Friday, October 2, 2009

A. Hyatt Verrill


Some of the most difficult series to obtain in dust jackets are the one's written by A. Hyatt Verrill (1871-1954). Mattson's guide lists three Verrill series.

The Boy Adventurers - 4 volumes (Putnam's)
Deep Sea Hunters - 3 volumes (Appleton)
Radio Detectives Series - 4 volumes (Appleton)



These are short series published in the mid 1920's during a time when these publishers did small print runs of series books. Because of that these books are uncommon. In addition the cross over collecting of a series about the early days of the radio makes the last series listed even harder to find.

Verrill wrote more than just these eleven series books. His list includes more than one hundred books many of which reflect his interests in natural history, travel, and science fiction. He wrote more than twenty tales for the Amazing Stories Quarterly




He was born in 1871 in New Haven, Connecticut. He attended Yale University where his father also taught. He served as the natural history editor of Webster's International Dictionary in 1896. In that role he illustrated numerous entries. In 1902 he invented the autochrome process of natural color photography. During his lifetime he spent significant periods of time on archeological missions to Central America, South America and the West indies.

In future blogs I will review his three juvenile series.




2 comments:

  1. Another series is composed of The Trail of the Cloven Foot and The Trail of the White Indians.
    Also, The Treasure of Bloody Gut and Carib Gold are the same story with very minor changes.
    Most of Verrill's works, including all of his SF works are on my blog for family and fans.

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  2. Here is that Link to Verrill's work...http://stillwoods.blogspot.com/2010/01/ahverrill-his-story-so-far.html

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