interactive email forums that are free to subscribe to and participate in. Some of these lists are incredibly active, while others are completely moribund. Some embrace variant spellings and others shy away from them. There can be more than one group for a given surname, usually split along lines of primary place of origin or settlement. Family researchers follow the subscription directions, delve into their archives, and often listen in for a few weeks before politely posting a query. If you don’t find the name in question in this Surname list, pull down to the very bottom of the page and you will find mailing list links to the vast Genealogy Resources on the Internet site, or you can access these directly through http://www.rootsweb.com. I formerly used the Directory of Family Associations for contact information, but the vast capabilities of the internet have greatly eclipsed such print resources.

It is taboo to join such a list for the express purpose of marketing your items. One could debate whether this constitutes true spamming until the cows come home, but most groups take exception, so don’t go there. The better approach is to contact list administrators directly and ask for their assistance. Once your eBay auction is live, click on “Email to a Friend.” Fill in the recipient’s email address, tailor your message, and fire away. They see the whole auction, complete with pictures, and can bid right from there. My message usually reads something like, “I came across this early (whatever) some time ago at an auction. I’ve just listed it on eBay, the online auction service, and thought that the (whatever) family list might be interested in copying the images and information or bidding on it. As list administrator, please consider posting a notice about it. Thank you.” The response is usually favorable. Often they will alert their members to this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, either privately or through the list. More than once, list members have pooled their resources to win the item in question. Even if list administrators keep the notice to themselves in order to avoid competition, at least you have one more interested party on board. On rare occasions, list administrators get crabby when contacted. Such contact is not a violation of list rules, however, and again I don’t consider this classic spamming. As my Grandmother used to say, “Who died and left you boss?,” and chances are some of that grumpy gatekeeper’s list members would pose the same question if they knew what was going on. After all, what better place is there to alert family researchers about extremely unique and potentially important pieces of their past?

The Cyndi’s List part of the various Surname pages usually gives direct email addresses. The lower Genealogy Resources on the Internet lists have uniform procedures for subscribing. Just substitute “admin” for the mail or digest mode options provided, as in smith-admin@rootsweb.com, and you have a valid list administrator’s email address. As an aside, one can employ the same technique with historical items pertaining to a particular town or city. Email the same eBay notice to the proper town historian or local historical society. These entities are increasingly easy to find on the web.

In checking the Cyndi’s List surname resources just now in the preparation of this article, I was surprised to see a link dedicated to the very 1729 Van Slyke Bible I recall selling several years ago. This was a massive book with wooden boards covered in leather and adorned with ornamental brass fittings. I paid a pretty penny for this Bible, to the amusement of the auction hall regulars, but it sold for over $1,000.00. Transactions like that make up for all the extra effort and modest returns more often associated with genealogical marketing. The URL ishttp://olivetreegenealogy.com/nn/surnames/vslyke_Bible.shtml. “The following pictures are from the Van Slyke Bible that was recently auctioned off on e-Bay. The successful bidder phoned me and after a lengthy chat, he drove up from the States to visit me here in Northern Ontario. What a great time we had! Of course he brought the Bible with him and we eagerly went through it page by page. Beautiful engravings (100 or more) fill its pages, and you can easily imagine how impressive it must have been for the Van Slyke family to gather around.” Reading on further, the present caretakers have made some reasonable assumptions about the entries in and journey of this Bible, and they have provided lots of extra information from other sources. In conclusion, I’m gratified, the descendants are delighted, and we can assume that the old Van Slykes would be most pleased that this long lost keepsake is now back in the family.

Shawn Purcell is the principle of Balopticon Books & Ephemera in Delmar NY, online at www.balopticon.com, and may be e-mailed atmail@balopticon.com” Copyright 2004 Shawn Purcell

#ephemera

Ephemeral Assays – Jane Jackets

Mary C. Jane, children’s author. I certainly never heard of her before. Ms. Jane is a little difficult to Google up because the name is so common, but eventually we find the trail in a Maine Writers Index. “Mary Childs Jane (18 September 1909 – 26 July 1991). Children’s mystery writer Mary Childs Jane was born in Needham, Massachusetts, and graduated from Bridgewater State Teachers College (Mass.) in 1931. Before her marriage to William Jane in 1937, w[ith] whom she had two sons, she taught in Pippapon, Kentucky (1931-1932), Chester, Massachusetts (1932-1935), and Needham, Massachusetts (1935-1937). She was a long-time resident of Newcastle, Maine. Jane’s specialty was writing mysteries for middle school age children. She knew, from her teaching experience, that many reluctant readers can be lead to reading with mysteries.”

