THE RAMBLE HOUSE MAPBACKS
by Gavin L. O'Keefe
If there was ever an author whose novels should have been published as Dell ‘mapbacks’, it was Harry Stephen Keeler. One can easily imagine his unique mystery novels sitting alongside such original mapback titles as The Affair of the Scarlet Crab by Clifford Knight (Dell #75, 1945), Murder Wears Mukluks by Eunice Mays Boyd (Dell #259, 1948) and The Case of the Seven Sneezes by Anthony Boucher (Dell # 334, 1949) . The editors at Dell, however, never appreciated the magic and charm of Keeler’s books, and his novels never made it to mapback status during that period. In fact, Harry Stephen Keeler never achieved any paperback release in his own country during his lifetime .
The Dell mapbacks began with The Four Frightened Women by George Harmon Coxe in 1943, and initiated a truly innovative cover design format in mass-market paperback fiction. With their bold, air-brushed-style front covers, and original back covers featuring maps of the localities featuring in the book, the books went on to number more than 600, and gained a popularity which endures, with collectors, to this day. Between 1943 and 1951, almost all Dell paperbacks featured an original mapback, the detailed designs mostly being executed by artist Ruth Belew. Many of these books were in the mystery genre, though the list also included westerns, adventure, romance and historical novels. Front cover artists included Gerald Gregg, Victor Kalin, George Fredericksen and Jerry Cummings.
For those who admire the wonderful style of the Dell mapback as well as the works of Harry Stephen Keeler, and who might have fantasized about the two having once met, speculation has now turned to reality with the advent of that other innovative publisher of distinctive paperbacks, Ramble House of Shreveport, Louisiana. From the creative minds and hands of Fender Tucker and Jim Weiler, Ramble House was already proving itself to be an innovative publisher of the kind of ‘pulp’ and mystery fiction which had been so central to the Dell mapback series. It seemed a logical step to adopt the guise of the esteemed mapback design for a number of Harry Stephen Keeler’s Ramble House books. This easily ‘killed two birds with one stone’: to finally allow the beautiful mapback format to clothe a Keeler book, and to pay homage to the innovation of the Dell paperback.
Having already been an admirer of Ruth Belew’s back cover map designs, I was enthusiastic about devising mapback-style covers for some of the Ramble House Keeler titles. To date I have completed fourteen separate mapback Keelers, and there is scope to increase this number. We have focused primarily on Keeler books featuring a definite locale which lends itself to being portrayed as a map. Where a particular Keeler novel moved around from city to city, or from country to country, with no special central scene of murder or mayhem, we have chosen to respectfully decline a mapback cover.
For several of these Ramble House Keeler books I have assumed full Dell mapback regalia: not just the map on the back cover, but spine lettering in the Dell style, front cover with Dell-style dramatic design, and a specially designed Ramble House ‘keyhole’ motif directly based on the keyhole symbols used by Dell to denote their mapback and genre paperbacks. I have also made a point of reining in the colors used on these covers: the original Dell covers had minimal color ranges, especially evident on the back covers.
This limited palette, rather than restricting the impact of these covers, actually enhances the effect. With many of the slick mass-market paperback covers of today there is a confusing abundance of color: the advent of cheap color-reproduction has opened the sluice-gates to Technicolor. In the past days of war-time production restrictions, spot-color, and cheaper paper, the artists and designers of the day were working to produce the most eye-catching book designs to woo the eye and open the wallet of the potential book-buyer. With the blossoming of the paperback book in the United States there grew competition amongst publishing firms such as Dell, Penguin, Pyramid, Pocket, Avon, Ballantine, Bantam, and others, to dominate the market, and the work of the book designers and illustrators of the day was very much to the fore of the marketing push.
In retrospect, we now appreciate these books for their artistry and style, and gratefully acknowledge the lasting influence of the artists who created the covers. But especially Dell! Because Dell made mapbacks, and they were unique books. And it’s a gesture of love to the mapback and to Harry Stephen Keeler that Ramble House is bringing back a little bit of the old magic.