“BIGGLES” OF THE CAMEL SQUADRON - HOW TO IDENTIFY THE FIRST
EDITION
by Roger Harris
A restored copy of an original John
Hamilton ‘wrap-around’ dust jacket for”Biggles” of
the Camel Squadron’
“Biggles” of the Camel Squadron' was the third
Biggles book published by John Hamilton and the first ever Biggles book to have
the word “Biggles” in the title – hence the quotation marks round the name! The thirteen separate stories had previously
been published in 'Modern Boy' Magazine from issue 284 (dated 15th July
1933) to issue 296 (dated 7th
October 1933). However, the first
five stories, ‘The Professor’, ‘The Joy-Ride’, ‘The Bridge Party’, ‘The Bottle
Party’ and ‘The Trap’ had originally been published in ‘Popular Flying’
Magazine, monthly, from January 1933 to May 1933.
The book itself was published by John
Hamilton Ltd, in March 1934, with the British Library receiving their copy on
16th April 1934 (so it must have been published earlier than this
date).
The book was later published in the
Boy’s Friend Library Series, as issue 610, dated 3rd February 1938,
but (bizarrely) it was re-titled “Biggles Goes to War” which is nothing to do
with the later Oxford book “Biggles Goes to War” published in May 1938 (but two
different Biggles books with the same title, being published within weeks of
each other, must have lead to some considerable
confusion!)
“Biggles” of the Camel Squadron was published
in at least eight editions by John Hamilton and the first edition of the book
was published as part of the John Hamilton "Ace" series.
The price of the book was 3 shillings
and 6 pence. Just a
brief note about "old money". Prior to decimalisation there
were 12 pence to a shilling and 20 shillings to a pound - so there were 240
pence in a pound. 3 shillings and 6 pence was
therefore 42 pence (pence was referred to by the letter "d" in old
money). On decimalisation, a shilling became 5 new pence so in "new
money" the book would have cost 17.5 pence.
The pages of my first edition were
originally tinted blue along the top edge. I have displayed photographs of my
original first edition to show the dimensions of the book and also to show what
the first few pages look like to assist people in identifying first editions of
the book.
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Above you can
see that the first three pictures show the size of the first edition book
cover. The book is 190 millimetres long
and is 40 millimetres wide.
The depth is
just under 130 millimetres from the back of the spine
to the tip of the cover.
My first
edition of “Biggles” of the Camel Squadron has a double flyleaf – that is two
blank pages at the front of the book.
From the age marks and thickness of the paper, these appear to be entirely
original and genuine and do not appear to have been added later. I would love to hear from any other collector
out there who has another first edition of this book to hear if their copy is
the same. Is this a feature of the first
edition?
As with all of
the John Hamilton books, there is no publication date.
Although
generally speaking, it is hard to determine the different John Hamilton
editions of "Biggles” of the Camel Squadron’, as the books were undated,
the first edition itself can be determined from the catalogue in the back of
the book. The first edition contained a
28 page catalogue dated Spring 1934 (see photo 15
above). The book itself has blue boards
and the titles are on the front cover and on the spine in gold gilt (although
on my copy this has obviously faded over the years). The book was part of the “Ace”
series and has 254 pages and the Sundial logo is at the base of the spine
followed by the words “John Hamilton”. The
book has a colour frontispiece and four other illustrations by Howard Leigh.