£600
156 vols., oblong 8vo, each pp. c.200-300. Original colour-printed wrappers, stapled spines. Paper spotted. Wrappers variously rubbed and worn, a handful loose and one front wrapper lost, a couple with sellotape repairs, overall in good condition.
A substantial collection of the Armed Services Editions, special paperbacks produced in a unique horizontal format (by means of printing two books, one above and one below, at the same time on magazine presses, then slicing the resulting volume across the middle) for distribution to the American military in the Second World War. The small format has text in two columns and almost always contains (and advertises on the cover) the complete original text. The books were distributed between 1943 and 1947 and over that period over 1200 different titles were printed in over 120 million total copies.
This collection contains over 150 different titles, with no duplication, and in fact no individual author represented by more than two titles. Many are authors of the day, but there is also canonical literature such as Conrad's Lord Jim, Pickwick Papers and David Copperfield, I, Claudius, The Grapes of Wrath, and Look Homeward, Angel. Genre fiction is also represented, with The Time Machine, Derleth's Sleep No More anthology, and The Return of Tarzan, alongside a number of westerns and a few crime novels.
Given the huge production run, despite the fact that many copies were read to death or abandoned in war, individual volumes are not hard to find. Collections are much rarer: only one complete set is known (at the Library of Congress) with a few near-complete holdings elsewhere in the USA. Relatively few are recorded in UK institutions and groups of more than a handful at a time scarcely appear on the market.
