Saturday, August 23, 2014

Aventuras de Sherlock Holmes

XIII: El perro de Baskerville

As an avid collector, I am constantly discovering ‘new’ editions. New being a relative word – some of the ‘new’ items I find might be decades old. Many of the things I find are quite mundane yet every once in awhile I come across something that really catches my eye. This is the case of a book I found nearly four years ago. I bought a copy of El Perro de Baskervilles with a very unusual cover. Much to my delight,when the book arrived I discovered it was volume XIII of a series called “Aventuras de Sherlock Holmes.” XIII is 13 for you folks that are Roman Numerically challenged.

I promptly begin searching for others in the series and over the next few months located and bought four more books from the series – III, VII, VIII, and XV (3, 7, 8, and 15). I also found cover images of three others – IV, X, and XI (4, 10, and 11). That is when the efforts to find more ran dry. Every few months I run searches and nothing ever turns up. The covers of these books are very stylized, sort of like El Greco meets Frederick Dorr Steele. But sadly the publisher gave no credit to the artist nor does the artist put their name any place visible on the cover art. Efforts to identify this wonderful artist have produced nothing.


VII: Sherlock Holmes sigue triumfando
VIII: El invincible Sherlock Holmes

1940s Zig-Zag Series

“Aventuras de Sherlock Holmes” was published by Editorial Zig-Zag in Santiago, Chile. This particular series came out in 1935. The publisher is still in business and throughout the years has done some remarkable series. One of their more interesting series, published in the mid 1940s, was “Coleccion “La Lantern”.”  This series also featured some very intriguing artwork. I will write more on this series at a later time.
XIV: La Banda moteada

Then last week, out of the blue, a book scout I use in Santiago, Chile emailed me. He had come across a copy of La Banda Moteada, volume XIV (14) in the series and asked if was I interested in buying it. Of course I replied and just yesterday the book arrived. Now I have six of the fifteen sitting on my shelves and it has renewed the challenge to find the missing nine volumes. These are the types of challenges that collectors love and are what stokes the fire even hotter. I know that one day I will complete this task but I also know, as a collector, there will always be more books to finds! 

Here is the complete of Aventuras de Sherlock Holmes and the rest of those wonderful covers:

Aventuras de Sherlock Holmes I: Un Crimen extraño
Aventuras de Sherlock Holmes II: Triumfo de Sherlock Holmes
Aventuras de Sherlock Holmes III: Nuevos triunfos de Sherlock Holmes
Aventuras de Sherlock Holmes IV: El ciclista fantasma\
Aventuras de Sherlock Holmes V: Cinco Hazañas de Sherlock Holmes
Aventuras de Sherlock Holmes VI: La Mas famosos hazañas de Sherlock Holmes
Aventuras de Sherlock Holmes VII: Sherlock Holmes sigue triumfando
Aventuras de Sherlock Holmes VIII: El invincible Sherlock Holmes
Aventuras de Sherlock Holmes IX: Policia fina
Aventuras de Sherlock Holmes X: Nuevas y últimas aventura de Sherlock Holmes
Aventuras de Sherlock Holmes XI: El problema final
Aventuras de Sherlock Holmes XII: La Resurreccion de Sherlock DH1
Aventuras de Sherlock Holmes XIII: El perro de Baskerville
Aventuras de Sherlock Holmes XIV: La Banda moteada
Aventuras de Sherlock Holmes XV: La Marca de los cuatro.

IV El ciclista fantasma
XI: El problema final
XV: La Marca de los cuatro
X: Nuevas y últimas aventura
de Sherlock Holmes

Happy Blogging!!

* These books are in my collection
** I just have cover scans of these books.  



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