E.R. Eddison in the Ballantine and Pan/Ballantine Editions

[Updated 8/4/18]  The history of Ballantine Books publishing the works of E.R. Eddison (1882-1945) is rather complicated, especially as one delves into the Pan/Ballantine editions and Canadian printings.  It involves only four books: The Worm Ouroboros (originally published in 1922), followed by the three volumes of Zimiamvia, Mistress of Mistresses (1935), A Fish Dinner in Memison (1941), and The Mezentian Gate (1958). The Ballantine Books editions of Eddison’s four novels came out in the U.S. between 1967 and 1969. Interestingly, the first edition of A Fish Dinner in Memison had been published only in the U.S., so the Pan/Ballantine edition of 1972 is the first edition of the book published in the U.K. Conversely, The Mezentian Gate, originally published only in the U.K., had its first American edition in the 1969 Ballantine paperback.

Does one consider any of the Eddison books as part of the Ballantine Adult Fantasy Series? That depends, for when the Ballantine Adult Fantasy series began officially in the U.S. in May 1969, all four Eddison volumes had already been published. Yet for The Mezentian Gate, which was published in April 1969, one month before the official start of the series, the phrase “A Ballantine Adult Fantasy” runs up the spine (in small type) near the top of the front cover, and there is an advertisement on the final page of the book for “Great Masterpieces of Adult Fantasy” which includes four of the titles soon to be published as part of the series proper.  And all four of the Eddison titles are definitely part of the U.K. Pan /Ballantine Adult Fantasyseries. 

Yet nearly all of these printings of Eddison do not have the unicorn’s head logo on the cover. The one exception to this is the “Seventh U.S. Printing: September, 1973” of The Worm Ouroboros (345-22001-3  $1.25), which has the unicorn’s head logo on the front cover. So whether one counts the Eddisons as part of the series really depends upon how you define the series itself.

7th printing

The cover art for three of the four books was done by Barbara Remington, who did the similarly psychedelic covers for the first Ballantine editions of Tolkien’s The Hobbit and the three volumes of The Lord of the Rings. She was unavailable to do The Mezentian Gate, so another artist, William Benson, was hired to do the cover in a style like Remington’s. Beginning in 1977, the original Ballantine covers were replaced with new covers by Murray Tinkleman.

It is sad to note the decreasing number of printings of the successive books by Eddison.  While The Worm Ouroboros achieved twelve U.S. printings between 1967 and 1981, Mistress of Mistresses saw four, A Fish Dinner in Memison four or five, and The Mezentian Gate only two.

If any reader of this blog has any of the below printings of The Worm Ouroboros marked “not seen”  and can supply scans of the covers, title and copyright pages, I’ll be grateful. Contact me at nodens100 at gmail dot com.

Readers of Eddison will be interested to know that the omnibus Zimiamvia (Dell, 1992), containing Mistress of Mistresses, A Fish Dinner in Memison, and The Mezentian Gate, published for the first time some additional parts Eddison wrote of The Mezentian Gate. This includes a large section of chapter 30, and other passages in chapters 8, 12, and 31-33.

My thanks go to Trevor Livelton, Bill Lloyd, and Jon Preece for assistance with this post.

The Ballantine Printings of E.R. Eddison

The Worm Ouroboros

New York: Ballantine Books, [April] 1967 [cover art by Barbara Remington]

            “First Printing: April, 1967” on copyright page

Second Printing: April 1967 [3rd & later printings say May] [not seen?]

“Third American Printing: October, 1967” [printings listed as “First American 

             Printing … Third American Printing”]

“Fourth American Printing: May, 1968”

“Fifth Printing: August, 1970”

“Sixth Printing: March, 1972” [printed in England; 7th says January 1972] 

            [NB: This copy has U.S. price of $1.25 printed on the cover, and no 

            other prices]

“Seventh U.S. Printing: September, 1973” [Unicorn Mast on front cover] 

            [Beginning with the 7th printing, the list of printings on the copyright 

            page has been reset so that each line reads “First U.S. Printing” / 

           “Second U.S. Printing” / etc.]

Eighth U.S. Printing: October, 1974

“Ninth U.S. Printing: February, 1976”

“Tenth U.S. Printing: November 1977” [cover art, by Murray Tinkelman]

“Eleventh U.S. Printing: June 1978”

“Twelfth U.S. Printing: December 1981” [cover border color changed from 

            green to light orange]

 

First Canadian Printing: September 1967

Second Canadian Printing: November 1967

London: Pan/Ballantine, [June 1971]  [0-345-02001-4 “Printed in Canada”
           Prices on rear cover: U.K. 40p, plus Australia, New Zealand and 
           South Africa.]

