Christine Campbell Thomson & 'Not At Night'

[dem bones]

Christine Campbell Thomson (1897-1985)

Editor of the Not At Night series, she also penned a number of stories as 'Flavia Richardson'. Many of them were competent, if formula, young-women-in-peril-from-demented-surgeons shockers, although Black Magic and the 'supernatural' also featured in such terror tales as When Hell Laughed Out Of The Earth and The Red Turret. My favourite of her efforts is the nasty Behind The Yellow Door, although Christine had a fondness for her final attempt at fiction, Message For Margie, in Van Thal's Pan Horror #5).

Originally intended as a one off collection, the series was such a success that Christine wound up editing eleven volumes and an omnibus between 1925 and 1937. In all, there were 170 stories and, according to noted fantasy bibliographer Mike Ashley, exactly 100 of these came from the legendary American pulp Weird Tales.

The books in the series were all published by Selwyn & Blount.

Not At Night (October, 1925)
More Not At Night (Sept. 1926)
You'll Need A Night Light (Sept. 1927)
Gruesome Cargoes (July, 1928)
By Daylight Only (Oct. 1929)
Switch On The Light (April, 1931)
At Dead Of Night (Nov, 1931)
Grim Death (Aug, 1932)
Keep On The Light (July, 1933)
Terror By Night (Aug., 1934)
Nightmare By Daylight (April, 1936)
Not At Night Omnibus (April 1937)

Arrow books published three paperback compilations from the series from 1960-62 as:

Not At Night (1960)
More Not At Night (1961)
Still Not At Night (1962: reissued as Only By Daylight, 1972)

After Not At Night, Campbell would later publish her autobiography I Am A Literary Agent (Sampson Low, 1951). She and Not At Night legend Oscar Cook were divorced in 1938, and Christine remarried in 1945, adopting her second husband's surname, Hartley, for her two non-fiction occult titles, The Western Mystery Tradition (1968) and A Case For Reincarnation (1972).