COMPLETE COLLECTION OF STORIES FOR BLACK MASK - 11 ISSUES (1933-1937)

New York: Pro-Distributors Publishing Company, Inc, 1937. First Editions. Raymond Chandler's stories for the pulp magazine Black Mask mark a cornerstone in American crime fiction. Among the hundreds of pulp magazines churning out cheap fiction in New York, Black Mask stood out from the pack; under the watchful eye of editor Joseph T. Shaw, the magazine became fertile ground for top-notch crime fiction written by Dashiell Hammett, Erle Stanley Gardner, Carroll John Daly, Paul Cain, Frederick Nebel, and Cornell Woolrich, to name a few. By Chandler's own admission, he read and studied the stories submitted by Hammett, a man he admired greatly, who "took murder out of the Venetian vase and dropped it in the alley." What Chandler did was take the very best parts of Hammett's writing, and added poetry and style. Perhaps the greatest compliment of his work came from Shaw himself, who declared: "...there was no wordage fat. You could not cut. Every word had to be there." As a testament to their staying power, seven of the eleven Black Mask stories were immortalized by The Library of America in Raymond Chandler: Stories and Early Novels (1995). A perilously difficult set to complete, with relatively few holdings in OCLC member institutions. See: MacShane, Frank. The Life of Raymond Chandler, pp.44-54; Bruccoli C40-47, 49-51; Hagemann 347-357. Eleven small quarto issues (25cm); original pictorial pulp wrappers; illus. Publication sequence as follows: December, 1933 ("Blackmailers Don't Shoot"); July, 1934 ("Smart-Aleck Kill"); October, 1934 ("Finger Man"); January, 1935 ("Killer in the Rain"); June, 1935 ("Nevada Gas"); November, 1935 ("Spanish Blood"); January, 1936 ("Guns At Cyrano's"); March, 1936 ("The Man Who Liked Dogs"); June, 1936 ("Goldfish"); September, 1936 ("The Curtain"); January, 1937 ("Try the Girl"). The December, 1933 issue is a Fair copy, with the text complete, but lacking the rear cover. Remaining issues are Very Good and complete, with some losses to paper at spine ends, six issues with tape (in varying degrees from light to moderate - to spine, covers, cover interiors, and a few opening and closing pages), and small loss to rear joint on the January, 1937 issue.