“Reprinted 1972” [0-345-09740-8  “Printed in England”  Prices on rear cover: 

           U.K. 50p, plus Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa.]

“3rd printing 1973” [0-330-23841-8 “Printed in Great Britain by Richard 

            Clay” Prices on rear cover: U.K. 50p, plus Australia and New Zealand. 

            “Not for sale in Canada.”

“4th printing 1975” [0-330-23841-8  Prices on rear cover: U.K. 75p, plus 

            Australia and New Zealand. “Not for sale in Canada.”

1st printing

10th and 12th printings

Mistress of Mistresses: A Vision of Zimiamvia

New York: Ballantine Books, [August] 1967 [cover art by Barbara Remington]

            “First Printing: August, 1967” on copyright page

Second Printing: September 1967

Third Printing: May 1968

“Fourth Printing: January 1978” [cover art by Murray Tinkelman]

First Canadian Printing: November 1967

[U.K. edition:]  New York: [Pan/]Ballantine, [June, 1971] [have] “Printed in 

            Canada” on copyright page.  “Cover printed in Canada” on rear cover.  

            Prices and ISBN on reader cover: 345-02006-5 U.K. (8/-) 40p, plus 

            Australia, New Zealand, South Africa. The copyright page lists the 

Third Printing: May 1968 as the latest printing, but this must be an 

unacknowledged Canadian printing made for distribution in the U.K. 

“Pan” as publisher and the 1971 date of first U.K. publication do not 

appear anywhere on the book. 

1st printing

4th printing

A Fish Dinner in Memison

New York: Ballantine Books, [February 1968] [cover illustration by Barbara 

             Remington.] “First Printing: February, 1968” on copyright page

Second Printing: September 1970

“Third Printing: April 1978” [cover art by Murray Tinkelman]

Fourth Printing: May 1978 [mentioned in the “Special Printing” below]

First Special Printing: July 1978  [This is apparently a printing for the U.K. 

            market, with a price of £1 on rear cover. Also, this has a different 

            ISBN 0345278607]

[Fifth?]: July 1979  [not seen]

London: Pan/Ballantine, [July] 1972 [345-097410-6 “Printed in Great Britain 

            by Richard Clay” Prices on rear cover: U.K. 40p, plus Australia and 

            New Zealand. “Not for sale in Canada.”]

1st printing

3rd printing

The Mezentian Gate

New York: Ballantine Books, [April 1969] [uncredited cover illustration by

William Benson, in the style of Barbara Remington]

“First American Printing: April, 1969” on copyright page

“Second Printing: May 1978” [cover art by Murray Tinkelman]

London: Pan/Ballantine, [July] 1972 [345-09742-4 “Printed in Great Britain by

Richard Clay” Prices on rear cover: U.K. 40p, plus Australia and New 

Zealand. “Not for sale in Canada.”]

1st printing

2nd printing

Evangeline Walton in the Ballantine Adult Fantasy series

It was Paul Spencer, an acquaintance of Lin Carter’s in the James Branch Cabell Society, who recommended The Virgin and the Swine (1936), by Evangeline Walton (1907-1996), for the Ballantine Adult Fantasy series. Lin Carter and Betty Ballantine read it and approved of it, and they sought the author about reprint rights, initially thinking that she might be dead.  But they found that she had renewed the copyright in 1964, and contact was made, and a contract secured.

Both were happily surprised to learn that Walton had further unpublished manuscripts reworking other branches of the Mabinogion. She had initially planned to do only the fourth branch, but after it was published in 1936, she received a fan letter from John Cowper Powys, who encouraged her to continue with the other branches. Walton reworked the second and third branches into one huge novel of one hundred and eighty thousands words called The Brothers of Branwen, but she had troubles finding a publisher. Powys suggested she use his own literary agents in London (Pearn, Pollinger and Higham), and in July 1940 they nearly succeeded in selling The Brothers of Branwen to the Bodley Head, but the publisher got cold feet because of the size of the book and the paper shortages in England during the Second World War. After this, Walton ceased offering the manuscript to publishers.

After The Island of the Mighty (retitled from The Virgin and the Swine) was re-published by Ballantine in 1970, Walton returned to the manuscript of The Brothers of Branwen and split it into two books. In revised form these were published as The Children of Llyr and The Song of Rhiannon. In his introduction to The Children of Llyr, Carter noted that “as with the previous book, we decided to change the original title. Miss Walton had suggested The Doom of the Dark Woman, but the original tale upon which it was based was known widely in studies of Welsh and Irish mythological literature as ‘the tale of the children of Llyr.’ ” 

After The Song of Rhiannon was published, Walton returned to the first branch of the Mabinogion, which she had left unfinished after The Brothers of Branwen had failed to achieve publication, and the resultant Prince of Annwn was published by Ballantine in 1974, several months after the Ballantine Adult Fantasy series had ended. Thus Prince of Annwn  is not officially part of the series proper, and it (unlike the other three volumes) has no introduction from Lin Carter. After an article by Patrick Merla appeared in the 4 November 1972 issue of The Saturday Review, Carter’s introductions were replaced in most printings with an extract from Patrick Merla’s piece (the extract is identical in all books).  

