1990s
Towards the 1990s as his health began to fail, as well as the expansions, he primarily wrote "fill in the gaps" books or anthologies of short stories about characters. The last J T Edson book available in the UK, Mark Counter's Kin, was an anthology. However, he also wrote and published the first three in a quartet of new books designed to fill in what happened to Dusty Fog, Mark Counter and Lon Ysabel as they made their way home to the OD Connected after the events of the Floating Outfit title Return to Backsight (which Edson used as a springboard to launch his Waco series): Wedge Goes To Arizona, Arizona Range War and Arizona Gun Law are only available via American bookstores, as is his long-promised "Belle Boyd"-centric novel, Mississippi Raider (also a new work). The final book in the quartet, Arizona Takeover, was apparently not published. Whether it was completely unwritten or prepared in manuscript form is unknown.
He eventually decided to semi-retire but couldn't stop writing altogether; he lived near Melton Mowbray in Leicestershire and would often come up with plots at his local Public House.
His American publishers Dell and later Harper Collins began to periodically reissue his books, causing a surge of new interest, though their tendency to change the books' original titles causes problems for eager collectors who should ensure that they are getting one of the few new books and not a republished old one under a new name. Title changes were as follows:
- .44 Calibre Man is now Forty-Four Caliber Man (1980);
- Beguinage became The Texas Assassin (1986);
- Master of Triggernometry became The Trigger Master (1986);
- You're in Command Now, Mr Fog is now Rebel Vengeance (1987);
- Diamonds, Emeralds, Cards & Colts became simply Cards and Colts (1988);
- Back to the Bloody Border is now Renegade (1989);
- Calamity, Mark and Belle became Texas Trio (1989);
- Beguinage is Dead ! became The Lone Star Killers (1990) and Texas Killers (2004);
- Set A-Foot is now The Nighthawk (1990);
- You're a Texas Ranger, Alvin Fog is now Alvin Fog, Texas Ranger (1991);
- Set Texas Back on her Feet is now Viridian's Trail (1992);
- Get Urrea! is now Texas Fury (1993);
- Is-A-Man became Texas Warrior (1997);
- Wanted! Belle Starr became Oklahoma Outlaw (1997);
- The Cow Thieves became Running Irons (2005);
- Calamity Spells Trouble is now The Road To Ratchet Creek (2005);
- White Stallion, Red Mare was republished as Ranch War (2006).
As well as Arizona Takeover, the purported 4th title in the quartet listed above, the most eagerly awaited of J T Edson's new works by his fans was Miz Freddie of Kansas, an anthology of anecdotes related by the octogenarian widow of Dusty Fog in which, so Edson promised, would be revealed details of how Dusty, Mark and Lon were killed together in Kenya, Africa in 1911.
J T Edson had had 136 books published and had sold over 27 million copies globally. Unfortunately, it is not known whether he has finished the above mentioned new books, or whether sufficient of these exists in manuscript form to be completed and/or published. J T Edson has at least one complete, unpublished novel, Amazons of Zillikian, which was #5 in the Bunduki series, but which remained unpublished due to his disillusion with the intransigence of the Edgar Rice Burroughs estate, as mentioned by Laurence Dunn in his online article .
Western authoress and journalist Jean Henry-Mead did a brief online interview with J T Edson for her 2002 book Maverick Writers, which can be found at www.jeanhenrymead.com. A retrospective of J T Edson's literary career to date and his books can be found in the article, The Inkslinger, by Catherine Stewart on the Non-Fiction page of the website The Cat's Whiskers.
Read more about this topic: J. T. Edson