New series of paperbacks?
 

You know, so many of the *best* of the 19th century and GA mysteries are in the public domain now, I wonder why there isn't a uniform series of inexpensive paperbacks of the great classics of the genre, a la Penguin Classics or the like? (There may be elsewhere, but not here in the States.) You wouldn't even have to pay for rights. If I were a publisher or had the capital I would do this myself. You know, titles like:

Poe, Selected Tales
Doyle, The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (and the rest)
Chesterton, The Innocence of Father Brown
Chesterton, The Wisdom of Father Brown
Bentley, Trent's Last Case
Zangwill, The Big Bow Mystery
Milne, The Red House Mystery
Christie, The Mysterious Affair at Styles

All of the above are out of copyright in the US. AND...if you were willing to pay for the rights, a great double-bill:

Berkeley, The Poisoned Chocolates Case & "The Avenging Chance" in one volume.

Wouldn't this make a great series?

EDIT: Obviously I shouldn't have left out The Moonstone.

Re: New series of paperbacks?
 

A lovely idea, although the people who might be most inclined to buy such are likely to already have them, n'est ce pas? THe only one of the above I don't have immediately to hand is the Christie, primarily because space considerations finally persuaded me to divest myself of a lot of noncollectable paperbacks some years ago.

I like the idea of the Berkeley novel and short story in one volume.

Other observation--one problem with issuance of non-copyrighted stuff is that publishers feel at incredible liberty to edit, alter, and rework things. You'd think that they'd be haunted by the ghosts of dead authors.

Re: New series of paperbacks?
 

These books are available for download at the Gutenberg project site. They are in text format and if you want to read them like a book, you could download ybook or any other book-simulation software from (www.hotfiles.com). I have some of these books, if anybody needs a copy....

By the way, other books in the genre are already in the public domain in Australia (such as the Van Dine Vances). I have them too.... :D

Re: New series of paperbacks?
 

Probably so, especially of course for the Sherlock Holmes stories, but for more casual mystery readers who haven't read (some of) these books because they are out of print (Zangwill, Milne, Chesterton) or because they don't know what the "classics" are, this might be a good way to establish a kind of basic canon, if you think that's worthwhile.

Brian

Re: New series of paperbacks?
 

The Poisoned Chocolates Case and The Avenging Chance were published together in one volume in 1979 by the University of California at San Diego in their Mystery Series.

Now for a shameless plug (since I co-wrote the introduction with Tony Medawar)…

A collection of Anthony Berkeley’s short stories featuring Roger Aheringham and Chief Inspector Moresby has been published by Crippen & Landru Publishers: THE AVENGING CHANCE AND OTHER MYSTERIES FROM ROGER SHERINGHAM’S CASEBOOK. It’s available from Crippen & Landru ($29 hardcover, $19 paperback) at:

http://www.crippenlandru.com/books.asp?ID=83

It includes the following stories:

1. The Avenging Chance (extended version, which previously appeared only in the limited edition “ROGER SHERINGHAM STORIES”)
2. The Perfect Alibi (the 1930 version of this appeared in The Armchair Detective but this is a different version, rewritten by Berkeley in 1953)
3. The Mystery of Horne’s Copse (a Sheringham novella rediscovered in 2000)
4. Unsound Mind (a Moresby story, rediscovered a few years ago by Tony Medawar)
5. White Butterfly
6. The Wrong Jar
7. Double Bluff (previously published only in THE ROGER SHERINGHAM STORIES)
8. “Mr. Bearstowe Says”

All of these feature Roger Sheringham except “Unsound Mind.” There are also a couple of introductions and a Roger Sheringham parody by Berkeley.

If anyone is interested, I’ve put a bibliography of Berkeley’s published writings on the Web at:

http://home.lagrange.edu/arobinson/coxbibliog.htm

I’ve tried to make this complete, so if anyone has any additions to it, please let me know! My e-mail address is arobinson@lagrange.edu.

Re: New series of paperbacks?
 

This is a great book, as are all of the Lost Classics so far. I haven't read the original version of this story, but the one in this collection may have the shortest denouement of any story I've ever read. At first I thought a page had inadvertantly been left out :D

Re: New series of paperbacks?
 

