Crown Constable

Constable & Co., Ltd. (London, UK)
Series dates: 1933-1940
Size: 5.5″ x 8″

Constable’s Crown Constable series consisted of mostly reprints and a few new publications, issued between 1934 and 1936 and sold until the end of the 1930s. It seems that no more than 12 titles were issued.

The jackets are common to the series, with a large colophon for the series dominating the front of the jacket. Jacket colors varied (orange, green, red). This copy of Flamenca, attributed to Bernardet the Troubadour and translated from the Provencal by H.F.M. Prescott was first published in the series in 1933, after initially being published by Constable in 1930. The front jacket flap is blank save for a price (5/- net).

The rear of the jacket names and describes the series and lists the initial 7 titles, each at 5 shillings. A full list of titles published in the series includes 12 titles:

Lord David Cecil, The Stricken Deer (1933)
Logan Pearsall Smith, All Trivia (1933)
Aeneas Sylvius Piccolomini, The Tale of the Two Lovers (1933)
Geoffrey Scott, The Portrait of Zelide (1934)
Stephen Hudson, A True Story (1933)
Michael Sadleir, Trollope: A Commentary (1933)
H.F. Amiel, Philine (1933)
Bernardet the Troubadour, Flamenca (1934)
Logan Pearsall Smith, On Reading Shakespeare (1934)
Irina Odoevtzeva, Out of childhood (1934)
Prevost, Manon Lescaut (1934)
Harold Nicholson, Some People (1934)

Blue cloth binding with gold decorations and typography on the spine:

The half-title page:

A list of five titles in the series faces the title page. The series name is included on both pages, in script typography.

The copyright page includes the Constable imprint but also Oxford University Press and The Macmillan Company of Canada. The initial edition (1930) and the first issue in the Crown Constable series (1933) is indicated. The book was printed in Great Britain by the Chiswick Press (Charles Whittingham and Griggs, Printers):

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