Initially I thought this particular topic of study was going
to be more difficult than it turned out to be. There are some anomalies (like
the Canadian printing of Dunsany’s
King
of Elfland’s Daughter that was distributed in England and in Canada, see
here, scroll down to the second scan), but such anomalies turned out to be the exceptions rather than the rule.
Basically, what seems to have happened is that as most of
the titles were printed (or in some cases, reprinted) in the U.S., there were
copies printed in Canada nearly simultaneously for the Canadian market. There
may have been some legal necessity for this to do with place of printing. The
U.S. and Canadian printings are virtually identical, save for the fact that the
line on the U.S. copyright page that reads “Printed in the United States” has
been removed and replaced with a line reading “Printed in Canada” (this line is
often in a different font, and sometimes in italics).
I show one example here, for The Water of the Wondrous Isles by William Morris. First is the U.S.
cover spread, and underneath that the Canadian one. Below the covers is the U.S. copyright page,
and finally the Canadian copyright page.
 |
| U.S. cover spread |
 |
| Canadian cover spread |
 |
| U.S. printing, copyright page |
 |
| Canadian printing, copyright page |
Thanks to Trevor Livelton and the long-time bookseller Grant
Thiessen (of BookIT Inc., formerly Pandora’s Books) I can say that the bulk of
the Ballantine Adult Fantasy series had their own Canadian printings. The following is a chronological list of the thirteen
titles for which I currently have no confirmation of Canadian printings, plus
one title with a Canadian printing associated with its U.S. Second printing. If
any reader of this blog has any of the below titles in Canadian printing and
can supply scans of the covers, title and copyright pages, I’ll be grateful.
Contact me at nodens100 at gmail dot com.
Pratt, Fletcher. The
Blue Star (US May 1969)
Morris, William. The
Wood Beyond the World (US July 1969) [Note: There was a
second US printing
in January 1974, and there is a confirmed Canadian
printing of the US second printing, with
appropriate price and ISBN.]
Cabell, James Branch. The
Silver Stallion (US August 1969)
Carter, Lin, ed. Dragons,
Elves, and Heroes (US October 1969)
Carter, Lin, ed. The
Young Magicians (US October 1969)
Bok, Hannes. The
Sorcerer's Ship (US December 1969)
MacDonald, George. Phantastes
(US April 1970)
Carter, Lin, ed. Golden
Cities, Far (October 1970)
Chesterton, G. K. The
Man Who Was Thursday (US July 1971)
Carter, Lin, ed. The
Spawn of Cthulhu (US October 1971)
Bramah, Ernest. Kai
Lung's Golden Hours (US April 1972)
Machen, Arthur. The
Three Impostors (US June 1972)
Bramah, Ernest. Kai Lung
Unrolls His Mat (US February 1974)
Dunsany, Lord. Over
the Hills and Far Away (US April 1974)
The possible reasons that there were no Canadian printings
of these titles seem to be come down to two different situations.
The first being for reasons of copyright.
Through at least the first half of the twentieth century it was common for
Canadian publishing rights to be partnered with United Kingdom (or
Commonwealth) rights.
By the 1960s this
was changing.
The second situation might
have something to do with the changes of ownership at Ballantine Books itself,
and its relationship with publishing partners.
The copyright situation is perhaps the more easily
discussed. Grant Thiessen, as a
bookseller in Canada in the 1970s, reports that the prevailing wisdom was that
the Chesterton and the Machen titles were never distributed in Canada. And neither were they distributed in the U.K,
where copyright then existed for the life of the author plus 50 years. Chesterton (who died in 1936) and Machen (who
died in 1947) were still in copyright in the U.K., while the copyright
situation in the U.S. was very different (based not on the author’s lifespan
but the work’s year of publication, and subsequent renewals), leaving both The Man Who Was Thursday (originally
published in 1908) and The Three
Impostors (originally published in 1895) in the public domain in the U.S.
