ARMED SERVICES EDITIONS were cheaply produced and distributed free in the expectation that they would not only be read, but read up, as well. As it happened, some Gl's brought copies home when they came back from the war; and even today, odd ASE volumes are easily and cheaply acquired in second-hand bookshops (the going rate for run-of-the-mill copies is about $2).
The Library of Congress owns a complete set of ASE's, acquired under copyright. The most important other surviving sets of ASE's were originally put together by persons with a connection to the Council on Books in Wartime.
The UVa Library's virtually complete set, acquired by purchase in 1963, was formerly the property of Philip Van Doren Stern, an editor at Pocket Books who became the general manager of the ASE project. Because Stern's copies of these books were never distributed (or possibly even read), they are in a remarkably fine state of preservation, in general much better than those in the collection of the Book Arts Press.
Comic books never appeared as ASE's, a circumstance that has not prevented collectors from making the ASE of George Lowther's The Adventures of Superman (the novel on which the comic-book figure was based) the most expensive ASE on the market.
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George Lowther. The Adventures of Superman. Armed Services Edition [656]. UVa. |
Inevitably, another desirable ASE is Tarzan of the Apes; most copies were read to bits, and the relatively few surviving copies of Tarzan and a sequel, The Return of Tarzan (also published as an ASE), are most likely to be found in file sets like the one owned by the UVa Library.
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Burroughs, Edgar Rice. Tarzan of the Apes. Armed Services Edition [M-16]. UVa. | Burroughs, Edgar Rice. The Return of Tarzan. Armed Services Edition [0-22]. UVa. |
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ASE's with fantasy/science-fiction themes were popular during World War II and collectible after it; the war ushered in a golden age of science fiction and fantasy, and the series included a number of classics old and new in these genres.
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One of the problems in collecting ASE's today is finding them in good condition. One of these two copies of Selected Short Stories of Philip Wylie is in virtually mint condition; the other copy has seen a lot of action while folded in half and stuffed into a pocket.
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Among the ASE editions most prized by collectors are several books made only as ASE's. Notable among these "made" books is a William Faulkner collection put together for the series and given the title, A Rose for Emily and Other Stories. The illustration on the front of the ASE (showing the cover of what appears to be an earlier edition of A Rose for Emily) depicts a book that never was.
| William Faulkner, A Rose for Emily and Other Stories. Armed Services Edition [828]. UVa. |
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Another ASE prized by bibliophiles is a "made" collection of Fitzgerald stories, The Diamond As Big As the Ritz and Other Stories.
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F. Scott Fitzgerald. The Diamond As Big As the Ritz and Other Stories. Armed Services Edition [1043]. UVa. |
Book collectors focusing on a particular writer may well wish to own ASE and other interesting reprint editions of that writer, as well as first editions. Joan Crane's definitive descriptive bibliography of the works of Willa Cather includes a careful description of the ASE edition of My Antonia as part of a detailed account of the many editions of this novel. Which of the two copies of the ASE edition shown would you prefer owning?
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Two copies, one UVa [mint] and the other BAP [worn]. |
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There is much interest these days in collecting volumes published in the Rivers of America series. The Hudson was one of several books in this long series to be picked up in ASE editions.
| Carl Carmer. The Hudson. Armed Forces Edition [806]. |
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A number of ASE's in the Book Arts Press collection have the name 'Turner' written on their front covers: primitive evidence of Mr Turner's bibliophilic instincts, perhaps?
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Robert Nathan. One More Spring. Armed Forces Edition [R-3]. |
Wittel's 1945 Saturday Evening Post article included a photograph of a Gl reading an ASE.
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LC's Books in Action: The Armed Services Editions was published in 1984. It contains a number of good photographs of servicemen-hospitalized ones in particular-reading ASE's.
| John Y. Cole, ed. Books in Action: The Armed Services Editions. Washington, DC: Library of Congress, 1984. Photographs. |
