What Was American Paperback Fantasy Before 1977, and How Much of It Was Good?

[dask]

Was this Kuttner book, The Dark World, basically sword-and-sorcery, or something else? This looks like something from no earlier than 1965.
View attachment 85190

Read it but don’t remember anything about it. Big help, I know.
Copyright page says 1946, Better Publications.

 

[Extollager]

Ace reprinted Le Guin's fine fantasy A Wizard of Earthsea in its Science Fiction (!) Specials in 1970, according to what I saw. But the Ballantine reprint series was well under way, and it was getting MUCH easier to get fantasy in mass market paperbacks.

 

[Extollager]

"SLAVES OF SLEEP is a magic carpet into adventure, romance, fantasy, and dazzling color. It rates a place on your shelves next to the works of Tolkien, Burroughs, and Robert E. Howard." So said the blurb of a Lancer paperback. I shrink away from things by L. Ron Hubbard, but perhaps this book should be mentioned as a 1960s fantasy paperback.

Pre-1970 Paperbacks with Comparisons to Tolkien

**updated entry** Thanks in particular to Dale Nelson, and a few others who emailed me, I can now post a follow-up on what books published...

tolkienandfantasy.blogspot.com

 

[Extollager]

The 1964 Eerdmans trade paperback of MacDonald’s Phantastes and Lilith in one volume was a great edition. But it wouldn’t have been widely distributed.

 

[hitmouse]

How about Mark Twain’s A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court?

 

[Extollager]

A 1964 Airmont Classic!

 

[BAYLOR]

A 1964 Airmont Classic!

A good Airmont cover.

 

[hitmouse]

Was Prince Valiant ever a paperback?

 

[Toby Frost]

The Weirdstone cover makes me realise that a lot of these are British and a lot aren't riffing off Tolkien, although they may have been republished in his wake. How about Steinbeck's Acts of King Arthur?

 

[BAYLOR]

The Weirdstone cover makes me realise that a lot of these are British and a lot aren't riffing off Tolkien, although they may have been republished in his wake. How about Steinbeck's Acts of King Arthur?

Given Steinbeck's previous books, this one is a bit of a surprise .

 

[TWErvin2]

The Broken Sword by Poul Anderson.

I know, the early 1980s cover, but originally released in the mid 1950s.

I know the early 1980s

 

[BAYLOR]

The Broken Sword by Poul Anderson.
View attachment 85250

I know, the early 1980s cover, but originally released in the mid 1950s.

I know the early 1980s

A first rate fantasy classic !

 

[tinkerdan]

...interesting website

Popular 1900s, 10s and 20s Fantasy Novels

At beginning of the 20th Century, books with fantasy elements – magic, invented worlds, supernatural beings – weren’t as mainstream as they would later become (and were often described as pu…

thoughtsonfantasy.com

 

[Extollager]

The Broken Sword by Poul Anderson.
View attachment 85250

I know, the early 1980s cover, but originally released in the mid 1950s.

I know the early 1980s

The thread is focused on books available in American paperbacks before 1977, and this one by Anderson did appear in softcover format during that time, in a Ballantine Adult Fantasy edition, January 1971:

 

[hitmouse]

An interesting list here, some of which we are missing, notably Michael Moorcock and Thomas Burnet Swann, and some others that are a debatable fit.

 

[hitmouse]

Another notable author who I think is not mentioned yet is Edgar Rice Burroughs. The Mars and Venus books are arguably SF, but many of the Tarzan novels contain lost civilisations, dinosaurs, hollow earth, and iirc, being shrunk to a tiny size.

 

[williamjm]

What about the Chronicles of Narnia?

 

[Extollager]

What about the Chronicles of Narnia?

Not in American paperbacks till about 1970, they were welcome when they did appear, though, unfortunately, unlike the British paperbacks (Puffins), the American pbs featured redrawn versions of Pauline Baynes’s wonderful illustrations.

 

[Extollager]

I thought about American paperbacks likely to be available in 1967. I probably began to read JRRT in 1966, but certainly was acquainted with him early in 1967.

OK, I thought: if I were a Tolkien devotee and wanted more high-quality fantasy in paperback, what might I be able to get hold of in that year, without having access to big bookstores staffed by knowledgeable bibliophiles, without getting useful advice from teachers or librarians, but basically by educating myself, by looking at spinner racks in drug stores, food markets, and stationery stores, and at the shelves in thrift stores. What could I find that I would think deserved a place on the same shelf as The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings, and The Tolkien Reader? I decided on these:

C. S. Lewis’s cosmic trilogy, the single-volume edition of George MacDonald’s Phantastes and Lilith, Haggard’s She, Eddison’s Worm Ouroboros, and Alan Garner’s Weirdstone

The MacDonald volume was a trade paperback, so I might have to be lucky to get that; it wasn't likely to show up in drug stores, etc., and the publisher, Eerdmans, was not widely distributed. The Lewis paperbacks were issued by Macmillan, and though they were mass market size, were made with better paper than mass market softcovers typically were. I don't know if they were likely to show up in the typical paperback outlets. The rest of those books were all available in ordinary mass market softcovers in 1967; the Haggard, Eddison, and Garner would have had the most widespread distribution.

There was quite a bit of sword and sorcery coming into paperback by then, but I don't think those deserve shelf space with Tolkien. I have also indulged my personal evaluation and not included some non-S&S fantasy that was available in mass market paperbacks, and that many people might feel were worthy of a place with Tolkien, such as T. H. White's The Once and Future King and Austin Tappan Wright's utopian fantasy Islandia, which I have never read. Some might also argue for John Myers Myers's Silverlock, which, again, I haven't read.

How about you? What would you choose for a shelf of fantasy books if you were in 1967 and had $10 to spend?

 

[Extollager]

Was Prince Valiant ever a paperback?

Fantagraphics published many volumes, but these were in the 1990s or later. Unfortunately the color reprints have lips in red, which looks particularly weird in drawings of male characters. Black and white reproduction would have been much nicer.