First Edition Identifiers

Above shows page 92 where the original page was removed and the corrected page was glued onto part of the original page.

This copyright page shows that A.C. McClurg published “The Mad King” in August 1926, however it was not publically released for sale until Sep. 18, 1926. The first edition has blue cloth boards like the preceding 4 independent titles but has red-orange lettering rather than black. In an effort to correct typographical errors A.C. McClurg printed this book twice made three states of this first edition. The dust jacket and frontispiece were illustrated by J. Allen St. John. The total print-run of all three states was 5,000 copies.

On the first state of “The Mad King” the sixth paragraph of page 12 ends with “and the spirit of Romance and Adventure face of the man.” (see right bottom photo), and, on page 92 line 16 is identical to line 22. The second state corrected the errors on page 92 by cutting out page 92 from the first state and tipping in a new page; however page 12 was overlooked.

For the third state, A.C. McClurg reprinted the book and corrected the errors on both page 12 and page 96. Page 12 is corrected to read “and the spirit of Romance and Adventure breathed strong within him.” All three states show the date on the title page as “1026”, rather than “1926”. This is due to a defective printing plate which cut off the lower portion of the nine (see photo’s below).

The date above is from “The Cave Girl” and shows both the 9 and 5 descending below the 1 and 2.

The date above is from “The Mad King” and shows the “O” which is really a “9” as shown in the other two photos.

The date above is from “Outlaw of Torn” and shows both the 9 and 7 descending below the 1 & 2.

Photographs