1. See, for example, Roger H. Smith, Paperback Parnassus
(Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1976) 65-76; Thomas L. Bonn, Under Cover:
An Illustrated History of American Mass Market Paperbacks (Middlesex
and New York: Penguin, 1982) 25-64; and Kenneth C. Davis, Two-Bit Culture:
The Paperbacking of America (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1984).
2. Frank MacShane, The Life of Raymond Chandler
(New York: Dutton, 1976), p. 59.
4. Ibid., p.73. The standard author's contract of the
time began with a ten percent royalty with and escalator up to fifteen
or twenty percent.
5. Frank MacShane, ed., The Notebooks of Raymond
Chandler (New York: Ecco Press, 1976), p. 10.
6. MacShane, The Life of Raymond Chandler, p.
89; and, Matthew J. Bruccoli, Raymond Chandler: A Descriptive Bibliography
(Pittsburg: University of Pittsburg Press, 1979), p. 13.
7. Bruccoli, Raymond Chandler: A Descriptive Bibliography,
pp. 19-31
8. Frank MacShane, ed., Selected Letters of Raymond
Chandler (New York: Columbia U P, 1981), p. 22.
9. Frank Gruber, "Some Notes on Mystery Novels
and Their Authors." Reprinted in The Notebooks of Raymond Chandler,
pp. 33-34.
12. In his discussion of Chandler's rejection of the
slick magazines, Frank MacShane cites a letter to James M. Fox as evidence
that "there was one real danger in writing for the slicks which Chandler
recognized early" (Life 77). In the letter Chandler writes,
The slicks pay good money and they are very nice people, but the trouble
with them is that they are very unsafe. They're never sure what they want
and if they guess wrong, you are out of a job. You may go on for years
getting $50,000 or even more for a serial, and then all of a sudden you
find yourself out in the cold. . . . and by that time you may--it's not
for certain--have denatured your writing to the point where you can't get
back to the things you once did well (Qtd. MacShane 77). This letter was
written in 1954, fifteen years after Chandler's decision not to publish
in the slicks. Chandler is giving advice to Fox, a Dutch-born adventure
writer. The ideas expressed in the letter may be accurate, but it was written
at a time when the literary market was quite different than it was in 1939
and at a time when Chandler was a commercial success.
13. Bruccoli, Raymond Chandler: A Descriptive Bibliography,
p. 120.
15. This figure is based on an assumed 10% royalty,
half of which would be split with Knopf.
16. MacShane, The Life of Raymond Chandler,
p. 105.
17. John Tebbel, A History of Book Publishing in
the United States. Vol. 4 (New York: R.R. Bowker, 1981), p. 347.
18. The United States first agreed to international
copyright in 1891.
19. Ray Walters, Paperback Talk (Chicago: Academy
Chicago, 1985), pp. 2-5.
21. Bruccoli, Raymond Chandler: A Descriptive Bibliography,
pp. 8-41.
22. Two of Chandler's novels, The Big Sleep
and The Lady in the Lake, were also released as Armed Services Editions
in 1945. These paperbacks were considered to be support for servicemen
fighting overseas, so Chandler received no royalties from them. The Armed
Services Editions were important, though, because they introduced Chandler's
stories to an audience who might not have read his works otherwise.
24. "Murder Business," Newsweek, 31
October 1949, pp. 68-70.
27. William Luhr, Raymond Chandler and Film
(New York: Frederick Ungar, 1982.), p. 68.
28. Bruccoli, Raymond Chandler: A Descriptive Bibliography,
p. 43.
29. The early appreciation of Chandler as a literary
craftsman began in England in the mid-1940s. Dilys Powell, Desmond MacCarthy,
Elizabeth Bowen, and W.H. Auden all wrote articles praising his novels.
30. My quotations from the paperback covers are taken
from xerox copies supplied by The Special Collections Department of the
Kent State University Library, which holds a complete run of Chandler paperbacks.