Pan/Ballantine U.K. editions of the first three volumes were published in 1972 and 1973, but they did not publish the fourth book. Ballantine reprinted each of the four volumes a number of times (including Canadian printings), and a boxed-set of all four volumes was issued in November 1974. 

The original cover artists were Bob Pepper (for the first book) and David McCall Johnston (for the subsequent three), and Walton liked these covers very much. But she disliked the new covers by Howard Koslow put on all four volumes in 1978-79.  The printings with the Koslow covers were distributed in the U.K. in April 1980. 

Ballantine tinkered with the original covers as they reprinted the books, sometimes adding black or white spines, sometimes reversing the wrap-around cover art (making what had been on the reverse of the book into the front cover and vice versa).

I have marked the printings that I am missing as “not seen.”  If any reader of this blog has any of these printings and can supply scans of the covers, title and copyright pages, I’ll be grateful. Contact me at nodens100 at gmail dot com.

The Island of the Mighty

“First Printing: July, 1970” [Cover by Bob Pepper.]

“Second Printing: November, 1974” [Cover reversed, white spine.]

“Third Printing: November 1975”[Cover identical to Second Printing.]

“Third Printing: July 1977” [Actually the Fourth Printing.] [Cover orientation 

            matching Third Printing, but now has a black spine, and the Del Rey 

            logo on the upper cover.]

“Fifth printing: February 1979” [Cover by Howard Koslow.]

London:  Pan/Ballantine, [May] 1972

[The Lin Carter Introduction is only in the First Printing (and in the Pan/Ballantine printing). The Second through Fifth printings contain:  “On Evangeline Walton and Magic” by Patrick Merla, reprinted from The Saturday Review, 4 November 1972.]

1st printing

2nd and 3rd printings

4th printing

5th printing

 The Children of Llyr

“First Printing: August, 1971” [Cover by David McCall Johnston.]

“Second Printing: November, 1974” [Reverses cover illustration, white spine.] 

“Third Printing: November, 1975” [Cover identical to Second Printing.]

Third Printing: July 1977 [Actually the Fourth Printing.] [Not seen.]

“Fifth Printing: December 1978” [Cover art by Howard Koslow.]

London:  Pan/Ballantine, [May] 1972

[The Lin Carter Introduction is only in the First Printing (and the Pan/Ballantine printing). The Second through Fifth printings contain:  “On Evangeline Walton and Magic” by Patrick Merla, reprinted from The Saturday Review, 4 November 1972.]

1st printing

2nd and 3rd printings

5th printing

 

The Song of Rhiannon

“First Printing: August, 1972” [Cover by David McCall Johnston.]

“Second U.S. Printing: September, 1973”  [Cover identical to First Printing.]

“Third U.S. Printing: November 1974” [Reverses cover illustration, white spine.]

Fourth Printing: November 1975  [Not seen.]

“Fifth Printing: January 1979”  [Uncredited cover art by Howard Koslow.]

First Canadian Printing: September, 1972  [Noted in the “Second U.S. Printing: 

September, 1973”.]

London:  Pan/Ballantine, [December] 1973 

[The Lin Carter Introduction is only in the First and Second printings (and the Canadian and Pan/Ballantine printings). The Third through Fifth printings contain:  “On Evangeline Walton and Magic” by Patrick Merla, reprinted from The Saturday Review, 4 November 1972.]

1st and 2nd printings

3rd printing

5th printing

Prince of Annwn

“First Printing: November, 1974” [Cover by David McCall Johnston.]

“Second Printing: May, 1975”  [White spine.]

Third Printing: January 1977 [Not seen.]

Fourth Printing:  November 1977 [Not seen.]

“Fifth Printing: November 1978” [Uncredited cover art by Howard Koslow.]  [All copies seen are priced $1.75, but it is reported that some “Fifth Printing” copies are priced $1.95. This has not been seen by me.]

[All printings of Prince of Annwn have an introduction “On Evangeline Walton and Magic” by Patrick Merla, reprinted from The Saturday Review, 4 November 1972.]

1st printing

2nd printing

5th printing

Thanks to Jon Preece, Bill Lloyd, and Trevor Livelton for assistance on this entry.