Something About Box Sets

Just some books in a box!

In reviewing the archives, I found an old FAQ-type page we used to have online. Visitors used to ask many of the same questions and the site admins put together a page to provide everyone the same answer. Case in point, “what is the book titled John Bellairs?”

As it turns out, it wasn’t a single book but the name of the 1988 Bantam Skylark box set containing The Curse of the Blue Figurine, The Mummy, the Will, and the Crypt, The Dark Secret of Weatherend, and The Spell of the Sorcerer’s Skull. I don’t remember ever seeing it in stores, and frankly, all these years later, with decades of data behind us, it seems sort of a strange idea. Curse and Mummy had been in paperback for a couple of years and Weatherend went paper two years prior. I suppose the box set was an easy way for newer fans to get four titles at once rather than scavenging one by one. I assume most fans already had these titles in paperback by 1988. But again, I don’t recall ever seeing this, and I don’t ever remember advertisements in the rear of the later-day Bantam editions. The box set still appears online for sale in various auctions and, thankfully, what images I have seen show the outer orange box looking good after 30-some-odd years.

There has been only one other box set of the Bellairs Corpus, a 2002 French collection of the first three books in the Kévin et les Magiciens series. Those are La Pendule d’Halloween, La Médaille ensorcelée, and Émily et l’Anneau magique. As with the Bantam editions, the books are paperback and appear to be the same as those sold separately. It did come with a snazzy bookmark showing the three books in the Kévin titles, so – yeah.

I suspect there were never more box sets for the same reason there were never more anthology editions. Money. Interest. More money. Who thinks Bellairsian box sets are good idea?

And that’s my contribution for Boxing Day.