The Art of Packaging: Dell Mapbacks

Dead Yellow Women by Dashiell Hammet, 1947

The Mapback series of of paperbacks was put out by Dell Publishing from 1943 to 1951. The books are known as mapbacks because the back cover of the book contains a map that illustrates the location of the action. Dell books were numbered in series, starting (for some reason) at number 5 and extending to 550. A variety of themes and topics were represented by Dell – romance, space, short stories – but mostly crime fiction.