The Whitman Tom Swift Sr. Reprints

 Last updated 12/3/2009

Most recent additions are in Red.

If you've been a Tom Swift collector for any length of time you will probably have come across some rather boring-looking Tom Swift books printed by the Whitman Publishing Company. You may even have noticed that the titles put out by Whitman are identical to titles put out by Grosset & Dunlap. Where does Whitman fit into the picture?

Well, in 1938 after Grosset & Dunlap had authored their last Tom Swift book, the Whitman Publishing Company purchased the rights to reprint the entire Tom Swift series. The Whitman Publishing Company didn't reprint the entire series, however; they confined themselves to reprinting Airline Express, Circling the Globe, Talking Pictures, House on Wheels, Big Dirigible, Sky Train, Giant Magnet, Television Detector, Ocean Airport, and Planet Stone (that is, the last 10 Tom Swift Sr. titles). The Whitman reprints are not hard to find; in fact, many of the Whitman reprints are far cheaper and easier to locate than their Grosset & Dunlap counterparts.

 

The Whitman reprints are not as nice as their original Grosset & Dunlap counterparts. Some of the differences are:

• The original G&D books had beautiful, detailed full-color dustjackets; the dustjackets of the Whitman reprints are much simpler and shoddier.
• The original G&D books were printed on fairly high quality paper; the Whitman reprints were printed on cheap acid paper that is very prone to deterioration.
• The original G&D books had a drawing in the book to the left of the title page; the Whitman reprint does not have the drawing.
• The original G&D books had a list of titles in the front and a list of other series books in the back; both of those are missing in the Whitman reprints.

 Chris Landa has also alerted me to a difference between Whitman dustjackets. The small books (7.5 inch tall) list 10 Tom Swift titles on the back of the dustjacket. The large books (8 inch tall) list either 9 titles or the back lists other Whitman series (the list leaves out Tom Swift and his Planet Stone). I had not noticed this but he is correct. The evidence seems to show that smaller 7.5 inch-tall books were printed first, then the larger 8 inch-tall ones. The list of 9 on the back of the tall Whitman editions seems good proof that the Planet Stone is not available in the larger format but only exists in the small format. As of today, no large copy of Planet Stone has ever been found: it is very unlikely that it exists in the larger format.

Unlike Grosset & Dunlap, the Whitman Publishing Company reprinted the Tom Swift books in a large array of different formats and sizes. I have made a table listing the different formats I have discovered so far; as I discover more I will add them to the list. As I have found pictures of these books I've added them to the table. I want to give special thanks to Chris Landa and A. Bruder, who have worked hard and from whose vast Whitman collection most of this data has come. I'd also like to thank John Kimball, Frank Krieger, and the others who have helped… I only have a handful of Whitman volumes; they have given me all the data. Thanks a lot!

If you know of or have an edition that isn't on this table, feel free to drop me a line at the e-mail address found on this webpage and let me know!

 One note: the last two entries for the 'dust jacket' refer to the Whitman editions with dustjackets. The first item refers to the dustjacket that has an ad on the back for 'Stories for Girls and Boys'. On the inside flap of that dustjacket 7 Tom Swift books are listed, but as Chris Landa pointed out, strangely enough only 4 of those 7 listed books can be found with that dustjacket. Perhaps the other 3 were never issued in that dustjacket? The issue is being investigated, but at the moment it remains a mystery!

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