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RARA-AVIS: Hammett bibliography
On Sun, 2 Feb 1997, William Denton <buff@vex.net> wrote:
>
> From Eddie Duggan's listing of Continental Op stories, a book I have
> and some web sites I found, I have started to put together a Dashiell
> Hammett bibliography. I've got all the novels down as well as most
> later collections (although some are probably missing), but the short
> stories I don't have at hand. I'm wondering if some of the Hamett
> experts here could help.
There is a full bibliography, with very few errors in, by Richard Layman:
*Dashiell Hammett: A Descriptive Bibliography* (Pittsburgh: University
Press, 1979).
There are several articles by William F. Nolan addressing Hammett
bibliography in *Armchair Detective* (there's also a booklet by Mundell,
purporting to list short stories, which I believe contains several
inaccuracies and/or omissions).
>In the collections, there are many short stories listed that don't
>have the Op (there are the few Spade ones, then many others). Does
>anyone have a listing of them, or some details they could give me?
Ah ... this is where the trouble starts. It will be difficult and time
consuming to list the contents of every Hammett story in every Hammett
collection, and every compilation with a Hammett story in.
Logic suggests that a more 'do-able' project would seek to establish the
first appearance of each item. This would, however, exclude the Bestseller
Mystery & Jonathan Press Mystery series, as well as the Dell collections,
as these are all reprints.
If the purpose of the bibliography is to list every Hammett item ever
published (as Bill's subject line suggests: 'A full Hammett bibliography),
then that must strive for exhaustive (-ing?) completion <anoraks at 100
paces?>. If the purpose is to establish the corpus per se, that will
entail the compilation of an extensive listing of first periodical
publication. Either method would seem to exclude the collections that most
people (ie all but specialist collectors and bibliographers) would have or
might know about: Hellman (1966) and Marcus (1974).
To list all the contents of the Bestseller Mystery, Jonathan Press and
Dell collections is a rather repetitive, laborioius undertaking and,
unless it is part of the fuller project of cataloguing *everything*, I
can't really see a justification for such an undertaking.
FWIW, my recommendation would be to go for the first periodical publication
option.
> Also, when did _The Black Mask_ become _Black Mask_? Was it when Shaw
> took over?
Yes. The November 1926 issue was the first time the magazine used the
truncated title.
Hammett's first contribution to _Black Mask_ was "The Big Knock-Over" (Feb
1927). "The Creeping Siamese" (March 1926) should be shown as in _The
Black Mask_ [mea culpa].
Eddie Duggan
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