BEN SARTO – BRITISH PULP FICTION AT ASH RARE BOOKS
![]() | BEN SARTO – BRITISH PULP FICTION AT
|
BEN SARTO – BRITISH PULP FICTION | |
CLICK ON REFRESH/RELOAD TO ENSURE YOU HAVE THE UPDATED VERSION OF THIS PAGE | |
![]() |
“SARTO, Ben” – [FAWCETT, Frank Dubrez, 1891-1968] : MISS OTIS COMES TO PICCADILLY. London : Modern Fiction, [1942?]. First edition. The legendary Mabel Otis makes her first appearance in fiction: “Just under six feet tall, and every inch of it impressive “ – Giuseppe “Jews” Pellegrini “had never seen such a slap-up Society broad, except in technicolour on the screen. He never believed that such magnificent creatures could possibly exist except on celluloid”. The Otis gang hit London in a blaze of blood and dollars. Published from Modern Fiction’s N7 pre-1945 address and although the design of the upper wrapper has seemingly been altered to reflect a price change, the text on the rear wrapper reflects a country still very much at war. The evidence in the Modern Fiction Ltd. v Fawcett court case (1949) over rights in the Ben Sarto name make it clear that the book was written between December 1940 and June 1941, and first published shortly thereafter. The present copy certainly predates the British Library copy, which is dated to 1949 and has in any case been mislaid. SOLD |
![]() |
“SARTO, Ben” – [FAWCETT, Frank Dubrez, 1891-1968] : CHICAGO DAMES. London : Modern Fiction, [ca.1943]. First edition : the variant with the plain lower wrapper. The United Ladies’ Club of Chicago – Dynamite Doll, Slappy Sal (not to mention her husband Jelly the Fish), Velvet Vi, Reno Doreena – but Anna Toplitski craves the “sharp, puncturing kiss” of the hypodermic syringe. It has become apparent from the details of the May 1949 “passing off” High Court hearing before Mr Justice Romer, in which Fawcett and his publisher, Edwin Turvey, sued each other over the rights in the “Ben Sarto” name, that many of the Sarto titles were first published considerably earlier than has previously been supposed. Evidence produced at the trial over the surrender of rights in reprints suggests that the present title must have been in print prior at some time prior to the summer of 1944. £50 To purchase, call us or e-mail us at books@ashrare.com quoting stock number 30322 – or simply click on the button
|
![]() |
“SARTO, Ben” – [FAWCETT, Frank Dubrez, 1891-1968] : CHICAGO DAMES. London : Modern Fiction, [ca.1943]. First edition : the variant with the plain lower wrapper. The United Ladies’ Club of Chicago – Dynamite Doll, Slappy Sal (not to mention her husband Jelly the Fish), Velvet Vi, Reno Doreena – but Anna Toplitski craves the “sharp, puncturing kiss” of the hypodermic syringe. It has become apparent from the details of the May 1949 “passing off” High Court hearing before Mr Justice Romer, in which Fawcett and his publisher, Edwin Turvey, sued each other over the rights in the “Ben Sarto” name, that many of the Sarto titles were first published considerably earlier than has previously been supposed. Evidence produced at the trial over the surrender of rights in reprints suggests that the present title must have been in print prior at some time prior to the summer of 1944. £40 To purchase, call us or e-mail us at books@ashrare.com quoting stock number 31554 – or simply click on the button
|
![]() |
“SARTO, Ben” – [FAWCETT, Frank Dubrez, 1891-1968] : HI-JACKER’S LADY. London : Modern Fiction, [ca.1945]. First edition. “Corner of Gamm-street, Bowery. Dusk. December day; snow atop distant skyscrapers; awful squelcy slush underfoot; overhead railway smashing flashes of electricity from ice-hard rails. Everything around furtive, glum, anti-law, on account of the cold douche of Prohibition”. £50 To purchase, call us or e-mail us at books@ashrare.com quoting stock number 43199 – or simply click on the button
|
![]() |
“SARTO, Ben” – [FAWCETT, Frank Dubrez, 1891-1968] : MISS OTIS THROWS A COME-BACK. London : Modern Fiction, [1947]. First edition. An early title in the Miss Otis series – the “ritzy racketeer”. One of the most memorable characters in all the pulp fiction of the period. “An experienced dame, you would say, looking at Miss Otis in her sun parlor; a dame who had got ‘it’ in overweight quantities”. SOLD |
