Determining the Original Series of an LBB Title

Tracing the history of a title isn't easy in the Little Blue Books world. One of the problems is Haldeman-Julius's inconsistent use of numbers -- he didn't always assign numbers to new titles sequentially. This seems to have been especially true in the early years: numbers jumped around insanely, so a lower number didn't always indicate a lower publication date. Sometimes you couldn't even be sure of the series. For example, the last number used in the original Appeal's Pocket Series (APS) was 36, but numbers 17- 23 and a few others weren't used until the name "Appeal's Pocket Series" was replaced by "People's Pocket Series."

The following chart shows the original series where titles allegedly first appeared. (Some numbers are missing in the Re-Used Title Numbers column -- I didn't have enough info to place them.) The chart is synthesized from the work of Jake Gibbs in "Dating of Appeals Series" Big Blue Newsletter No. 11 and in "Dating Little Blue Books"Big Blue Newsletter No. 4, and of Richard Colles Johnson & G. Thomas Tanselle in "The Haldeman-Julius Little Blue Books as a Bibliographical Problem" (edited by Tim Davenport) Big Blue Newsletter No. 5.

Cautionary Notes: (1) Both Gibbs and Tanselle warn that their conclusions are tentative and may be supplanted by further discoveries. (2) There may be placement errors (where your Editor typed the number into the wrong cell/field).

One use of the information in this chart is in surmising the scarcity of earlier titles, especially when their numbers were re-used.

Numbering in this chart is based on the numbering used in the (Nearly) Complete Checklist of Little Blue Books Cover Titles. Readers should use that material to tie numbers to book titles.

Last update: 9 March 2009

Series

Dates

1st Use of Title Number