February 10, 2008

Seven Seas Books

This post now resides on my other site 50 Watts:

8 comments:

  1. The three Christmas tales from Dickens . . . the first was doubtless A Christmas Carol. The second . . . The Cricket on the Hearth? But for the third--what would they choose? I would choose The Haunted Man, but I bet they picked The Chimes.

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  2. Missing from this list is "New Masses: An Anthology From The Rebel '30s," edited by Joseph North, introduced by Maxwell Geismar.

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  3. Interesting stuff! I have quite a large collection of Seven Seas books (66) and have often thought about trying to get a full list of those in existence. Of these 43 were on your list, but 23 were not). These are:
    North,Joseph No men are strangers (1976)
    Saxton,Alexander The Great Midland (1958)
    Brand,Millen Some Love,Some Hunger (1959)
    Bredel,Willi The Death of General Moreau and other stories (1962)
    Seghers,Anna Revolt of the Fisherman of Snta Barbara; A Price on his Head (1960)
    Strittmatter,Erwin Ole Bienkopp (1966)
    Winnington,Alan The Slaves of the Cool Mountains (1962)
    Lawrence,Lars Out of the Dust (1958)
    Heym,Stefan The Crusaders Vol 1 and Vol 2 (1958)
    Polonsky,Abraham A Season of Fear (1959)
    Bessie,Alvah Bread and a Stone (1961)
    De Bruyn,Gunter Buridan's Ass (1973)
    Stern,Kurt and Jeanne Ricefield Battlefield (1969)
    Cope,Jack The Fair House (1960)
    Dodd,Martha Sowing the Wind (1960)
    Kaufmann,Walter The Curse of Maralinga and other stories (1959)
    La Guma,Alex And a Threefold Cord (1964)
    Foner, Philip S Jack London American Rebel (1958)
    Mally, E. Louise (trans) Immortal Lieder - 800 years of German Poetry (1962)
    Stewart, Margaret (trans) A Seven Seas Sampler - collection of british 19th century short stories (1961)
    Laas,Hilda (editor) The Fabulous American, A Benjamin Franklin Almanac (1964)
    Lardner, Ring Jr. The Ecstasy of Owen Muir (1959)

    If you want any more info on any of these, then please let me know.

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  4. Jago, definitely get in touch -- ajourneyroundmyskull at gmail.

    Maybe you could do a guest post featuring some of the jackets and/or descriptions of your favorites. Thanks! I'm going to add these to the main list asap.

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  5. The publisher and "brain" behind Seven Seas Books was American-born Gertrude Gelbin. Re: Stefan Heym's book "The Glasenapp Case." This title is a reissue of Heym's first novel called "Hostages." It was first published in the US in about 1942. Heym updated it slightly for Seven Seas, and gave it a new title. Btw, "Hostages" was also made into a movie by Paramount in 1943. It starred William Bendix. The score was composed by Victor Young. Lastly, Seven Seas reportedly published approximately 140 titles. A search in the NY Times archives under "Seven Seas Books" leads to two relevant articles. A first interview with Gertrude Gelbin done in the mid-sixties, and a second one with her successor (American-born Kay Pankey) roughly 10 years later.

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  6. Thanks for the information. I'll look up the Times articles.

    I need to do a follow-up to this post asap.

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  7. My mother Dorothy Hewett whose novel Bobbin Up (on your list, and later reissued in English as a Virago Modern Classic) was published in various languages by Seven Seas. She writes about meeting Gertrude Gelbin in Berlin and her experience with Seven Seas in her autobiography, Wild Card.

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