Dell Mapbacks

Dell 5, Four Frightened Women by George Harmon Coxe, was the first of the mapbacks. On the back cover of each of these books is, naturally, a map—a cutaway bird’s-eye view of the apartment building, house, hotel or city-section in which the events of the book take place. These drawings were generally quite faithful to the books; the most careful one was probably the map sketched by author Hake Talbot for his own book, Rim of the Pit (Dell 173), and executed, as were most of the mapbacks, by Ruth Belew. Almost all Dell Books published until 1951 were provided with a mapback; beginning in that year, the practice was gradually abandoned. Dell’s sales department hated the idea; they found the maps unnecessary and noncommercial, and felt that back covers could better be reserved for advertising blurbs. The Book of the Paperback: A Visual History of the Paperback Book (1982) by Piet Schreuders I’ve long been fascinated by the Dell Mapbacks even though I’ve only ever seen pictures of them.…