Ballantine's Road Goes Ever On: Bibliographers Off by a Year!

I’ve been looking everywhere in my Tolkien files for something I need that is Hobbit-related, and I even braved my huge pile of unsorted research notes, some of which date back thirty or more years. But at least in the absence of finding what I’m looking for, I can clear up a long-standing mystery about the Ballantine edition of The Road Goes Ever On. It went through three printings, the first was a jacketless undated hardcover, with the Barbara Remington Lord of the Rings mural  inset on the lower half of the upper cover. The other two printings were trade paperbacks, the second printing is designated on the copyright page August 1975; and the third printing January 1978. But each of these list the first Ballantine printing as having been in October 1969. And that is how it is dated in J.R.R. Tolkien: A Descriptive Bibliography.

But I made a research note that I had examined one copy that was inscribed “Christmas 1968”—which, if true, would put the edition back a year in time.  Lin Carter, not normally remembered for accuracy, listed it as an October 1968 publication in his list of sixteen Ballantine precursors to the Ballantine Adult Fantasy series, in “Bibliography II” (page 268) of Imaginary Worlds (1973).

And Lin Carter was right. Publishers Weekly for 2 September 1968 lists it with a October 14th [1968] publication date, with notice of major promotion and publicity.

Publishers Weekly, 2 Sep. 1968, p.63

Details and cover scans of the Ballantine printings can be found at Devon Press’s TolkienBooks.US site: the hardcover here, and the paperbacks here. (Now updated with the correct 1968 date.)

 

 

 

Lin Carter’s Lost Juvenile Fantasy Series: Magic Kingdoms

Fantasiae was, according to its initial subtitle, the “monthly newsletter of the Fantasy Association,” based out of Los Angeles. The first issue was dated April 1973, and the final issue was no. 103 (volume 9 no. 10) from October 1981. The editor for the entire run was Ian M. Slater, who also contributed many articles and book reviews.

In the fourth issue, July 1973, Cory Panshin had a letter which noted:

“From what I’ve observed, the recent spate of children’s quality paperbacks hasn’t been very heavy on fantasy. I wonder if the Fantasy Association includes anyone with publishing connections to do a reprint program of children’s fantasy similar to what Lin Carter has done for Adult Fantasy with Ballantine?”

The editor replied: “Lin Carter has mentioned Magic Kingdom Books ‘for younger readers’ several times since early 1972.”

In fact, Carter mentioned this planned series in one of his Introductions to an Adult Fantasy selection. In Evenor by George MacDonald, published in September 1972, Carter wrote:

“With the publication of this book we have exhausted the adult fantasy of George MacDonald. But those of you who find pleasure and excitement in his work need not despair. For we are launching a companion series of classic fantasy novels for children which we have named ‘Magic Kingdoms.’ Among the first of our Magic Kingdom books you will find George MacDonald’s most famous children’s fantasy novel, The Princess and the Goblin. Each year, among our annual Magic Kingdom releases, we hope to include a George MacDonald fantasy, so that eventually we will have all of his fantasy, both adult and juvenile, in print at the same time.”

Cory Panshin’s letter, and Ian M. Slater’s editorial comment, brought forth a very interesting reply from Lin Carter himself, outlining the plans for the series. It was published in issue no. 5, August 1973.

“Cory Panshin’s letter in Fantasiae #4 asks for someone to revive children’s fantasy on a scale similar to what I have been doing at Ballantine over the last five years. Your note to her letter alludes to my ‘Magic Kingdoms’ series. Permit me to say a few words about this proposed series.

“Two years ago I suggested Ballantine launch a series of children’s fantasy classics as a sort of spin-off to the Adult Fantasy series. Mrs. Ballantine instantly recognized it as a good idea and the title ‘Magic Kingdoms’ was tentatively chosen for the program. I wanted to do seven or eight large-sized paperbacks a year, some old classics and some new books of quality. The series would have a special colophon and I would write afterwords to be put at the end of the books, since I wanted nothing to stand between the kids and the beginning of the story.

“I planned to eschew over-familiar classics in favor of equally deserving but less easily available books—Mary de Morgan’s fairy tales, rather than those of Andersen or Grimm—The Rose and the Ring or The Cuckoo Clock rather than Alice or Peter [Pan].

