For many younger readers, their entry drug into the worlds of horror was the novels of Stephen King. For me that was not the case. King came later. For me the first real books of horror I bought were not novels at all but collections of stories by many authors– anthologies. Certain names I sought avidly in the used books stores. The first of these was Peter Haining. I loved his The Unspeakable People and Beyond the Curtain of Dark. (Haining will be in the next section of this list. I have also not included any Science Fiction titles.)
Later, I learned that this anthology game was much older than a few 1968 paperbacks. It had been going on for much longer than I had been alive. Anthologies dated back to Charles Dickens and his Christmas numbers of All the Year Round and Household Words, where as editor he would gather a number of ghost stories for special issues such as Mugby Junction (1866).
Book publishers got in on the act as early as 1885 with The Witching Time, edited by Henry Norman. Some later famous singles include The Omnibus of Crime (1929) by Dorothy L. Sayers (half of which was supernatural tales), The “Creeps” Omnibus edited by Charles Birkin in 1935 and Creeps by Night (1945) edited by Dashiell Hammett. Collections of ghost stories, usually between Halloween and Christmas time were solid sellers for book publishers.
But it would take Christine Hartley under the name Christine Campbell Thomson (1897-1985) and Selwyn & Blount’s Not at Night series to make regular or annual ghost story collections good business. Thomson was Dion Fortune’s literary agent as well as a member of her circle. She wrote for pulps like Weird Tales under the name Flavia Richardson. I suppose it shouldn’t be surprising that exactly 100 stories (according to Mike Ashley, an anthologist we will look at later) came from the Unique Magazine for these anthologies. Authors did not get paid for these reprints in Not at Night, which Paul S. Powers lamented in Pulp Writer (2007):
… It stated that the book had been published in England under a different title and that it had sold more than 100,000 copies there. As only a few authors were represented, and I had two stories in the volume, I estimated that my share of the royalties should have been several thousand dollars, not including those from the American publication of the book. Of course, there was nothing I could do, except smile —with my teeth in close contact. Somebody must have made considerable money out of the work that I had done on a rather empty stomach ten years before —but they made it legally. If I had received some complimentary copies of the book I might not have felt so indignant.
Of the series Mike Ashley wrote in Hartley’s obituary in Locus, No 299 (December 1985): “…although anthologies have perhaps earned a reputation greater than they deserve, they were nevertheless a landmark series in the history of horror short fiction”. I have to agree this with simply because they were the first collections to pilfer the back pages of Weird Tales, which the anthologies after 1954 would do with much greater frequency. With the exception of Phil Stong’s 1942 The Other Worlds, not many anthologists looked to Weird Tales or any other pulps.
The Not at Night Series
Not at Night (1925)
More Not at Night (1926)
You’ll Need a Night Light (1927)
Gruesome Cargoes (1928)
By Daylight Only (1929)
Switch on the Light (1931)
At Dead of Night (1931)
Grim Death (1932)
Keep on the Light (1933)
Terror by Night (1934)
Nightmare By Daylight (1936)
Not at Night Omnibus (1937)
Not at Night (Arrow reprints)
Not at Night (1960)
More Not at Night (1961) (aka Never at Night (1972)
Still Not at Night (1962) (aka Only By Daylight (1972)
Selwyn & Blount were British publishers. I suppose it shouldn’t surprise us the next editor would also come from that country. Hutchinson & Co. began The Ghost Book series a year after Not at Night. The editor was Lady Cynthia Asquith (1887-1960) who was well connected to Britain. She married the son of a Prime Minister, was secretary to James M. Barrie and was instrumental in the discovery of D. H. Lawrence. Asquith’s choices are good but she had a tendency to avoid the really gruesome stuff.
The Ghost Book Series
The Ghost Book (1926)
The Second Ghost Book (1952)
The Third Ghost Book (1955)
Other Anthologies
The Flying Carpet (1925)
The Black Cap: New Stories of Murder & Mystery (1928)
Shudders (1929)
When Churchyards Yawn (1931)
Any discussion of horror anthologies would not be complete without mentioning August Derleth. Derleth and Donald Wandrei started Arkham House in 1939 to publish the works of H. P. Lovecraft. They did this but also went on to collect his friends and associates like Robert E. Howard, Frank Belknap Long, Clark Ashton Smith and Fritz Leiber. Later Derleth would inspire a new group of writers such as Ramsey Campbell and Brian Lumley. None of this technically is anthology work, but Derleth did create a number of actual anthologies in both Horror and Science Fiction. First with the poetry collection, Dark of the Moon (1947) then with the Arkham Sampler and then as actual volumes of stories with Over the Edge (1964). The last under Derleth was 1971’s Dark Things. I’m not going include a list here because Arkham House is such a topic on its own that we can look at in detail in another piece.
Stephen Jones (another anthologist to look at later) outlines Derleth’s travails with getting Lovecraft published in England in “Lovecraft in Britain” (2007). Derleth’s work with Gollancz was part of the publishing wave that would see paperback publishers in particular coming out with collections of horror anthologies: Pan, Mayflower, Arrow, Fontana, Beagle, Orbit, Star, etc. It is this boom that I discovered well after it was over in the used bookstores.
