Canadian Printings and the Ballantine Adult Fantasy Series

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.]