“For the first schedule I chose Andrew Lang’s Prince Prigio, George MacDonald’s The Princess and the Goblin, Ting-a-Ling Tales by Frank Stockton, L. Frank Baum’s Sea Fairies, E. Nesbit’s Five Children and It, and a new book called The Face in the Frost by a new writer named John Bellairs. I also planned to launch the series with a keynote anthology called, most appropriately, Magic Kingdoms.

“The thing is, you see, I love children’s fantasies every bit as much as I do the superior adult works in the genre, and I was eager to revive delightful fantasies like The Tale of the Land of Green Ginger, Sylvie and Bruno, and the fairy tales of Mrs. Molesworth and Oscar Wilde. (Who besides me knows such delicious books as Rocking Island, The Treasure of the Isle of Mist, Sky High, The Three Mulla-Mulgars, and The Amazing Vacation? If you do, then you know exactly the sort of book I hoped to get back in print.)

“Mrs. Ballantine went ahead and designed a unique form for the series, and has in fact three superb paintings and interior illustrations for three of the books. However, by the time all this had been done, it appeared that there might be problems at Intext [Intext owned Ballantine Books since circa November 1969] and the program was shelved for the time being. The new ownership (Random House [who bought Ballantine Books from Intext circa April 1973]) is still too new to immediately become committed to a while program of juvenile publishing which would be a completely different departure for Ballantine.

“The whole thing is still up in the air. It has neither been approved or disapproved, but lies dormant.

“I still think we could put together and beautifully illustrate a quality line of classic fantasies for juveniles which in my opinion could fine an enthusiastic audience, and I would love the opportunity to infect a whole generation of younger readers with the kind of sparkling, fairy-kingdom story that please and continues to please me.”

The proposed Magic Kingdoms series did not more forward at all. Here follows a list, alphabetically by author, of what can be pieced together about Carter’s proposed selections:

Baum, L. Frank. Sea Fairies [Originally published in 1911.]

Bellairs, John. The Face in the Frost [Originally published in hardcover in 1969. Ace published a mass-market paperback in 1978.]

Carroll, Lewis. Sylvie and Bruno [Originally published in 1889. Carter would likely have also published the continuation, Sylvie and Bruno Concluded (1893).]

Carter, Lin, ed. Magic Kingdoms [Proposed anthology. Carter noted in Imaginary Worlds, published in June 1973, that John Bellairs “has produced for my yet-unpublished anthology of juvenile fantasy, entitled Magic Kingdoms, a new short story which tells how his diabolic duo [Prospero and Roger Bacon, characters from The Face in the Frost] first became friends” (p. 167).]

de la Mare, Walter. The Three Mulla-Mulgars [Originally published in 1910. Retitled in some editions, beginning in 1927, as The Three Monkeys.]

de Morgan, Mary. Fairy-tales [de Morgan’s three volumes of fairy-tales included

On a Pincushion and Other Fairy Tales (1877), The Necklace of Princess Fiorimonde (1880), and The Windfairies (1900). These volumes were collected in 1963 as The Necklace of Princess Fiorimonde: The Complete Fairy Stories of Mary de Morgan. Roger Lancelyn Green introduced the volume.]

Green, Roger Lancelyn. [In Double Phoenix, two unrelated novellas respectively by Edmund Cooper and Roger Lancelyn Green, published in the Ballantine Adult Fantasy series in November 1971, Carter noted that Green’s novella, “From the World’s End,” was “probably just the first work by Roger Lancelyn Green you will see in the years to come under the Sign of the Unicorn’s Head.” Green is known to have submitted to Carter three of his unpublished children’s fantasies, The Wood That Time Forgot (written 1944, revised 1949); The Castle in Lyonesse (written 1950, revised 1956), and The City of the Tiger, a sequel to The Land of the Lord High Tiger (published in 1958). All three of these short novels by Green remain unpublished, though I included the a chapter of The Wood That Time Forget in my anthology Tales Before Narnia (2008), as the book had been an influence on C.S. Lewis, inspiring him to write the first book of The Chronicles of Narnia.]

