Dear All,
I've searched around on this subject without finding an answer to my questions. I'm pretty sure John Davey will know some/all of this, but rather than mail him direct, I thought I'd ask the questions here for the amusement and edification of the wider community.
I have a trio of Mayflower/Granada (British) paperbacks (Count Brass, The Champion Of Garathorm and The Quest For Tanelorn) in a cardboard slipcase. The books are collectively known as The Chronicles of Castle Brass, but the slipcase bears the wrong title, “The Chronicles of Count Brass� on front, back and spine.
John told me about this misprinted edition a couple of years ago, and I bought my set on eBay some time back.
Before launching into my collector’s questions, daft and obsessive as they may be, I would like to add that I recently re-read this trilogy, and found that I liked it better than I did 25-30 years ago, when I first read it. So if my questions seem to reveal a collector’s mentality bordering on the lunatic (I’m not denying it!) please be assured that I do also read Moorcock’s books and continue to love and admire them as stories as well as collecting them (in my fairly haphazard way).
Apart from my own collector’s fervour, I would like to see all possible factual information on the books available from a scholarly perspective.
My questions are:
(1) Was this set actually withdrawn from sale, as I remember hearing?
(2) Was it reissued with the title corrected on the box?
(3) What was the year of release of the boxed set (s)? 1977?
(4) Should the books in the box form a uniform set?
Mine don’t. All 3 have the price 60p. But Count Brass and Quest are Mayflower/Granada, both 1977 reprints. Champion is Mayflower, 1977 reprint. I assume the company changed its name, merged, whatever, between the 1977 reprinting of Champion, and before the 1977 reprintings of Count Brass and Quest. I further assume that the slipcase set is simply made up of the latest reprintings of all 3 books and not actually designed as a uniform set. However it is possible that owner(s) before me moved books in/out of the slipcase for reasons of their own.
(5) Here’s where it gets odder…
The 1977 Count Brass book in my slipcase set has the correct name of the trilogy, “(The First Volume of) The Chronicles of Castle Brass,� under the title (even though the slipcase, as you might remember from a few hours back, has the wrong title, The Chronicles of Count Brass).
But I also have a 1973 reprint of the Mayflower paperback which calls itself, on the front and back covers, the first volume of the chronicles of Count Brass.
Clearly this jinx first set in in 1973.
But could 1973 have been the true date of the slipcased set? No, that can’t be the case, since Quest wasn’t published until 1975.
Did the jinx just re-surface in 1977 when some hapless designer put the slipcase together?
(6) Was the 1973 printing of Count Brass withdrawn from sale?
Did the original, very first 1973 printing of the first Mayflower edition of Count Brass have the wrong or the right subtitle on the cover?
If the distinguished readership of this forum can’t these questions between us, I fear perhaps no-one can. And what a terrible thing that would be.
:O)
Best wishes,
Guy
I've searched around on this subject without finding an answer to my questions. I'm pretty sure John Davey will know some/all of this, but rather than mail him direct, I thought I'd ask the questions here for the amusement and edification of the wider community.
I have a trio of Mayflower/Granada (British) paperbacks (Count Brass, The Champion Of Garathorm and The Quest For Tanelorn) in a cardboard slipcase. The books are collectively known as The Chronicles of Castle Brass, but the slipcase bears the wrong title, “The Chronicles of Count Brass� on front, back and spine.
John told me about this misprinted edition a couple of years ago, and I bought my set on eBay some time back.
Before launching into my collector’s questions, daft and obsessive as they may be, I would like to add that I recently re-read this trilogy, and found that I liked it better than I did 25-30 years ago, when I first read it. So if my questions seem to reveal a collector’s mentality bordering on the lunatic (I’m not denying it!) please be assured that I do also read Moorcock’s books and continue to love and admire them as stories as well as collecting them (in my fairly haphazard way).
Apart from my own collector’s fervour, I would like to see all possible factual information on the books available from a scholarly perspective.
My questions are:
(1) Was this set actually withdrawn from sale, as I remember hearing?
(2) Was it reissued with the title corrected on the box?
(3) What was the year of release of the boxed set (s)? 1977?
(4) Should the books in the box form a uniform set?
Mine don’t. All 3 have the price 60p. But Count Brass and Quest are Mayflower/Granada, both 1977 reprints. Champion is Mayflower, 1977 reprint. I assume the company changed its name, merged, whatever, between the 1977 reprinting of Champion, and before the 1977 reprintings of Count Brass and Quest. I further assume that the slipcase set is simply made up of the latest reprintings of all 3 books and not actually designed as a uniform set. However it is possible that owner(s) before me moved books in/out of the slipcase for reasons of their own.
(5) Here’s where it gets odder…
The 1977 Count Brass book in my slipcase set has the correct name of the trilogy, “(The First Volume of) The Chronicles of Castle Brass,� under the title (even though the slipcase, as you might remember from a few hours back, has the wrong title, The Chronicles of Count Brass).
But I also have a 1973 reprint of the Mayflower paperback which calls itself, on the front and back covers, the first volume of the chronicles of Count Brass.
Clearly this jinx first set in in 1973.
But could 1973 have been the true date of the slipcased set? No, that can’t be the case, since Quest wasn’t published until 1975.
Did the jinx just re-surface in 1977 when some hapless designer put the slipcase together?
(6) Was the 1973 printing of Count Brass withdrawn from sale?
Did the original, very first 1973 printing of the first Mayflower edition of Count Brass have the wrong or the right subtitle on the cover?
If the distinguished readership of this forum can’t these questions between us, I fear perhaps no-one can. And what a terrible thing that would be.
:O)
Best wishes,
Guy
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