Paperback 898: Seminole / Theodore Pratt (Gold Medal 635)

Paperback 898: Gold Medal 635 (2nd ptg, 1957)

Title: Seminole
Author: Theodore Pratt
Cover artist: Jack Floherty [signature]

Estimated value: $7-10

Best things about this cover:

• Full frontal is cool if a. the woman is "native" or otherwise of color and b. you airbrush the nipple into virtual nothingness.
• Nothing says "sexy" like a slave auction! Seriously, this cover is infinitely gross.
• Mr. Top Hat Akimbo in the background knows it's gross. He and his bow tie are having none of it.
• If you're wondering whom the auctioneer is pointing at, just wait ...

Best things about this back cover:

• Wraparound!
• Sky looks even more insane back here. It's like Captain Cogitation there is summoning storm clouds with his mind. And his pointing pal is saying "Oooh, that one looks like a bunny."
• This painting is much, much better with the native slave auction cropped out of it.
• Just watched "Key Largo" and I'm pretty sure those two Native Americans that killed are called "The Osceola  Brothers." This Osceola was a leader of the Seminole resistance during the Second Seminole War.
• At least this novel seems to know what the white man is a "marauder."

Page 123~

Indians lay in water with lily pads over their faces to hide from the white soldiers. Seminole children were buried in pits to their heads, which were covered over with palmetto to conceal them.

~RP

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Paperback 801: Morgan's Daughter / H.G. de Lisser (Ernest Benn Ltd (UK) nn)

Paperback 801: Ernest Benn Ltd (UK) nn (1st ptg, 1961)

Title: Morgan's Daughter
Author: H.G. de Lisser
Cover artist: Uncredited

Yours for: $16


Best things about this cover:

• "Remove the ascot at once, or you will force me to make use of what appears to be an awfully anachronistic-looking handgun … sir."
• I hope this is a bodice-ripper, 'cause she's certainly ready.
• He has double fear hand! Or else "Air Keyboard Hands."
• I wanted this to be Morgan le Fay's daughter, but no.
• I picked this up in Owego a couple weeks ago, during an impromptu trip to a bookstore basement. Nothing Great, but plenty of Good.

Best things about this back cover:

• "Complacency returned"! Phew! Slavery was really rough for white people.
• The name "Three-fingered Jack" is making me thirsty for whiskey.
• Oh … *Captain* Morgan is her dad. I just got that. Now I want rum.
• With such awkward punctuation and grammar, what might not be the meaning of that last question?
• Wait, she became the "mistress" of *all* the slaves (and maroons!)? What might not be possible?

NOTE: Maroon
n.

1. often Maroon

a. A fugitive Black slave in the West Indies in the 17th and 18th centuries.

b. A descendant of such a slave.

2. A person who is marooned, as on an island.

Page 123~

Captain Thornton was a man of action. And now he was a soldier attending to his duty. He swung himself off his horse and his men followed his example. So did Cudjoe.

I wish I could tell you Cudjoe was a man-eating Saint Bernard. I really do.

~RP

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P.S. Should be back to a roughly 3x/week posting schedule now, for the foreseeable future.

Paperback 671: Mistress of Falconhurst / Lance Horner (Fawcett Gold Medal X3315)

Paperback 671: Fawcett Gold Medal X3315 (PBO, 1973)

Title: Mistress of Falconhurst
Author: Lance Horner
Cover artist: Uncredited

Yours for: Not for Sale (gift to the collection from Laurie Gagne)


Best things about this cover:

• You had me at Mandingo-font.
• Antebellum Lambada!
• His left hand is terrifying.

Best things about this back cover:

• "Did we mention MANDINGO? MANDINGO!"
• What kind of hell-on-earth do you have to create in order to become "the South's most notorious slave plantation"? Don't answer.
• "Sometimes it was hard to tell who was master and who was slave." — when I'm trying to tell master from slave, I use this simple heuristic: the slave is the black one.
• For some reason the phrase "... as only Lance Horner can tell it" is making me LOL.

Page 123~

He put his left arm around Djoubo's naked waist and drew him close, hefting his huge genitals in his right hand.

This is — swear to god — the least offensive thing on this page. What the hell, 1970s readers?

~RP

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Paperback 668: Fiona / Catherine Gaskin (Fontana 2958)

Paperback 668: Fontana 2958 (1st ptg, 1972)

Title: Fiona
Author: Catherine Gaskin
Cover artist: Uncredited [Renato Fratini]

Yours for: Not For Sale (gift to the collection from Laurie Gagne)


Best things about this cover:

• The drugs they gave her for her root canal were really, really good.
• Are you there God, it's me, sexy drugged-out plantation lady.
• If you can figure out what the hell is happening in the background with the people and the running and what not, you have better eyes and interpretive skills than I do.

Best things about this back cover:

• This novel should've been called "Dangerous Currents." That, or "Plantation Fantasies To Masturbate By."
• It's pretty impressive how this description manages to make "emancipation" seem like a species of orgasm.
• Woman's Journal—the journal read by just one woman.

Page 123~

"Before he was ill—before Maria and that rotten weed she gave him to smoke—that, and the rum—he was a clever manager."

Plantation romances are not really my cup of tea, but I am suddenly interested in Maria and her rotten weed.

~RP

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Paperback 484: Up From Slavery / Booker T. Washington (Pocket Books 80)

Paperback 484: Pocket Books 80 (1st ptg, 1940)

Title: Up From Slavery
Author: Booker T. Washington
Cover artist: N/A

Yours for: $10

Best things about this cover:

• Is this a book about denim?
• A good example of how deathly boring the packaging was on a lot of early paperbacks—and this is one of the earliest, Pocket Books having begun only a year earlier in 1939.
• One thing this book does have going for it is its condition—a little Perma-gloss peeling, a little scuffing, but other than that, square and bright and barely (if ever) read.

Best things about this back cover:

• More aesthetic austerity measures
• I sort of like this incarnation of the Pocket kangaroo—they're pushing the books-are-good-for-you angle here with the intellectual, bespectacled 'roo. Later incarnations will look younger, have better eyesight (the better to appreciate the more lurid covers)

Page 123~

From the first I have sought to impress the students with the idea that Tuskegee is not my institution, or that of the officers, but that it is their institution, and that they have as much interest in it as any of the trustees or instructors.

~RP

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