Raymond Chandler, Spanish Blood, The World Publishing Company Tower Mystery, 1946

It is well known that hardboiled stories, which we would now describe as noir, first appeared in 1920s pulps magazines. And that, from the early 1940s, noir novels were circulated as paperback reprints or, in many cases, paperback originals. This belies the fact that the influential, early hardboiled novels were published as hardbacks, complete with polished dust jackets. This benefited especially hardboiled writers of the 1930s, before the triumph of paperbacks. But even after that, noir authors whose books had been published as hardbacks tended to find an easier way into the modern canon of noir literature. While paperback warranted circulation (as the case of Spillane made clear), hardback still anchored conservation, and hence institutionalisation.

W. R. Burnett, Little Caesar, Lincoln MacVeagh, The Dial Press, 1929

Dashiell Hammett,  Red Harvest Alfred A. Knopf, 1929

 

Dashiell Hammett,  The Dain Curse, Alfred A. Knopf, 1929

Dashiell Hammett,  The Maltese Falcon, Alfred A. Knopf, 1930

Raoul Whitfield,  Green Ice,   Alfred A. Knopf, 1930

W. R. Burnett, The Silver Eagle, Lincoln MacVeagh, The Dial Press, 1931

 

Dashiell Hammett, The Glass Key, Alfred A. Knopf, 1931

 Raoul Whitfield, The Virgin Kills, Alfred A. Knopf, 1932

 Paul Cain, Fast One, Doubleday Doran, 1933

The Thin Man, Alfred A. Knopf, 1934

James M.Cain, The Postman Always Rings Twice,  Alfred A. Knopf, 1934

Don Tracy, Criss-Cross,  The Vanguard Press, 1934

Jonathan Latimer, Murder in the Madhouse, Doubleday, The Crime Club, 1935

Jonathan Latimer, The Lady in the Morgue, Doubleday The Crime Club, 1936

James M.Cain, Serenade, Alfred A. Knopf, 1937

 

Don Tracy, Last Year’s Snow, M. S. Mill Co., Inc., 1937

Horace McCoy,  I Should Have Stayed Home, Alfred A. Knopf, 1938

Raymond Chandler, Farewell, My Lovely, Alfred A. Knopf,  1940

James M.Cain,Three of a Kind, Alfred A. Knopf 1943

  Raymond Chandler, Farewell, My Lovely, Alfred A. Knopf (A Black Widow Thriller), 1945 reprint

 

Mickey Spillane,  I, the Jury,  E. P. Dutton & Co., Inc.  1947

W. R. Burnett,  The Asphalt Jungle,  Alfred A. Knopf, 1949

 Jim Thompson, Nothing More Than Murder,  Harper & Brothers, 1949

Raymond Chandler, The Raymond Chandler Omnibus, Hamish Hamilton, 1953

 

 Ross Macdonald, The Doomsters, Alfred A. Knopf, 1958

 

Source : http://www.facsimiledustjackets.com/