Hodges, C. Walter. Sky High: The Story of a House That Flew [Originally published in 1947.]

Lang, Andrew. Prince Prigio [Originally published in 1889.]

Langley, Noel. The Tale of the Land of Green Ginger [Originally published in 1937.]

Love, Edwin M. Rocking Island [Originally published in 1927.]

MacDonald, George. The Princess and the Goblin [Originally published in 1872. Presumably Carter would carry on with its sequel, The Princess and Curdie (1883), and other of MacDonald’s shorter fairy tales, and perhaps At the Back of the North Wind (1871).]

Molesworth, Mrs. The Cuckoo Clock [Originally published in 1877. Carter probably intended to reprint more of her fairy-tales.]

Nesbit, E. Five Children and It. [Originally published in 1902.]

Stockton, Frank R. Ting-a-Ling Tales [Originally published in 1882.]

Tarn, W.W. The Treasure of the Isle of Mist [Originally published in 1919.]

Thackery, William Makepeace. The Rose and the Ring [Originally published in 1855 as by M. A. Titmarsh.]

Wickenden, Dan. The Amazing Vacation [Originally published in 1956.]

Wilde, Oscar. Fairy-tales [Wilde’s two volumes of fairy tales were The Happy Prince and Other Tales (1888) and A House of Pomegranates (1891).]

Lin Carter's 1980s WEIRD TALES Revival

In the same interview published in March 1980 in which Carter described his plans for the Zebra fantasy series, as discussed in my previous blog post, he also discussed at length his plans to revive, also with Zebra, Weird Tales magazine, which originally ran from 1923 through 1954, and which had been revived once under the editorship of Sam Moskowitz for four issues in 1973-1974.

Weird Tales #1 and #2, both published in December 1980

Carter managed to get four issues done, though their subsequent publication was sporadic and spread out over three years. It is interesting to note that Carter had apparently turned in to the publisher all four issues previous to his March 1980 interview, for a note in the same issue as the Carter interview gives news from Roy Torgeson that "four issues are complete at this time" and the first issue of the quarterly will a appear in "July at the latest."  Actually the first two issues, both dated Spring 1981, appeared simultaneously in December 1980; the third issue (dated Fall 1981) in August 1981 (the same month as Bloch's Mysteries of the Worm appeared); and the fourth and final issue (dated Summer 1983) snuck out without much notice towards the middle of 1983.  (The first volume was actually reprinted, with a new ISBN and a raising of the printed price from $2.50 to $2.95, in conjunction with the appearance of the fourth volume.)

Here are Carter's lengthy comments, with some interspersed footnotes, marked by asterisks:

"I am reviving Weird Tales with the cooperation of Zebra Books, and I'm so thrilled—it's one of those things that I never dreamed could ever happen, when I was fourteen years old and picking up Weird Tales on the newsstand, in helpless admiration of the writers in it, and to find myself the fifth editor of Weird Tales in half a century is a dream come true that I never dared to dream. It's like having an Arkham book published. I had an Arkham book published, I never dreamed I could have an Arkham House book published. I have only two dreams left, that's to write an Oz book and to do my Tarzan [Laughs].

"With Weird Tales, well, I guess I'm best known for sword and sorcery, and I want to promise people that I'm not going to turn Weird Tales into half sword and sorcery and half Cthulhu mythos. It's going to be exactly the same magazine it always was. The mainstay of the thirty years that Weird Tales published regularly was always the urban horror story; the modern scene, urban horror story. We forget, because Conan and some of the swashbuckling Howard stuff attracts our attention, but in every issue, the bulk of the issue was modern day, urban-scene horror stories, and it's going to be exactly like that, if I have to go out there and rewrite the stories. Thank God, Ramsey Campbell is out there; nobody has ever done the urban horror story better than Ramsey, and Ramsey has a story in the first issue and a story in the second issue, and he'll have a story in every issue if I have anything to say about it, which of course I do. There will be a little sword and sorcery, of course. There will be at least one story in every issue. There will be Cthulhu Mythos stories, when I get good Cthulhu Mythos stories, but the rest of the stuff is going to be as close to the stuff Weird Tales used to print as possible. The fact that it's coming out as a paperback periodi­cal—I think the reason that the pulp magazines went under in 1954 was that pulp magazines no longer had space on the newsstands, because of the rise of the paper­back book. You could either buy a magazine for 25 cents or a book. And people wanted the books. So, since we can't lick 'em, we gotta join 'em. . . .