![]() |
“SARTO, Ben” – [FAWCETT, Frank Dubrez, 1891-1968] : DUCHESS OF DOPE. London : Modern Fiction, [ca.1945]. First edition. Man returns to Idaho from the mountains of Chile to find his sweet young wife has killed herself having become a dope addict: an exposé of the American morphine, heroin and cocaine rackets. “Then there was Jacqueline; tall, slant-eyed, raven-haired, fiery, dynamic; packing a flashlook that would burn up almost any guy with desire. They called her ‘The Duchess of Dope’ ...”. One of the most successful of all the Modern Fiction titles. SOLD |
![]() |
“SARTO, Ben” – [FAWCETT, Frank Dubrez, 1891-1968] : MISS OTIS GOES UP. London : Modern Fiction, [1947]. First edition. A murder in the Otis Restaurant – a revenge killing by a strange young man. £75 To purchase, call us or e-mail us at books@ashrare.com quoting stock number 41962 – or simply click on the button
|
![]() |
“SARTO, Ben” – [FAWCETT, Frank Dubrez, 1891-1968] : MISS OTIS GOES UP. London : Modern Fiction, [1947]. First edition. A murder in the Otis Restaurant – a revenge killing by a strange young man. £75 To purchase, call us or e-mail us at books@ashrare.com quoting stock number 42585 – or simply click on the button
|
![]() |
“SARTO, Ben” – [FAWCETT, Frank Dubrez, 1891-1968] : PINDAY AND THE GIRL SLAVERS. London : Modern Fiction, [1947?]. First edition. Pinday Gotch, con-man, salesman, and tracker-down of derelict goods, is brought in to find the white slavers behind the Central Troupe Training Academy on 23rd Avenue. It has become apparent from the details of the May 1949 “passing off” High Court hearing before Mr Justice Romer, in which Fawcett and his publisher, Edwin Turvey, sued each other over the rights in the “Ben Sarto” name, that many of the Sarto titles were first published several years earlier than has previously been supposed. The manuscript of the present title was produced in court to support Turvey’s claim that he had himself made considerable alterations to Fawcett’s text. The title given on the cover is “Pinday and the White Slaver” (as is the running title on some of the text pages), the title under which the book was later reissued with a quite different cover design. SOLD |
![]() |
“SARTO, Ben” – [FAWCETT, Frank Dubrez, 1891-1968] : MISS OTIS HAS A DAUGHTER. London : Modern Fiction, [1948]. First edition. Playing with his own name, Fawcett gives us cheapstore dressmaker Frank Driffield Tawfitt, who has taken a shine to the mysterious and alluring new partner in Manhattan’s Paradise Restaurant – Miss Otis has gone incognito. £75 To purchase, call us or e-mail us at books@ashrare.com quoting stock number 41963 – or simply click on the button
|
![]() |
“SARTO, Ben” – [FAWCETT, Frank Dubrez, 1891-1968] : SOHO SPIVS. London : Modern Fiction, [1948]. First edition. “These ‘spivs’, as they are named, have no identity cards, no ration books, no clothing or other coupons of legal acquisition. They are, in a civic sense, outlaws”. Post-war London memorably evoked as swell-looking “Yorkshire Alice”, popular with thieves and con-men, is knifed to death in a Soho alley. Correspondence from 1947 between Fawcett and his publisher, Edwin Turvey, reveals that the original manuscript was mislaid for a time, but that Fawcett was paid £33 for this “very good Sarto indeed” and Perl probably £5 for the cover. £50 To purchase, call us or e-mail us at books@ashrare.com quoting stock number 45699 – or simply click on the button
|
![]() |
“SARTO, Ben” : TOO BAD FOR SUSIE. [Leicester] : Hermitage Publications, [1948]. First edition. Susie escapes from the white slave traffic of Soho, but Detective Officer Maurice, Special Branch, tracks her down via an aunt in Edgbaston to an estate agent’ s office in Birmingham. It is a question of murder. “Ben Sarto” was the regular pseudonym of Frank Dubrez Fawcett (1891-1968), but it is not at all clear whether the four extremely rare Sarto titles published by Hermitage in 1947-1948 and distributed by Thorpe & Porter were actually by him. SOLD |
