"Mapbacks" and More: the back cover cartographies of the Dell paperbacks
From 1942 to 1960, the Dell Publishing Company produced 1,020 paperback books. They were priced at 25 cents each and were primarily reprints of popular fiction titles, covering a wide range of genres: mystery, romance, western, adventure, and science fiction. The covers featured original artwork by a host of commercial illustrators, and 577 of them also featured maps or diagrams on the back covers. These books came to be known as “mapbacks,” and are highly prized by collectors today. Although un-credited on the books themselves, researchers have linked the illustrator Ruth Belew to hundreds of the "mapback" maps. In 2021, the Bancroft Library acquired a complete collection of the Dell paperbacks.
Bancroft Library staff members Geanna Hernandez-Phan and Randy Brandt will be bringing over a choice selection of the Library's mapbacks for visitors to explore. Please join us in taking a dive into the world of mapbacks, complemented with maps from the Earth Sciences & Map Library collection.