The Great Gnome Press Science Fiction Odyssey

James E. Gunn
1955

This book is in excellent condition.  There are just two or three minor faults to comment on which we will do presently, but first just a small bit of provenance.  This book is one of three I have that come out of the library of Gregg and Tina Riehl.  I must thank them for caring for their books – all three are in pretty good condition, and this is the best.  The book has an interesting cover.  I wasn’t sure what to make of it, but now that I’m reading it – the Review will be up in the next week or so – it’s making more sense.
I’m still working on getting the lighting right for these pics.  I’m loathe to extract the jackets from their protective covers, but I might have to for the sake of decent images for you to enjoy.  Just a touch soiled, but nevertheless, a clean cover as you can see.
Book sans dust jacket is nice too.
Currey ‘A’ priority binding at that.  I love the cloth shelf back with boards style.  Looks classy, especially with that attractive patterning on the boards.
Viewed from the top it still looks very good.  Sits nice and square and the binding is still firm and in excellent condition.
It’s much more interesting from below.  Check this out.
Exactly the same condition as the top.  But wait… what’s that we can see??  If you look carefully at the bottom of the block you can see the name of the book and surname of the author penciled in.  Let’s get closer.
I’ve zoomed in on ‘World’ and ‘Gunn’.  An interesting but unfortunately uncool thing about this book.  Perhaps more concerning is that I never noticed it until I stated inspecting the book for this Close Up.
The head and tail of the spine are in great condition, not too much drama there, perhaps a little wear showing at the head of the dust jacket.
But the tail is in superb condition.  That writing is visible here also.
A touch of darkening is beginning to become apparent, working it’s way in from the edges of the block.

Finally, the rear of the jacket is pretty good apart from a bit of soiling on the spine edge (probably from grubby hands).

It looks a bit worse than it does live.  Also a bit of a graze between the Prelude to Space and Iceworld listing.

Year: 1955
Paid: $45
Art: Murray Tinkelman
Quantity: 4000 copies
Binding: Currey priority ‘A’. Currey claims blue-gray boards with light blue cloth shelf back. Looks more greenish to me. Black spine lettering.
GP Edition Notes: 1st edition so stated.
Comments: Slight block darkening, light pencil inscription on the base of the block and slight soiling to dust jacket. Previous owners embossed stamping to front free end-paper. Otherwise a very nice copy.
Expand Upon: wikipedia.com, Internet Speculative Fiction Database

This entry was posted on June 15, 2009 at 7:15 am and is filed under 1955, Close Up with tags James E. Gunn, Murray Tinkelman, This Fortress World. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.