Herbert van Thal (1904-1983) was a book publisher who turned editor for Pan’s long-running series The Pan Book of Horror Stories. Van Thal’s innovation was not to just include all the old chestnuts of the Victorians but to include new fiction as well helping later stars like Basil Copper and Charles Birkin to see publication. He was described as “a sleek, well-groomed dormouse” because of his dandy dress. The portrait seen here would support that image. Unlike Cynthia Asquith, van Thal was not squeamish and would include gore-for-gore-sake tales, which Mike Ashley has criticized him for in Who’s Who in Horror and Fantasy Fiction (1977), though he also points out each volumes has something worthy in it.
Pan Books of Horror Stories
The First Pan Book of Horror Stories (1959) (aka The Pan Book of Horror Stories)
The Second Pan Book of Horror Stories (1960)
The Third Pan Book of Horror Stories (1962)
The Fourth Pan Book of Horror Stories (1963)
The Fifth Pan Book of Horror Stories (1964)
The Sixth Pan Book of Horror Stories (1965)
The Seventh Pan Book of Horror Stories (1966)
The Eighth Pan Book of Horror Stories (1967)
The Ninth Pan Book of Horror Stories (1968)
The Tenth Pan Book of Horror Stories (1969)
The Eleventh Pan Book of Horror Stories (1970)
The Twelfth Pan Book of Horror Stories (1971)
The 13th Pan Book of Horror Stories (1972)
The 14th Pan Book of Horror Stories (1973)
The 15th Pan Book of Horror Stories (1974)
The 16th Pan Book of Horror Stories (1975)
The 17th Pan Book of Horror Stories (1976)
The 18th Pan Book of Horror Stories (1977)
The 19th Pan Book of Horror Stories (1978)
The 20th Pan Book of Horror Stories (1979)
The 21st Pan Book of Horror Stories (1980)
The 22nd Pan Book of Horror Stories (1981)
The 23rd Pan Book of Horror Stories (1982)
The 24th Pan Book of Horror Stories (1983)
The 25th Pan Book of Horror Stories (1984)
Other Anthologies
Told in the Dark (1950)
Oriental Splendour (1953)
A Book of Strange Stories (1954)
Great Ghost Stories (1960)
Striking Terror (1963)
Famous Tales of the Fantastic (1965)
Lie Ten Nights Awake (1967)
Selections from The Pan Book of Horror Stories #3 (1970)
Selections from The Pan Book of Horror Stories #4 (1970)
Selections from The Pan Book of Horror Stories #5 (1970)
The Bedside Book of Horror (1973)
The Bedside Book of Strange Stories (1974)
The Second Bedside Book of Strange Stories (1976)
Tales to Make the Flesh Creep (1977)
R. Chetwynd-Hates (1919-2001) inherited the Fontana series from its previous editor, Robert Aickman, the grandson of horror author, Richard Marsh. Both men share the fact that they wrote many of the best horror stories of the last part of the 20th Century. (Aickman would have preferred the label “strange stories”.) Chetwynd-Hayes fiction was filmed twice in From Beyond the Grave (1974) and The Monster Club (1981). Who better to edit a horror anthology?
Armada Monster Book Series
The First Armada Monster Book (1975)
The Second Armada Monster Book (1976)
The Third Armada Monster Book (1977)
The Fourth Armada Monster Book (1978)
The Fifth Armada Monster Book (1979)
The Sixth Armada Monster Book (1981)
The Fontana Book of Great Ghost Stories Series
The Ninth Fontana Book of Great Ghost Stories (1973)
The Tenth Fontana Book of Great Ghost Stories (1974)
The Eleventh Fontana Book of Great Ghost Stories (1975)
The Twelfth Fontana Book of Great Ghost Stories (1976)
The Thirteenth Fontana Book of Great Ghost Stories (1977)
The Fourteenth Fontana Book of Great Ghost Stories (1978)
The Fifteenth Fontana Book of Great Ghost Stories (1979)
The Sixteenth Fontana Book of Great Ghost Stories (1980)
The Seventeenth Fontana Book of Great Ghost Stories (1981)
The Eighteenth Fontana Book of Great Ghost Stories (1982)
The Nineteenth Fontana Book of Great Ghost Stories (1983)
The Twentieth Fontana Book of Great Ghost Stories (1984)
Other Anthologies
Cornish Tales of Terror (1970)
Scottish Tales of Terror (1972) [only as by Angus Campbell]
Welsh Tales of Terror (1973)
Tales of Terror from Outer Space (1975)
Gaslight Tales of Terror (1976)
Doomed to the Night (1978)
Great Ghost Stories (2004) with Stephen Jones
Tales to Freeze the Blood: More Great Ghost Stories (2006) with Stephen Jones
We will continue into the 1960s next time with such star editors as Vic Ghidalia, Peter Haining and Hugh Lamb.