"I've been sitting on a pile of stuff ever since the Ballantine series dropped out from under me. I've had people from all over the world sending me Xeroxes and manuscripts of things that they happened to have. I'll mention a 10,000 word fraction of a novel by Clark Ashton Smith*1 that was sent to me from New Zealand, which is not known to otherwise any longer exist. The Ballantine series did not last long enough for me to get all of these things into print. For ex­ample, there's a trove of short stories by Hannes Bok,*2 who of course is much better remembered as an artist and an illustrator, but did about seven stories for Weird Tales over the years. Not the best stories in Weird Tales, but still . . . Ever since the idea of Weird Tales has come up, I have been calling, writing, begging, asking—and there are enough of the old authors, there are enough of the surviving members of the Weird Tales group still writing, that I can, at least with the first four issues, bridge the gap between what Weird Tales was and what Weird Tales will have to be in the future, because we are running out of the original authors. Ob­viously, to be viable to go on for years it will have to depend on the newer authors like Gary Myers, Tanith Lee, Ramsey Campbell, Brian Lumley.*3 But Joseph Payne Brennan has given me a story. Carl Jacobi has given me two stories. I have a story from Robert Aickman; also one of the newcomers.*4 I have unearthed unpublished stories by Howard, by Smith, by David H. Keller.*5 I have this trove of Hannes Bok stories.*6 I have stories promised me from Frank Belknap Long and Mary Elizabeth Counselman.*7 I just received a story from Manly Wade Wellman.*8 And I'm gonna do my damnedest to coax and wheedle stories from C.L. Moore, E. Hoffmann Price. Robert Bloch, Ted Sturgeon, people like that.*9 You see, Weird Tales lasted such an incredible length of time—a human lifetime, thirty years of publishing, that towards its end, a lot of the authors were fairly young. And there's still a residuum of unpub­lished work by the great masters—a little bit is left. Howard and so forth."

Weird Tales #3, published in August 1981

*1. The fragment of a novel by Clark Ashton Smith was "The Infernal Star," first published in Strange Shadows (1989). edited by Steve Behrends, with Donald Sidney-Fryer and Rah Hoffmann.

*2. Hannes Bok published five stories between 1942 and 1944 in the original Weird Tales. Carter published for the first time Bok's tale "Someone Named Guiborg" in Weird Tales #1.

*3. Gary Myers (with Marc Laidlaw) contributed "The Summons of Nuguth-Yug" to Weird Tales #3. Tanith Lee contributed "When the Clock Strikes" to Weird Tales #1 and "The Sombrus Tower" to Weird Tales #2. Ramsey Campbell contributed "Trick or Treat" to Weird Tales #2. Brian Lumley's "The House of the Temple" appeared in Weird Tales #3, in the interim having also appeared in English in the Italian magazine Kadath in issue #3, November 1980, a special Brian Lumley issue. 

*4. Joseph Payne Brennan contributed "Fear" to Weird Tales #2.  Carl Jacobi contributed "The Pit" to Weird Tales #1 and "The Black Garden" to Weird Tales #3. Robert Aickman (who died in February 1981) contributed "The Next Glade" to Weird Tales #4. This was perhaps Aickman's last story.

*5. Carter published "Scarlet Tears" by Robert E. Howard in Weird Tales #1. Gerald W. Page completed a Howard fragment "The Guardian of the Idol" for Weird Tales #3. Carter completed fragments by Clark Ashton Smith, "The Light from the Pole" in Weird Tales #1 and "The Decent into the Abyss" in Weird Tales #2.  David H. Keller's "The House without Mirrors" appeared in Weird Tales #1.

*6. No other stories by Hannes Bok, beyond the one mentioned in footnote 2 above, appeared in Carter's Weird Tales.

