Good Grief, More Peanuts #[nn]
Good Grief, More Peanuts (1956, Holt, Rinehart and Winston) is the third volume in the foundational 'Full Books' series of Peanuts strip reprints that Charles Schulz and his publishers assembled throughout the 1950s — the era when the strip was cementing itself as a cultural phenomenon. Because its indicia copyright window runs 1952–1956, the collection captures Linus Van Pelt across the years of his most rapid early development: from a baby too young to sit up, through his first words (1954), to his first appearance with the security blanket (June 1954), to his first full sentences (September 1955) and his budding friendship with Charlie Brown (January 1956). For a collector, that makes this the single book-format volume that documents Linus's transformation from a comic walk-on into one of the most philosophically rich characters in American newspaper comics. The book was reprinted at least twenty-one times by 1967, a testament to how voraciously mid-century readers consumed Schulz's quietly melancholic humor about childhood.
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The 'Full Books' reprint series was launched in 1952 by Rinehart & Co., Inc., with a slim digest-sized paperback simply titled Peanuts; a second volume, More Peanuts, followed in September 1954. Good Grief, More Peanuts arrived in 1956, still under the Rinehart imprint just before the company merged with Henry Holt and the John C. Winston Company to form Holt, Rinehart and Winston in 1960. The book exists in at least two distinct physical formats: a softcover edition (approximately 5½ × 8 inches, 120 pages) and a hardcover boards edition distributed through the Weekly Reader Book Club, the latter including frontispiece portraits of each character — an editorial touch aimed squarely at the school-age audience that was driving the strip's explosive growth. The Grand Comics Database notes that a horizontal-format edition was also produced, which preserved the full Peanuts title panel on each Sunday page rather than the cropped version that appeared in the standard vertical layout.
Trivia · 8 facts
- Written and drawn entirely by Charles M. Schulz; published by Holt, Rinehart and Winston in 1956 as the third volume in the original 'Full Books' Peanuts reprint series.
- Reprints Sunday Peanuts strips with a copyright window of 1952–1956, making it the primary book-format home for Linus Van Pelt's earliest developmental strips.
- Linus Van Pelt first appeared in the daily strip on September 19, 1952 (first mentioned July 14, 1952); his iconic security blanket debuted June 1, 1954 — both milestones fall squarely within this collection's date range.
- Features Charlie Brown, Snoopy, Linus Van Pelt, Patty (the original Patty, not Peppermint Patty), and Violet — core cast members of the strip's earliest years.
- Issued in at least two physical formats: a standard softcover (approx. 5½ × 8 in., 120 pages, B&W interior) and a hardcover boards edition distributed through the Weekly Reader Book Club.
- A horizontal-format edition was also produced, preserving the full title panel of each Sunday strip rather than a cropped version — a notable production variant documented by the Grand Comics Database.
- Reached at least its twenty-first printing by 1967, reflecting sustained demand across more than a decade of continuous availability.
- Schulz named Linus after his real-life friend Linus Maurer; Schulz described the character as representing 'my serious side... the house intellectual,' a thematic depth already visible in the mid-1950s strips collected here.