In 1942, barely four years after the birth of the modern paperback, the Dell Publishing Co. introduced its first series of softcover mysteries, Westerns and romances. And from the beginning, Dell books were different.
The trademark itself was more than a little unsettling. This was no Pocket Books smiling kangaroo, but rather a classic image of voyeurism: a human eye staring through a keyhole. The covers often featured surrealistic, airbrushed images, a marked contrast to the usual bigger-than-life curvaceous dame. On the back cover, intead of a teaser about the contents, was a detailed map delineating the landscape of the book`s action-whether it was an apartment or an entire continent.
Today, Dell mapbacks are just one of the lines of vintage paperbacks from the 1940s and `50s that have attracted ”a small cult of collectors,” says Chris Rohe, of Paul Rohe & Sons, Booksellers, 3178 N. Clark St. Rohe, whose store stocks a lot of mapbacks, thinks the collecting cult is growing, with paperbacks becoming as valuable as another kind of once-disposable literature, the comic book.
”It has a smell to it like comic books,” agrees T.B. Martin of Shake, Rattle & Read, 4812 N. Broadway, which also carries many vintage paperback mysteries and Westerns. Titles that originally sold for 25 cents or even a dime now go for $10 to $20, and a few have reached $150.
In fact, the booksellers talk about the Dell mapbacks with a kind of fond respect because the Dell books represent some of the most imaginative graphic design ever employed in publishing.
”They were one of the prime paperback lines,” says Kenny Corrigan, buyer for Booksellers Row, 2445 N. Lincoln Ave. ”They epitomized everything good about pulp.” –
