Following on from
last years collection of books that caused some gleeful childhood terror, here's another selection. I hope you find an old favourite here too...
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| 1968 |
Originally published in 1968 (this is the fifth edition, from 1974), the Fontana series began in 1966 and ran through seventeen volumes until 1984 (1976 was skipped for some reason). Christine Barnard edited the first four, Mary Danby took over for the rest.
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| 1970 |
The third in the series, edited by the wonderful Mary Danby (
who I was lucky enough to meet in 2012 at FantasyCon in Brighton, when Johnny Mains introduced us), this features cover art by
Peter Archer and twelve stories, including work by M. R. James, Christine Campbell Thomson, R. Chetwynd-Hayes and Danby herself.
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| 1971 |
Features eight stories (including a Sherlock Holmes adventure,
The Red-Headed League, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle), with the Master Of Suspense lending his name (though there's no note on the editor since, sadly, Hitchcock's regular collaborator
Robert Arthur had already passed away).
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| 1973 |
A selection of true-life ghost stories
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| 1973 |
With cover art by
Tom Chantrell, who created my favourite
Star Wars poster, this excellent volume by Denis Gifford is beloved by fans of a certain age...
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| 1975 |
Originally published by Gollancz in 1975 (this is the 1978 Puffin edition) and ably edited by the excellent Peter Haining (who also edited the fantastic
The Restless Bones,
which I wrote about here), this features a veritable who's-who of horror fiction, including M. R. James, O. Henry, Algernon Blackwood, Rudyard Kipling, Arthur Machen, Daphne du Maurier, Fritz Leiber, Joan Aiken, Ray Bradbury and others.
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| 1979 |
Edited by the prolific
Richard Davis (though Pertwee contributed the introduction and epilogue), this contains nine original short stories.
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| 1979 |
Hardback edition from Hamlyn, originally published in 1977 as a Beaver paperback (see the last Childhood Terrors) as the
Beaver Book Of Horror.
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| 1980 |
Another selection of true-life mysteries.
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| 1980 |
I was a huge fan of the TV show as a kid (some of it was scary and it was always fascinating) and I have the BCA edition of this, which is the first place I ever read of the Devil's footprints, a story I still find very creepy.
Puffin Books is the long-standing childrens imprint of Penguin Books and was formed in 1940.
Piccolo Books is the children's imprint of Pan Macmillan.
Armada Books was set up by Gordon Landsborough in 1962 as a paperback imprint of Mayfair Books Ltd, focussing exclusively on books for children to buy with the pocket money. Collins bought it in 1966 as an imprint to publish books for 10-15 year olds under their Fontana Books paperback arm. Armada ceased in 1995 but I will always love it because it published
The Three Investigators.
Beaver was the children's imprint of Hamlyn which is now part of the Octopus Publishing Group, owned by Hachette Livre.
Fontana was the paperback imprint of William Collins & Sons and is now part of Harper Collins.
Magnet Books was the children's imprint of Methuen
I've got the ones by Denis Gifford and Artur C. Clarke. Never was much of a horror fan, apart from the old Universal movies. I do have novelisations of The Bride Of Frankenstein, The Werewolf Of London, and The Mummy though.
ReplyDeleteExcellent, I don't think I've ever seen them!
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