And then there’s this from the rear panel of a Jane jacket. “To teach, to write, and to have a family of her own-these are cherished dreams come true for Mary C. Jane. This is why we believe she is particularly well qualified to write children’s books, and we are proud to publish her mystery stories. A graduate of Bridgewater State Teachers’ College in Massachusetts, Mrs. Jane began her teaching career at the Caney Creek Community Center in Kentucky. After several years in Massachusetts schools she married and moved to Newcastle, Maine, where she is the fifth generation of her family to live in the same neighborhood. Here she became an enthusiastic member of creative writing groups and for several years was president of the Poetry Fellowship of Maine. Her feature stories and poetry have appeared in many journals and newspapers, among them the Lewiston Journal, the Portland Sunday Telegram and the Christian Science Monitor. Reading aloud to her two sons sparked an interest in children’s literature that was fanned later by her experiences working with fifth and sixth graders when she returned to teaching.”

Two years ago I came upon a pile of these at a country auction. Various full tables of books around the hall were going for one money each, and this particular lot was way over near the office and out of view. Snagging it required careful previewing and absolute attention to the auctioneer, as evidenced by the general confusion of the audience by the time the hammer fell. That haul included fifteen out of sixteen available Janes, lacking only her premier effortMystery in Old Quebec. They are all first editions, in dustjackets, in very good condition, and signed and inscribed by the author to her brother-in-law Donald! I found some other Donald Jane stuff that day, such as a photo of him lying languidly on top of a baby grand piano looking a bit like Cole Porter, and lots of theatrical materials, so we can perhaps assume that the books came from his unclaimed estate.

I knew this was a great find, and after some research priced them at an average of $325.00, which is actually a bit low in today’s market all things considered. Although Mary C. Jane works are quite rare in this state, I don’t believe the author is all that collectible, and I was hoping they would all go to one appreciative buyer. There was a damaged copy of her penultimate, The Rocking-Chair Ghost from 1969, that I sent up as a trial balloon on eBay, but it was quickly deflated there, so I resolved to market the rest in a more traditional manner, where they sat for two years with only one nibble. I am moved to document the collection now, however, because a savvy buyer has come forward to claim the prize. She grew up in Maine and was given many of the early volumes by her grandmother, who claimed Mary Jane as a distant relative. She came back from college to find them all gone. After some pleasant negotiations we arrived at a discount price of nearly 25% off for the entire lot.

-The Ghost Rock Mystery (1956). A small blurb over the front inside flap title and description reads, “Weird hoofbeats and sinister visitors disturb a Maine vacation.” The inscription reads, “For Brother Don, with love from Mary.” Lippincott letterhead stationary pencil dated 9/19/1956 is laid in. “The exciting pattern set by Mary C. Jane in her first book is carried on in this new action-packed thriller for young readers.” Two paragraphs of plot line follow. “Mrs. Jane has further justified the interest she aroused with her excellent first story, ‘Mystery in Old Quebec.’ THE GHOST ROCK MYSTERY is available at your local bookstores, and the price is $2.25.” The rear inside flap promotes Mystery in Old Quebec. “A mongrel pup helps two children unmask a clever deception.” The dedication reads, “To my favorite Vermonters Dorothy Canfield Fisher and Jessie Wheeler Freeman.”

-Mystery at Shadow Pond (1958). “Once more the air is alive with suspense in MYSTERY AT SHADOW POND.” That blurbette doesn’t tell us anything, so we’ll continue down the front inside flap. “When Neale and Margie Lawson heard that their father would have to sell his shore land and their beloved horse, Firefly, they were miserable. They could find no way to help him until a strange red car, a lost cat, and the odd behavior of an eccentric old man drew them into a mystery involving the lost letters of a famous New England artist. The Lawsons and their friend Rupert Reed, son of the Ranger at the camp across the lake, were plunged into a bewildering tangle of strange doings. Neale thought that his robot-burglar alarm might help to solve the mystery, and Margie was sure that her grandfather’s books held the key to the problem. Both children were right, but it took two discoveries-one in a cave on the mountain and one in the middle of Shadow Pond-to set things straight.” “With love to Don from Mary.” The price has crept up a quarter to $2.50. This one still has its clipping, from the “For Young People” column of the 6/28/1958 Saturday Review, but it’s more of a blurb rehash announcement than a review, though it does offer one concluding opinion. “The insatiable young readers of mystery stories will welcome this title.” The dedication reads, “To my sisters and brothers Nell, Margaret, Charlie, and Ken.”

-Mystery Back of the Mountain (1960). “Two young detectives track down the mystery of their summer house.” “With love to Don from Mary.” The first four include a rather dowdy head shot photo of the author on the rear panel over her brief bio. They all used “Introducing Mary C. Jane” in large letters. This one drops “Introducing.” Looks like she has finally arrived. The dedication reads, “To my dear friend, Florence Sturges.”