The same situation is the case with the two books by Ernest Bramah (who died in
1942), Kai Lung’s Golden Hours
(originally published in 1922) and Kai
Lung Unrolls His Mat (originally published in 1928). It is worth noting
that neither of the Bramah books had U.K. editions in the series. That covers four
of the titles given above.
The remaining titles, or at least some of them, may have lacked
Canadian editions due to changes in ownership and methods of management at
Ballantine Books. The firm was founded
in 1952 by Ian and Betty Ballantine, but they sold it in October 1968 to
Intext, the International Textbook Company of Scranton, Pennsylvania, in a deal
by which Ian and Betty Ballantine remained in control. A number of the
preliminary books published by Ballantine after Tolkien in 1965 and before the
Adult Fantasy series proper began in May 1969, did have Canadian printings, but
there were no further Canadian printings by Ballantine after the sale in
October 1968, until they resumed printing operations in Canada sometime around
the Spring of 1970 (April 1970 is the date of the first known Canadian printing
of Cabell’s Figures of Earth). This
might explain why some five or six books from 1969 have not been seen in contemporary
Canadian printings. [For more on this, see the Appendix below.]
The 1974 Dunsany title Over
the Hills and Far Away was the final title of the series (published two
months, rather than the usual one month, after the previous book). The series was probably cancelled by that
time, and possibly a Canadian printing of the final title was nixed as well. The
last known Canadian printing of the series is of the “Second Printing: January,
1974” of The Wood Beyond the World by William Morris.
MacDonald’s Phantastes
and Carter’s The Spawn of Cthulhu
don’t fit with either of the proposed scenarios. Perhaps they had Canadian printings as yet
unconfirmed, or perhaps they had different reasons for not being printed in
Canada (e.g., Carter’s contract for The
Spawn of Cthulhu may not have allowed for foreign sales; the book in fact
did not have a U.K. edition).
Appendix:
Another way to look
at this is to consider all of the Ballantine Adult Fantasy series titles
published between April 1969 and June 1970, and consider what we know about
Canadian printings:
May 1969. The Blue Star, by Fletcher Pratt
June 1969. The King of Elfland's Daughter, by Lord Dunsany [Canadian printing,
for the U.K. as
well as Canada, dates from May 1971]
July 1969. The Wood Beyond the World, by William Morris [Known Canadian
printing associated with the U.S. Second
Printing of January 1974, which
has a
different price and ISBN
from the July 1969 printing.]
August 1969. The Silver Stallion, by James Branch Cabell
September 1969. Lilith, by George MacDonald [Known Canadian
printing
associated with the U.S.
Second Printing of September 1973, which
has a different price and ISBN from
the September 1969 printing.]
October 1969. Dragons, Elves, and Heroes, ed. by Lin Carter
October 1969. The Young Magicians, ed. by Lin Carter
November 1969. Figures of Earth, by James Branch Cabell [A
later U.S. printing
gives the date of
April, 1970, for the first Canadian printing, which is five
months after the first U.S. printing. Thus April 1970 is the first attested
date
for any Canadian printing.]
December 1969. The Sorcerer's Ship, by Hannes Bok
January 1970. Land of Unreason, by Fletcher Pratt and L.
Sprague de Camp
[Canadian printing attested but undated.]
February 1970. The High Place, by James Branch Cabell [Canadian printing
attested but undated.]
March 1970. Lud-in-the-Mist, by Hope Mirrlees [Canadian
printing attested
but undated.]
March 1970. At the Edge of the World, by Lord Dunsany [Canadian
printing
attested but undated.]
April 1970. Phantastes, by George MacDonald
May 1970. The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath, by H. P.
Lovecraft
[Canadian printing attested but undated.]
June 1970. Zothique, by Clark Ashton Smith [Canadian printing attested but
undated.]
The first is an expanded collection of my own Late Reviews, from Wormwood and other sources, plus newly written ones.
