Dashiell Hammett, Black Mask Magazine, &c
Having gotten through about half of my new collection of forty Perry Mason novels, I needed a break. So I re-read the Hammett novels. It had been ten years. All but one were in one of those leather-bound gilt-edged collections you can purchase in any used book store. And the Maltese Falcon, in a version I have that contains the original Knopf text, and dozens and dozens of archival photographs illustrating throughout the work locations in the plot as they were in December '28. Here's a couple of them:
I spent a few weeks a year in San Francisco on business in the '80s, where I stayed at the Beresford Arms, a block east of Sam Spade's apartments (pictures & plans), which I passed every day. (I knew them to be so then.) On a few occasions when the Beresford Arms was busy, as I regular they let me stay in some of the unrenovated suites on the ninth floor, which were still much like Sam's suite. There was an interesting old lady who still lived up there, a remnant from the hotel resident days. So anyway, on a whim I decided to read the Wikipedia on Hammett, and then Googled him and went prospecting, and I found a most rich vein. Hammett published in the Black Mask magazine. At www.blackmask.com -- which is apparently the same as www.munseys.com -- I found that there are 20, 000 short stories and novels online, including many works from the Black Mask magazine. I also found an archival collection of Black Mask magazines' cover art. It looks like Munsyes sells DVD collections of these works, which I think are out of copyright now (it's 70 years, as I recall). At Munsyes I picked Pulp Fiction + H + Hammett Here are the results reformatted for your ease of access; 16 of Hammett's Black Mask short stories: I obtained the dates shown above from a Hammett anthology I found, which discusses a number of the relationships between various Hammett works. I tried going through Hammett's years at the Black Mask covers site, but many covers have no information on them or are too small to read. I did find these two cases of Hammett mentioned on the cover (pick for larger image):
If you are interested in exploring further, you may wish to check out some of Munsyes' most popular items, including (pick to read):
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