![]() |
“BUXTON, Raymond” : NO GENTLE LADY. London : Modern Fiction, [1948]. First edition. A “Postman Always Rings Twice” type of tale, the lovely Carol married to ghastly filling-station proprietor Lem Spelter, passing-by Peter Willmore taking a job with them to pay his way. The book featured in a legal dispute between the publisher Edwin Turvey and his author Frank Dubrez Fawcett over who held the rights to the “Ben Sarto” pseudonym. Turvey’s case was that he had invented the name and could use it on any book he wished, Fawcett’s that he had written all the original Sarto titles and the name was clearly his. It was evidently Turvey s original intention to publish this as by “Ben Sarto”, a name given in larger letters on the cover than Buxton’s. The court case revealed that Buxton’s real name was Marsh, that the book had actually been written some years earlier, and that the foreword by “Ben Sarto” was initially written by Turvey and then cleaned up by Buxton/Marsh. £75 To purchase, call us or e-mail us at books@ashrare.com quoting stock number 45702 – or simply click on the button
|
![]() |
“SARTO, Ben” – [NEWTON, William (William Simpson), 1923-2009] : THERE’S ALWAYS A DAME. London : Modern Fiction, [1949]. First edition. Prisoner nearing the end of his five-year sentence encounters a new prisoner – the man who killed his girlfriend. Revenge has to be exacted. SOLD |
![]() |
“SARTO, Ben” – [FAWCETT, Frank Dubrez, 1891-1968] : BEECH ON THE BOULEVARD. London : Modern Fiction (London), [1952]. First edition. “Almost out-Zolas Zola” – “Girls disappear from their Paris homes; in many cases they are never traced ... enticed, on one pretext or another, by glib promises of a film, dance-hall, or cabaret career” – Ben Sarto with an “on-the-spot study” of a typical victim of the white slave trade. SOLD |
![]() |
“SARTO, Ben” – [FAWCETT, Frank Dubrez, 1891-1968] : CITY OF SIN. London : Modern Fiction (London), [1952]. First edition. Rena falls for a European, but “she hadn’t seen anything of the world further east than Minneapolis”. Sarto “tears the veil from the activities of the army of White Slavers”. SOLD |
![]() |
“SARTO, Ben” – [FAWCETT, Frank Dubrez, 1891-1968] : THE OLDEST PROFESSION. London : Modern Fiction, [1952]. First edition. “As usual with Sarto books, it is the result of personal observation, plus access to police records and secret news files ... an innocent young girl from the country finds herself caught up in the toils of a Manhattan exploiter – with tragic results. One big, breath-catching thrill from first word to last, but shot with sadness and regret”. SOLD |
![]() |
“SARTO, Ben” – [FAWCETT, Frank Dubrez, 1891-1968] : MISS OTIS DESIRES. London : Milestone Publications, (1954). First edition. The seventh in the new series of Miss Otis titles – Mabie Otis covets a unique seven-thousand dollar Russian sable wrap. SOLD |
![]() |
“SARTO, Ben” – [FAWCETT, Frank Dubrez, 1891-1968] : MISS OTIS MAKES HAY. London : Milestone Publications, (1954). First edition. “The Otis prowess with her pearl-handled gat preserves her scorching personality – she’s a combination of guts and glamour, a gal who leaves 3-D pictures in the memory”. The eighth in the new series of Miss Otis titles. £50 To purchase, call us or e-mail us at books@ashrare.com quoting stock number 30553 – or simply click on the button
|
![]() |
“SARTO, Ben” – [PATERSON, Alistair John Blair, 1835- ] : DEAD RECKONING. London : Modern Fiction (London), [1955]. First edition. “There are some crimes, low crimes at that, where the normal procedure of detection is of no use at all. That was the case when the lovely Lorelei Colstart, a woman whose beauty enslaved men, came to seek aid in tracing the astronomical sum of money that her crooked father had possessed before he met a mysterious death”. SOLD |
Return to Ash Rare Books home page. |
Designed and © 2022 Ash Rare Books
e-mail: books@ashrare.com