Featured Cousin's hilarious circa 1930 boy's adventure books, and more!

I posted something long ago about a relative who churned out unintentionally hilarious boy's adventure books, but couldn't remember his name. I'd since uncovered some reviews of William Dixon Bell's books, which are every bit as entertaining as his books

To be straightforward about it, Bell is a chucklehead along the general lines of Ed Wood, Jr. and Arthur B. Reeve. He has not the vaguest notion of how people talk to one another, and even his narrative is sprinkled with wildly misused and misconceived language.
utexas.edu

Sacred Scimitar Review
The daring duo young male leads, the Hope brothers, seem to have something else going. "Will smiled and pressed Dave's hand affectionately. These two were more than brothers, more than twins" is on page one. And not much later in the book is this interesting narration: "When Dave got a little excited he called his twin brother 'Big Boy.' This was in the nature of an ejaculation."

Obviously, if you're writing for a juvenile you don't exactly have to be Vladimir Nabokov, but it helps if you can at least come across as more competent than the readership. Dixon Bell failed to do that so spectacularly, I actually enjoyed his cretinous attempt, like watching one of those ridiculous Doug McClure dinosaur movies. Yeah, they were fun.
goodreads


I gave the books I had to a younger cousin... Been afraid to ask what happened to them...

After about 40 years of conservatorship (HOARDER), our elderly cousin passed and the contents of her vault - what's left of it - were finally unveiled to three of her local relatives. BIG surprise! I found an incredible trove of his original manuscripts in their own wooden file drawers! And many copies of his classic, Moon Colony. All dried out and acidified.




Even funnier, I came across a family album with a lot of great info on her kin. Someone pasted in yet another bemused review, upper left on the page below: "Arizona Criticism"!!

That is his son, Dixon Tucker Bell, in the ad.



Any advice on what to do with all this? I think donate it, but it should be appraised. It's all tied up in a probate with distant relatives. It's so cool to find it all intact, even in this condition.

"They cannot be more idiosyncratic than Tom Swifties, she said positively." said @silverthwait

 

Very cool story, and an even cooler relative thanks for showing us!

 

Wow -- those reviews! And I love the dust jacket on The Moon Colony. Deep-sea diving knights with halberds(?) riding on the backs of grasshoppers(?)... amazing!

 

Right?? I love to see what reviewers extract as wacky - there are endless pages of it!!

His books did receive the errant "straight" review, but most seemed to really enjoy just how bad they were, and describing them as such.

My personal favorite was a lonnnnng paragraph describing a banquet for the captive boys and their exotically beautiful companion which included "...many toothsome viands."

 

"riding on the backs of grasshoppers(?)... amazing!"


That's right! Ghoppers ARE amazing.....

 

Hi, guys! I'm working some on my cousin's estate and looking for an appraiser, auction house or collectors that might be interested in this kind of pulpy fiction.

I haven't been able to catalog his manuscripts - it's entirely possible we'll find "Moon Colony" and the other two I had, all boys' adventure stories, set in very exotic locales... Obviously, his books are not especially valuable, but as a set they might be of interest.

Still more fun reviews from an (unmoored blog) University of Texas.edu

Here are another few reviews I found from newly published "Moon Colony" on Amazon. Come to think of it, I wonder how/who publishes them. I don't think it's entered the public domain, yet. He died in 1951, so short the 70 years past author's death.



Any opinions or guidance you all can put forth is appreciated.

BUMP

 

Thanks for bumping this thread. Fun!

 

The law about a work being copyrighted until 70 years after the author's death only applies to works originally published from 1978 to the present.

The U.S. Copyright office has issued a nice brochure/circular to explain some of the complexities of copyright for works published before that date. Here's a link to a PDF version that I hope will open from here: https://www.copyright.gov/circs/circ15a.pdf

This guide from Stanford University Library is more succinct in explaining it:
https://fairuse.stanford.edu/overview/faqs/copyright-basics/
Scroll down to How long does a copyright last?

 

Hi I need help
I just came back around for a minute and can't believe I missed your reference, lo these two years! Thanks!

 

Glitch?

 

gotta pop in more often.......u know the help we can be !!!!

 

It's good to see a post from you!

 

I have sold the moon colony book. They wanted it for the graphics on the dust jacket.