Robert Frost wrote “good fences make good neighbors.” I think good books make good neighbors.
One of our neighbors recently passed on to me A Treasury
of Sherlock Holmes. I already have three different editions of this book,
so why did I accept another? Because, as a former pastor of mine said while accepting
a slug of Bailey’s Irish Cream in his coffee at 10 a.m., “I’m never one to
discourage generosity.”
I’ve written about this interesting anthology before, as you
can read by clicking here.
But there’s a little mystery that goes with the edition I just
acquired, and maybe you can solve it.
The book was published by Hanover House, Garden City, New
York. But it’s exactly the same, page for page, as the edition pictured above
published by Doubleday & Co. It’s also the same as another edition I have,
published by the International Collectors Library. My third copy is a book club
edition from Nelson Doubleday Nelson, on thinner paper but paginated identically.
In each edition, no matter the publisher, the second
sentence of Adrian Conan Doyle’s introduction begins, “When our old friends at
Hanover House . . . .”
Were Hanover House, the International Collectors Library, and
Doubleday all the same company? Perhaps the answer is elementary.
Total guess here, but looking at that sentence, I'd assume that that Hanover House was the original publisher, and that that firm either sold or licensed the rights (and possibly the plates) to republish the book. That would make the texts exact, especially if the plates were included in the deal.
ReplyDeleteThat's what I figured. Ira Matetzky says Hanover House was an imprint of Doubleday. Maybe it started as a separate company and was acquired.
ReplyDelete