-Mystery at Dead End Farm (1961). “An ancient feud, an Indian plot and a lost silver mine figure in the MYSTERY AT DEAD END FARM.” Same inscription as last year. These all smell great by the way, at least to me. Slightly musty like they’re thawing out a bit in a northeast cabin once the fire gets going. Just didn’t feel like doing a dedication this time around, Mary? You’ll wish you had later when you have to jam a whole bunch in.

-Mystery Behind Dark Windows (1962). “A deserted mill in New England conceals a MYSTERY BEHIND DARK WINDOWS.” Same inscription. This is the only second printing of the bunch, with an ugly silver “longlife binding” sticker defacing the jacket. It is also the only fully price-clipped copy. The bio retreats to the inside rear flap where the promo for the previous title used to appear, the rear panel lists all the titles, and the photo is dropped altogether. Small, simple, signed, white, gold and silver illustrated Christmas card laid in with an aerial view of two houses with snowy fields for back yards. The dedication reads, “To David Walker, next author in the family.”

-Mystery in Longfellow Square (1964). “A boy and dog take a dangerous chance to solve the MYSTERY IN LONGFELLOW SQUARE.” Same inscription, updated. $2.95 already. Set in Portland, Maine. The boards vary throughout the series. One color with stamped letters early on, colored paper over a cloth binding with stamped decoration, etc. This one sports a stormy visage repeat of the jacket theme on red-orange boards with black spine lettering.

-Indian Island Mystery (1965). They dropped the little blurbette at the top of the inside cover altogether! Has to do with Tim Neptune, star Maine Native American athlete and class valedictorian, who disappears at the same time a valuable bear’s-tooth necklace vanishes from an antiques shop. The author’s photo has gone missing again too. “With love to Don from Mary.” The first name basis signed inscriptions are always on the first free endpaper or half-title page, but this one includes an additional full signature on the title page. The dedication reads, “To the boys and girls of Indian Island, especially my first friend, Howard Mitchell, and to their teacher, Sister Mary Laura, with warm regard.”

-The Dark Tower Mystery (1966). Old Mrs. Parmenter had planned on making her mountaintop, High Blue, into a wildlife refuge in memory of her late husband. Outsiders would put a commercial park there instead. The old tower bell rings out mysteriously, and then there’s the ghost of beautiful Irene who died on this spot long ago. The kids unearth a strange secret that leads to the solution of a fascinating puzzle. “With love to Don from Mary. Too bad you’re not the age you were when I first knew you, as you could really enjoy this. The dark tower is the one on Mt. Bathe, in Camden-there’s a road up there now.” A new and slightly unflattering photo appears over the rear inside flap bio. “Horrible picture” next to this in her handwriting.

-Mystery of the Red Carnations (1968). Prue Tenney was bummed out on Sunday night. All of her friends had either caused or found an exciting adventure to write about for class over the weekend. Then she remembered that an unknown young man had been mysteriously shot eight years back, and somebody placed red carnations at the grave site on every anniversary of the unsolved murder. I would almost read this just to hear her explain why the police didn’t think to stake out this cemetery. The final line of the inside front flap blurb is a little odd. “While her characters are confronted with a hidden gun, a strange woman prowling around an empty house, and a suspicious neighbor, these details fit plausibly into the everyday world of a small New England town.” And we learn from the inside rear flap under the usual boilerplate bio that, “for the first time, she has put herself in the story-as the teacher.” Was Mary C. Jane losing her footing? Was Lippincott getting cold feet? “With love to Donald from Mary. Christmas 1968. This one you’ll like-I think.” The dedication reads, “To the J. B. Lippincott Company on its 175th anniversary, to all my friends, past and present, in their children’s book department, to artist Ray Abel, and especially to the memory of Ollie Talbot, Lippincott’s New England sales representative, who kindly gave me the true story of XYZ on which this mystery is based.”

That’s it, as far as I can tell, for the Lippincott Janes. My guess is that the early years were the happiest. Imagine her thrill at seeing these dustjackets for the first time as they came from the publisher, of passing the new books out to friends and family, and of seeing them all stacked up in stores. It probably became a chore toward the end, and it was getting harder to reconcile innocent juvenile mysteries with the shock value of late 1960s culture. Mary C. Jane did live another 21 years, into her eighties, passing away in 1991. She must have had many happy memories of her writing days. The last passage in her final mystery reads as follows. “I guess you can get to feel on top of the world in lots of different places,” Amy said. “But it sure would be hard to beat this!”

Shawn Purcell is the principle of Balopticon Books & Ephemera in Delmar NY, online at http://www.balopticon.com, and may be e-mailed atmail@balopticon.com Copyright © 2004 Shawn Purcell

#ephemera