Betty Bacon Blunt’s fourth wordless novel, Double Trouble, follows up the ending of her 1st wordless story, Bet It’s a Boy, where she had given birth to twin girls. The overwhelmed new mother copes with the help of a grandmother and husband.

Most wordless novels, especially those pre-1960, deal with social realism and rather grim themes. This story lacks the gravitas often associated with wordless novels and some would question the appropriateness of including it here. My inclination is to include anything that comes within the strict definition of a wordless story, lighthearted or not.

Unlike Blunt’s first three books this is done in black and white line drawings without the benefit of colour enhancements.

  • Title: Double Trouble
  • Author: Betty Bacon Blunt
  • Illustrator: Betty Bacon Blunt
  • Introduction: none
  • Date of publication: 1945; 2nd printing September 1945
  • Publisher: Thomas Y. Crowell Company
  • Place of publication: New York
  • Printer: ?
  • Copyright: Betty Bacon Blunt
  • Dimensions: 8 x 7 inches (not including the comb)
  • Binding: red enamelled metal (a magnet sticks to it) comb. Some listings incorrectly refer to it as a spiral binding.
  • Boards: illustrated cover has blue and yellow as opposed to the blue and gold of the earlier stories. The cover is a very heavy card resulting in some listings calling this a “hard cover”.
  • Language: English
  • Unpaginated; pages are thicker than a typical page and the paper appears to be acidic as all page have browned
  • Printed: verso and recto
  • Edition: Trade only
  • Printed from the original line drawings by lithograph
Note the yellow versus the orange/gold used in earlier books.
Title page with publisher:
Thomas Y. Crowell Company, New York
Copyright page and dedication page to “Em” and “Su”.
1st printing 1945.
2nd printing, Sept 1945. Note also for the 2nd printing that
this is a Wartime book in compliance with the regulations.
Photo credit: dehoarding123
Images printed verso and recto.
Metal comb at back of the book.

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