*7. Frank Belknap Long's "Homecoming" appeared in Weird Tales #4. Mary Elizabeth Counselman contributed two stories, "Healer" in Weird Tales #1, and "The Lamashtu Amulet" in Weird Tales #2.

*8. Manly Wade Wellman's "Nobody Ever Goes There" appeared in Weird Tales #3.

*9. No new stories by C.L. Moore, E. Hoffmann Price. Robert Bloch (a reprint of "The Feast in the Abbey" from 1935 appeared in Weird Tales #2), or Ted Sturgeon appeared in Carter's Weird Tales. However, letters from Bloch and Sturgeon (and from Ray Bradbury) appeared in the letter column "The Eyrie" in Weird Tales #1.

"For the first issue of Weird Tales, I desperately wanted something by Seabury Quinn, be­cause Quinn, of all the authors who ever wrote for Weird Tales, had more appearances in that magazine than anybody else. I think, just talking off the top of my head, that he appeared in 168 issues. Now, I could be wrong, I'm just talking off the top of my head, I don't have my notes. But there's not a word of unpublished Quinn left. But there are three stories Quinn wrote, ob­viously for Weird Tales, which were obviously rejected by Weird Tales, because they ended up in Weird Tales, short-lived com­petitor, Strange Stories, and they have never been reprinted, anthologized, or put in any collec­tion of Quinn, and therefore their exposure has been very limited. I'm going to be reprinting them in the weird story reprint department, which was there from the very first year of the magazine, and there was one story left in manuscript that appeared in Jack Chalker's fanzine Mirage, which I'm going to lead off with, since that's had the least exposure of all. . . .*10"

*10. Seabury Quinn's "Master Nicholas" appeared in Mirage #6 (1964), but it was not reprinted in Carter's Weird Tales. Instead, "Some Day I'll Kill You" (from Strange Stories, February 1941) appeared in Weird Tales #1. It was the only Seabury Quinn story that appeared in Carter's four issues. Carter's Weird Tales did not retain the "Weird Story Reprint" department, and only had the letters column, "The Eyrie," in Weird Tales #1.

Weird Tales #4, published circa April 1983

Carter published a story of his own in each of the four issues, as well as his two posthumous collaborations with Clark Ashton Smith.  Carter did manage to include other authors from the heyday of Weird Tales, including August Derleth (reprinting his first contribution from 1926) and Evangeline Walton (utilizing the bulk of the extensive prologue she wrote for inclusion in the 1950 UK edition of her novel Witch House, which had originally been published by Arkham House in 1945). For Weird Tales #2, Carter trumpeted R.H. Barlow's story, "The Night Ocean," as by H.P. Lovecraft and Robert H. Barlow [sic; Barlow always signed his contributions with his initials and surname], because it had  been revised lightly and stylistically by Lovecraft, who would never have claimed any credit of partial authorship.

The license of Weird Tales to Lin Carter and Zebra was revoked in 1982 owing to non-payment (though Zebra went ahead and published issue number 4 in 1983). Zebra seems always to have worked on the edge of financial disaster, and they were known to pay only very small advances and to be lax about accounting for sales and subsequent royalties. It is probably this financial instability that doomed from the outset both Lin Carter's new fantasy series, as well as the revival of Weird Tales. It was a sad last hurrah for Lin Carter's editing career. In 1985 Carter was diagnosed with oral cancer, and he died three years later at the age of fifty-seven.*11

*11. In an interview with Robert M. Price, published in the Yule 1985 issue (#36) of Crypt of Cthulhu, Carter outlined another project which did not come to fruition, a new magazine to be called Yoh-Vombis:

"In the beginning it will consist of the stories I would have published in Weird Tales if I had been permitted to continue editing Weird Tales. I'm only returning a handful of stories which are too long. Yoh-Vombis will have about 25,000 words of material in every issue. And, naturally, I will have to be going for the shorter stories. It will also contain poetry and art, and every other issue will have a section called "Epistle" which will feature unpublished letters from Lovecraft and Smith and people like that. It will also have, in alternate issues, a section called "Folio" which will consist of unpublished art by Clark Ashton Smith, Roy Krenkel, Mahlon Blaine, etc. There will be at least one item, either story or verse, by Howard and Smith in every issue."