Van Dine

Yellow covers in Spain : The Biblioteca Oro

Fu

Sax Rohmer, El Diabolico Doctor (Biblioteca Oro, 35, 1935

It was not long before  a Spanish publisher introduced the  1920’s fashion of Yellow Crime Fiction booklets to Spain.  Only a few years after Mondadori in Italy,  the Barcelona publisher Molino proposed in 1933 (the year of the publishing house’s creation),  a series of Crime Fiction  pulps with yellow covers in its series Biblioteca Oro. Like the Italian series, this Spanish counterpart would become a landmark series, publishing the most representative authors in the genre.  The books were on average some 100 pages long and cost 0,90 cts.

 The first period of the series starts in 1933 and finishes in 1936, the year of the civil war.  In its original period, the series published 25 authors, accounting for 68 books (see list below).  The authors who saw the most of their books translated  in the series were Oppenheim (8), Martyn (7), Christie (6) and Van Dine (5).  Christie published there in that period the following books, whose translated title remain close to the original    (this was not always the case in French)  as can be see here : Continue reading

A Wordcloud History of early Crime Fiction

 Poe Morgue

(click to enlarge)

Edgar Allan POE (1809-1849)  The Murders in the Rue Morgue (Graham’s Magazine, Philadelphia, 1841)

Total of 13,724 words and 2,847 unique words. Most frequent words in the corpus: voice (42), said (35), Dupin(27), house (26), head (24).

Affaire Lerouge

Emile GABORIAU (1836-1873) L’Affaire Lerouge (Le Pays, 1863;   Paris, Dentu, 1866; The Widow Lerouge, 1873)

Total of 123,867 words and 8,792 unique words. Most frequent words in the corpus: said (450), old (443), Sir(351), Noel (311), man (288).

orcival

Emile GABORIAU (1836-1873) Le Crime d’Orcival (1867), The Mystery of Orcival

 Total of 103,639 words and 8,452 unique words. Most frequent words in the corpus: said (532), Lecoq (322), Plantat (307), man (252), know (230) Continue reading