Customer Reviews

Dames, Dolls and Delinquents: A Collector's Guide to Sexy Pulp Fiction Paperbacks

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With titles like that, you're in for a lurid treat of dangerous dames, wanton wenches, swamp sirens, hayseed honeys, Mob molls, killer cuties and teenage temptresses from the reckless, untamed age of paperbacks, the 1950s and '60s. This was a pop-cult era when women were either good girls or whores. The paperback world was definitely infatuated with the latter. For the uninitiated, these covers are real eye-openers on the supposedly button-down world of Eisenhower America. The primary audience was mostly returning war vets, who were infused with violence and exotic women. The no-nonsense titles have the rat-tat-tat crack-pop of gunfire: Stone Cold Blonde, They Kill To Live, Hell Strip, Hard-Boiled!, Shack Woman, Pillow Tramp, Don't Cross Me, Honey, Sweet Savage! Author Gary Lovisi has long been the East Coast king of vintage paperbacks, publishing the hobby's best fanzine, Paperback Parade. With this book he's compiled 200+ pages of the wildest covers in the history of publishing, featuring bad, bad women in overheated passions and primary colors. This is a great book for the novice collector. Lovisi presents not only the most notorious covers and renown artists, but also some rare gems from obscure publishers. He's categorized them into the following chapters: Sexy Pin-Up Dolls; Sultry Streetwalkers; Bad Girl Delinquents; Deadly Femme Fatales; Women In Peril; Women And Violence; Luscious Lesbians; Fetish Covers; and Heated Embraces. Every cover is annotated with title, author, cover artist (if known), publisher, year, and collector value according to condition. He also includes some British paperbacks, which were often even more lurid than their American counterparts. My only complaint would be the exclusion of sexy space babes from science fiction paperbacks. These floating femmes, their Earthly lust catapulted into zero-gravitational space, definitely deserve their own extended chapter.

One of my favorite titles in this book.
"Never Trust a Rich Bitch" is another. And there are so many more classics here to savor. This is not a comprehensive Overstreet style guide. This is more like a gallery of lurid, sexy, socially inappropriate and hilariously over-the-top paperback covers you might have found on the spinner rack at your local drug store or men's smoke shop from the late 40's to the early 60's. And there are selected men's magazine and pulp digest covers thrown in for good measure. As the previous reviewer has noted, Gary Lovisi knows his subject and includes many collector favorites along with some rare obscurities. I don't want to mislead anyone to think that this is just an art book. This generous volume is packed with great information. Under each cover is noted publisher, artist (if known) and rough value scale for anyone who might want to search for these books. In the back of the book is a terrific list of resources, dealers and websites dealing with vintage paperbacks. I was glad to add "Dames, Dolls and Delinquents" to my library. I recommend it.

I was pleasantly surprised at how good this book looked. Usually titles for collectors, from my experience, tend to look very dull and unimaginative (Schiffer books in particular) probably on the basis that they are only a visual checklist of what is available and presentation doesn't matter. Fortunately Krause think book buyers deserve something better and it showed when I looked through these interesting pages.

The seven hundred covers get a good showing with none of them angled or arranged in contrived graphic presentations. They all have nice drop shadows which lifts them off the page and the nine chapter opening spreads get a pleasant graphic treatment, too. This all looks a lot better than the comparable Sin-A-Rama: Sleaze Sex Paperbacks of the Sixties, which features many of the same covers.

As with any down-market product individually they tend to look like trash but collect lots of them together and visually they come alive. Virtually none of these covers have any design potential and why should they. The publishers clearly knew their market and pitched to it with gusto. Artists like Bilbrew, Avati, Edwards, Maguire, Popp or Bill Ward made a living (sometimes rather precariously) churning out the same female form but concentrating on the bits that caught the male imagination. The first sixteen pages have an interesting essay about the artists and how the paintings were used on covers.

My only real criticism of the contents is that there are far too many British covers. Their extremely tacky art and crude title lettering make them stand out even from the few dull American titles. Perhaps it was an editorial mistake to have so many covers (the highest number of any artist) by British illustrator Reginald Heade. I thought his work was really second-rate when compared to many of the American illustrators in the book.

Though the book's title relates to paperbacks I was surprised to see a few pulp men's magazine covers included. If these interest you check out the stunning Men's Adventure Magazines, with over a thousand covers in color.

'Dames, Dolls & Delinquents' is an affectionate look back at a slice of mass-market pop culture that sold in the millions.

***SEE SOME INSIDE PAGES by clicking 'customer images' under the cover.

One could easily forget that this is a guide to collectible paperbacks in looking through page after page of colorful cover art. Lovisi has divided the roughly 700 covers mostly four per page with a few full-page into certain subjects and types of images. These include the basic Sexy Pin-up Dolls and Sultry Sweethearts to the troubling and somewhat more complex Bad Girl Delinquents and Deadly Femme Fetales to the provocative and exotic Luscious Lesbians and Fetish Covers. Other categories are eroticized women in certain activities--Women in Peril, Women and Violence, and Heated Embraces. Inevitably there is overlap since the aim of any of the covers of such pulp fiction is to strongly suggest or depict outright sex--better yet, forbidden sex--danger, and uncontrolled and often perverse emotions.

Underneath these striking, evocative cover illustrations are the book's author, cover illustrator, publisher, and prices according to grades. Though many of the illustrators are unknown. In an introductory section, Lovisi discusses the art of a few of the most notable artists who are known. In many cases, however, the publishers would block out the artist's name. The selling point of such pulp fiction was not who was the cover artist. In most cases, publishers would alter the cover art anyway in the printing by making reds and other bright colors more vivid and glaring and would freely intrude on the art with titles, subtitles, and story blurbs.

Such fiction of interest mainly for the covers doesn't get high prices as far as collectibles and auction prices go. Between $40 and $125 is the range for most in better condition. There is one though titled Junkie (1953) by the author named William Lee which can go for over $1,000 in near perfect condition. William Lee is the pseudonym of William Burroughs, author of the Tarzan series whose first editions written in the early 1900s bring thousands of dollars.

So many pulp fiction titles were published when they were at the height of their popularity during the 1950s and into the 1960s that no guide can include them all. Along with being of interest as a gallery of book cover art in the vein of mass-market publishing and popular culture, this guide presents covers which have been proven to have value to collectors.

this is a great collection of pulp covers, well produced and worth the money for fans of pin-up, pulp, kitsch and babes

This is fetching eye candy and a blast to look through. The artwork on the covers of these pulp books by such greats as Robert Maguire and Reginald Heade is fantastic and sometimes cheesy, yet always gorgeous; innocent, yet lurid. The book titles and blurbs are also a total hoot. Author Gary Lovisi has included a variety of terrific covers of sexy and dangerous dames and dolls. I'm really looking forward to his next book coming this fall: Bad Girls Need Love Too.

This book is a steamy collection of tantalizing eye-candy! My friends and I have fun paging through and taking turns reading the suggestive titles. Here are some of my favorites: "She Tried To Be Good," "Her Candle Burns Hot!," "There's One in Every Town," "The Girl Who Killed Things," "Adam and Two Eves," and "Untamed Lust." We always end up blushing and giggling!

Just a great book and a wonderful look back at the 40's,50's and 60's. Sexy, violent, socially revealing and exciting art. I throughly enjoyed every page of this book.

Wonderful book. Amazingly well researched and illustrated. Perhaps some of of the descriptions are redundant and could have been left out. We don't need the author to tell us if a cover is one of the most striking or not.

This book is buxotically perfect! I wish folks still painted book covers like this.The covers represented are sextastic! I was not dissapointed.