Dodd Mead & Co. (New York, US)
Series dates: 1941-1970, 1975-2005
Size: 6″ x 8.5″
A long-running Dodd Mead series, first issued in 1941 and published through 1970. The series seems to have been redesigned in the mid-1970s and published for another few decades. The series was aimed at the juvenile market, but the titles were typical 19th and 20th-century classics. Some titles were abridged.
Jacket designs are revised over time, the earliest seems to be the design below, common to the series, for David Copperfield by Charles Dickens. This book contains a copyright date of 1943 but could have been a later reprint. The series name is prominent on the jacket spine and front. The price ($3.50) is on the front jacket flap.
The back of the jacket lists titles “In this new series.” Around the World in Eighty Days is advertised on the rear jacket flap. 74 titles are listed, all published between 1941 and 1947 (thus 1947 might be the printing year of this particular book).
The jacket above lists 74 titles, which were published between 1941 and 1947. 44 more titles were added between 1948 and 1970. The series was redesigned and reissued in 1975. I may have missed a few titles, but at least 118 titles were published in the series between 1941 and 1970 (as listed below, which includes the list from the jacket and additional titles added after the jacket catalog was printed).
“IN THIS NEW SERIES, the world’s great novels are supplemented and enhanced by illustrations, captions and introductions, giving the reader the fascinating background of the author, his works and his era. The timeless quality of great literature, the historic illustrations and the large, readable type combine to make this growing series the foremost library of its kind.”
Adam Bede, by Eliot
Afloat and Ashore, by Cooper
Arabian Nights
Around the World in Eighty Days, by Verne
Barnaby Rudge, by Dickens
Ben Hur, by Wallace
The Black Arrow, by Stevenson
Black Beauty, by Sewell
Bleak House, by Dickens
Christmas Tales, by Dickens
The Cloister and the Hearth, by Reade
The Cruise of the Cachalot, by Bullen
David Copperfield, by Dickens
The Deerslayer, by Cooper
Dombey and Son, by Dickens
Famous Tales of Sherlock Holmes, by Doyle
Great Expectations, by Dickens
Green Mansions, by Hudson
Gulliver’s Travels, by Swift
Henry Esmond, by Thackeray
The House of the Seven Gables, by Hawthorne
Huckleberry Finn, by Clemens
The Hunchback of Notre Dame, by Hugo
Ivanhoe, by Scott
Jane Eyre, by Bronte
A Journey to the Centre of the Earth, by Verne
Kenilworth, by Scott
Kidnapped, by Stevenson
King Arthur, by Malory
The Last Days of Pompeii, by Bulwer Lytton
The Last of the Mohicans, by Cooper
Little Dorrit, by Dickens
Lorna Doone, by Blackmore
The Man in the Iron Mask, by Dumas
Martin Chuzzlewit, by Dickens
The Moonstone, by Collins
The Mysterious Island, by Verne
Nicholas Nickleby, by Dickens
The Old Curiosity Shop, by Dickens
Oliver Twist, by Dickens
Our Mutual Friend, by Dickens
The Pathfinder, by Cooper
Pere Goriot, by Balzac
Pickwick Papers, by Dicken&
The Pilot, by Cooper
The Pioneers, by Cooper
The Prairie, by Cooper
Pride and Prejudice, by Austen
Quentin Durward, by Scott
Quo Vadis, by Sienkiewicz
The Red Badge of Courage and Other Stories, by Crane
The Return of the Native, by Hardy
Robinson Crusoe, by Defoe
The Scarlet Letter, by Hawthorne
Sense and Sensibility, by Austen
Silas Marner, by Eliot
The Sketch Book, by Irving
The Spy, by Cooper
A Tale of Two Cities, by Dickens
Tales, by Poe
The Talisman, by Scott
The Three Musketeers, by Dumas
Tom Sawyer, by Clemens
Treasure Island, by Stevenson
Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea, by Verne
Twenty Years After, by Dumas
Two Years Before the Mast, by Dana
Uncle Tom’s Cabin, by Stowe
Vanity Fair, by Thackeray
Walden, by Thoreau
The Way of All Flesh, by Butler
Westward Ho!, by Kingsley
The Wreck of the Grosvenor, by Russell
Wuthering Heights, by Bronte
Additional titles:
The Warden, and Barchester Towers, by Anthony Trollope (1948)
Crime and Punishment, by Fyodor Dostoyevsky (1950)
Pygmalion and other Plays, by Bernard Shaw (1957)
Captains Courageous and Other Stories, by Rudyard Kipling (1959)
The Odyssey, by Homer (1959)
The Mill on the Floss, by George Eliot (1960)
A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court, by Mark Twain (1960)
Tess of the d’Urbervilles, by Thomas Hardy (1960)
The Call of the Wild, by Jack London (1960)
The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde and other Famous Tales, by Robert Louis Stevenson (1961)
The Luck of Roaring Camp and Other Tales, by Bret Harte (1961)
Emma, by Jane Austen (1961)
Lord Jim, by Joseph Conrad (1961)
Short Novels, by Henry James (1961)
Autobiography, by Benvenuto Cellini (1961)
The Souls of Black Folk, by W.E.B. Du Bois (1961)
From the Earth to the Moon, by Jules Verne (1962)
The White Company, by Arthur Conan Doyle (1962)
Kim, by Rudyard Kipling (1962)
Adventures of Don Quixote de la Mancha, by Miguel de Cervantes (1962)
Short Stories, by Nathaniel Hawthorne (1962)
Everybody’s Plutarch, by Plutarch (1962)
Typhoon, and Other Tales of the Sea, by Joseph Conrad (1963)
White Fang, and Other Stories, by Jack London (1963)
The Autobiography, and Other Writings, by Benjamin Franklin (1963)
The Oregon Trail, by Francis Parkman (1964)
The Rise of Silas Lapham, by William Dean Howells (1964)
The Scarlet Pimpernel, by Baroness Emmuska Orczy (1964)
Up From Slavery, by Booker T Washington (1965)
The Prince and the Pauper, by Mark Twain (1965)
Three Tragedies, by William Shakespeare (1965)
Three Comedies, by William Shakespeare (1965)
Anna Karenina, by Leo Tolstoy (1966)
Three Histories, by William Shakespeare (1966)
Five Tales, by Herman Melville (1967)
The History of Tom Jones, by Henry Fielding (1967)
The Pilgrim’s Progress, by John Bunyan (1968)
Far From the Madding Crowd, by Thomas Hardy (1968)
Life on the Mississippi, by Mark Twain (1968)
The Virginian, by Owen Wister (1968)
The Hound of the Baskervilles, by Arthur Conan Doyle (1968)
Histories II, by William Shakespeare (1968)
Madame Bovary, by Gustave Flaubert (1969)
Dracula, by Bram Stoker (1970)
The earliest bindings follow a design for what would have been thought of as a typical fine binding at mid-century, quarter bound with bars and filigree, bound to look just fine on a suburban living room bookshelf. A series colophon is printed on the front of the book with the initials GIC.
The half-title page:
A list of titles faces the title page.
The copyright page includes copyright of 1943.
