Biggles of 274
Have you ever noticed how people say that
W.E. Johns wrote "around 100" Biggles books? Or "more than 100" Biggles
books? or "almost 100" Biggles
books?
That nobody ever puts a
exact figure on it?
Well I intend to put an exact figure on
it. The standard lists tend to show 98
Biggles books and that seems to be the "officially" accepted figure.
However, I say there are 101 Biggles
books. This explains why.
W. E. Johns was a terrible self-plagiarist
who would often re-write and re-use stories and this makes counting Biggles
books and Biggles stories very difficult!
For example, “Spitfire Parade” contains World War Two stories which are
re-writes of older World War One stories from “Biggles in France”. Certain short stories are also
re-writes. For instance, "The Case
of the Early Boy" in 'Biggles Flies to Work' is a re-write of the story
"Worrals Works it Out".
The books themselves went through
different versions. "Biggles
Pioneer Air Fighter" is really just a reprint of the very first book
"The Camels are Coming".
Should it be counted as a separate book?
Of course not!
"Biggles of 266" features
stories from the original "Biggles in France". Is that an original book? What about the Omnibus books? They are just reprints of previous books,
aren't they?
On this page you are going to find what I
say is the DEFINITIVE list of ALL Biggles stories and books. W. E. Johns wrote numerous short stories
featuring Biggles.
This was something I first attempted to do
in an article I wrote for "Biggles
Flies Again"
Magazine that was published in the January 2006 issue - Volume
2 - Number 6. In that article I concluded that
there were 278 stories. I now conclude there are 274. The difference is mainly due to me not having
the original individual stories from Biggles Learns to Fly. These were all originally published in
"The Modern Boy" and you can see
the full details on my Biggles Learns to Fly page here - http://www.biggles.info/Details/05/. I have since collected every single issue of
The Modern Boy and I am now better informed!
I thought each chapter of "Biggles
Learns to Fly" was an individual story and so I counted the 17 chapters as
17 stories. In fact 5 of the stories
from the Modern Boy covered two chapters in the book, so instead of 17, there
were in fact 12 and that reduced the number of stories by 5. However, it has also dawned on me that I
have missed out recording as a 'Biggles' story, the short Gimlet story
published in 'Comrades in Arms'. This
was entitled "An Oriental Assignment" in 'Comrades in Arms' when that
book was published in August 1947 but the story itself was originally published
in three parts in the July 1945, August 1945 and September 1945 issues of
"Boy's Own" magazine when it was entitled "Seeds of
Trouble". Biggles and Ginger fly
Gimlet and Co. out to their mission and, with the addition of Algy, pick them
up at the end of the story. Here they
have a few lines, so it has to be said this is also a Biggles story!
With those amendments, I stand by the rest
of my article from 2006. So how did I
get to the total of 274 stories
then? I reproduce my original article
below ........
HOW MANY BIGGLES STORIES ARE THERE?
You would think this was an easy question
to answer, but it isn't. The first
question is how many Biggles books are there, but in order to answer that, you
have to define exactly what you are counting.
I think a "Biggles" book has to
be a book written by W. E. Johns which features the character of James
Bigglesworth. As so many books have been
re-issued in other formats and combinations, it is also necessary to count only
the first book publications. Omnibus
editions can be immediately discounted.
One problem here is that Johns wrote many short stories for publication
elsewhere. Indeed, Biggles started life
in short stories for 'Popular Flying', a magazine edited by Johns. Those short stories were gathered up and
issued in book form.
Later, Johns would write numerous short
Biggles stories for various boys annuals and other publications. Most of these were gathered together and
published in book form. It was not until
1999 that Norman Wright gathered the ten 'missing' Biggles stories and
published a final collection of short stories as 'Biggles - Air Ace', this
being the last ever Biggles book. I say
we need to count these collective books as being the first publication in book
form.
I say that there are 101 original Biggles
books. This figure is arrived at as
follows. 92 of them were published
during Johns lifetime (From Camels are Coming up to and including The Boy
Biggles in 1968). Four were published
after his death, having already been written by Johns (Underworld, Little Green
God, Noble Lord and Sees Too Much). Two
more were published in the late 1990's, (Homework - the unfinished book and Air
Ace - the final collection of short stories).