Ellery Queen scoffed at "White Butterfly" in the intro to "Avenging Chance" in 101 Years' Entertainment. Is it really that awful?

The book you edited sounds excellent, by the way, and I intend to buy it.

Re: New series of paperbacks?
 

"White Butterfly" isn't a great story, but I rather like it. Actually I've wondered whether Berkeley's comment referred to "White Butterfly." I think I saw a fuller uotation of Berkeley's letter to Ellery Queen somewhere, and if I recall correctly (maybe I don't) Berkeley didn't mention "White Butterfly" by name, he just said that there had been one other Roger Sheringham story which was of "a dismal futility that puts it out of court for further use" (or something like that). But in fact "White Butterfly" wasn't the only other short Sheringham story Berkeley had written at that time; he had also written "Perfect Alibi" and "The Mystery of Horne's Copse." I have wondered whether Berkeley might have been referring to one of these. ("The Mystery of Horne's Copse" is IMO unsuccessful as a fair-play detective story, though it has other merits--in fact a recent Monk episode used a similar idea.)

Re: New series of paperbacks?
 

Can anybody point me to a place on-line (or off-line even) where I could find a listing of all the titles in the U of C Mystery Library series? I own Green for Danger, and nowhere in the book does it provide a list of titles.

Re: New series of paperbacks?
 

Re: New series of paperbacks?
 

I tried to compile a list from the WorldCat database in my library, which lists all books in US libraries, but I can't guarantee this is a complete list for the series--it depends on whether the cataloguers who made the original records included the series title "The Mystery Library." As you can see below, most but not all of the catalog records had the numbers. Here's what I came up with. As you'll see, I can fill in your gap at #1 but not #11:

1. Arthur William Upfield, The New Shoe (1976)
2. John Dickson Carr, The Crooked Hinge (1976)
3. Mary Roberts Rinehart, The circular staircase / (1977)
4. Melville Davidson Post, The complete Uncle Abner (1977)
5. E.C. Bentley, Trent’s last case (1978)
6. Eric Ambler, A coffin for Dimitrios (1977)
7. Ellery Queen, the Tragedy of X (1978)
8. John Buchan, The thirty-nine steps (1978)

10. Joel Townsley Rogers, The red right hand (1978)

12. Anthony Berkeley, the poisoned chocolates case (1979)

No numbers given:

Christianna Brand, Green for Danger (1978)

Hillary Waugh et al., Last seen wearing (1978)

Elliot L. Gilbert, The world of mystery fiction: a guide (1978)

Hubin, Allen J. The bibliography of crime fiction, 1749-1975 :
listing of all mystery, detective, suspense, police, and gothic fiction in book form published in the English language / (1979)

My guess is that Last Seen Wearing is #11, judging from the 1978 date (though as you can see, #5 was published in 1978 and #6 in 1977; actually I found two records for The Tragedy of X, one listing it as #5 in the series with a publication date of 1977, but this is probably an error--only 3 libraries are listed for this record, and 370 for the one I give above). The last two books (Gilbert and Hubin) are non-fiction, so I don't know whether they were part of the numbered series. The catalog record doesn't give the number for Green for Danger, but you've supplied that.

I hope this is of some use.

Re: New series of paperbacks?
 

Hey, thanks a bunch!

Re: New series of paperbacks?
 

Ove two decades ago I bought what I thought was this collection (except it didn't come directly from Publishers, Inc. but from the distributors of an encyclopedia). Waugh's Last Seen Wearing wasn't one of them. Green for Danger was. I couldn't afford Hubin's book but it was also listed as a separate item. Aside from Gilbert's World of Mystery Fiction, another short story compilation was The Mystery Story (part of this collection) edited by John Ball. Otherwise all the books listed above are correct.

Re: New series of paperbacks?
 

Re: New series of paperbacks?
 

Oh, a correction: The Poisoned Chocolates Case was not in the series I bought. Sorry, for forgetting as the collection is in my old country (migrated to Canada in 96, all my books are still in the Philippines). The set purports to be the Mystery Library series as published by Publisher's Inc.