Continuing my series looking at various publishers, this time we take a look at Black Dog Books (BDB). BDB is basically Tom Roberts, who reprints various pulp fiction works.
He doesn’t do hero pulps, but is more focused on adventure, but also science fiction, mysteries, and a few other genres. He does have a few reprint series, and overall the quality of the works is high, with good design and cover artwork, some by Tom himself. Some of the works are edited by Doug Ellis and Gene Epstein.
BDB started around 1998. At this time, they put out several chapbooks — 5×8-inch booklets saddle-stiched with color paper covers at first, later full color covers. Most were focused on specific authors. There was a five-volume set of H. Bedford-Jones works, other sets have Carl Jacobi and others.
Then with the advent of print-on-demand, the move was to that format, with full color covers. In most cases, the focus was on specific authors per volume, along with series. Some of the series included the Lester Dent Library, the Talbot Mundy Library, the Sax Rohmer Library, the Adventure Library, the Signature Series, and more. There are some non-fiction works, but no new works.
As noted, several collections have been edited by Gene Christie. These include two volumes of Seabury Quinn works, and themed collections from early pulp magazines.
Black Dog Books also published most (all?) of the Windy City Pulp Stories, which is the program book for the Windy City Pulp and Paper Convention. I’ve reviewed these separately.
Their output has slown in recent years, which is sad. Their website is incomplete, and you have to purchase their works from Amazon only. Some works are now unavailable, and some series are still incomplete, such as the Talbot Mundy Library which has three volumes more that haven’t been published and I really want them. I’d like to see more in the Adventure Library series.
And their older website listed several planned works, including reprints of Robert Sampson‘s The Night Master (on The Shadow) and The Spider, the only book-length study of this character.
I hope that this publisher can come back, at least to provide us the unfinished series, and if not, somehow get these works over to another publisher so they can continue them.