This is a total of 98 so far.
However, an analysis of the first 92
Biggles books shows that two of them were really reprints of earlier
books. 'Biggles Pioneer Air Fighter'
(published 1954) contains 13 stories but 11 of these were published in The
Camels are Coming and 2 of these were published in Biggles of the Camel
Squadron. 'Biggles of 266' again really
contains reprints, eight stories from Biggles in France and one from Biggles
Learns to Fly.
Should any other books be removed? I say no, Spitfire Parade contains stories,
which although they are reworkings of old stories, feature different characters
and can be called original for this reason.
Biggles of the Special Air Police, reprints half a dozen old stories
from 'The Camels are Coming' plus one other Biggles First World War story but
it also gathers together six otherwise uncollected 'Special Air Police'
stories. For this reason it has to
qualify as an original Biggles book.
I therefore conclude that Biggles Pioneer Airfighter and Biggles of 266 have to be removed from the
list and the 98 books I have listed so far are therefore reduced to 96. So how do I get to 101?
Simple, we have to count the four Gimlet
books in which Biggles appears. You will
recall that we started off with the definition that a Biggles books is a book
written by W. E. Johns featuring the character of James Bigglesworth. Biggles features, albeit very briefly in four
Gimlet books, ‘King of the Commandos', ‘Gimlet Goes Again', ‘Gimlet Mops Up' and ‘Gimlet Bores In', so now we have 100 Biggles
books. The last one to be added is ‘Comrades in Arms’ which features an original Biggles story not featured in
any of the other books (and also a short Gimlet story in which Biggles
appears!).
This gives a grand total of 101 books.
Of these 101, a number of them (18)
contain short stories, namely,
1932 - THE CAMELS ARE COMING
1934 - BIGGLES OF THE CAMEL SQUADRON
1934 - BIGGLES FLIES AGAIN
1935 - BIGGLES LEARNS TO FLY
1935 - BIGGLES IN FRANCE
1941 - SPITFIRE PARADE
1943 - BIGGLES - CHARTER PILOT
1947 - COMRADES IN ARMS
1952 - BIGGLES TAKES THE CASE
1952 - BIGGLES AIR DETECTIVE
1953 - BIGGLES OF THE SPECIAL AIR POLICE
1954 - BIGGLES AND THE PIRATE TREASURE
1955 - BIGGLES' CHINESE PUZZLE
1957 - BIGGLES OF THE INTERPOL
1958 - BIGGLES PRESSES ON
1963 - BIGGLES FLIES TO WORK
1964 - BIGGLES INVESTIGATES
1999 - BIGGLES - AIR ACE
I have not counted THE BOY BIGGLES or BIGGLES GOES
TO SCHOOL as short
story books because the stories cover his early life and school life in various
adventures and run together as complete stories. If you remove the above 18
books from the list of 101 books you are left with 83 books. It is convenient
now to count how many Biggles short stories there are.
We have established that they are all
collected in the 18 books I have named above, so it is just a question of
listing them .....................
REVISED ENDING
With regard to earlier story titles I have
now elected to use the MODERN BOY original story titles as these are the titles
they had on first publication. There are 191 short stories.
I have also identified the original
publications of all the short stories.
If you want to know why the numbering of
the Biggles books only went up to 84 you can read why here http://www.biggles.info/Numbers/
As to how many World War 1 – Royal Flying
Corps - stories there are, then the answer is 65. There are 63 short stories and 2 full length
books (‘Biggles Flies East’ and ‘The Rescue Flight’).
These 65 stories are all highlighted on
the list. (I would love to find a
previously unknown Biggles R.F.C. story as then there would be 66. Biggles Squadron was 266, so it would be most
appropriate to get “to” 66!).
I have done some considerably work on
trying to establish the correct order of these 65 stories. You can read my conclusions here http://www.biggles.info/Order/
I welcome comments and corrections from
other fans out there.
You can e-mail me at rogerharris@biggles.info
So here is my DEFINITIVE list of
the 274
BIGGLES STORIES I do hope you
find it of interest!
Roger Harris
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