Bestseller Library - Horror Stories

[allthingshorror]

Bestseller Library (1961/1962)



Horror Stories

CONTENTS:

Moonlight Sonata - Alexander Woolcott
The Novel of the Black Seal - Arthur Machen
Mrs Armsworth - E.F Benson
The Upper Berth - F. Marion Crawford
The Dunwich Horror - H.P Lovecraft
Was It A Dream - Guy De Maupassant
The Judge's House - Bram Stoker
The Trial For Murder - Charles Collins and Charles Dickens
The Man with a Malady - J.F. Sullivan
Sawney Bean and His Family - Scottish Traditional Tale
The Squaw - Bram Stoker
The Hair - A.J. Alan
What Was It? Fitz-James O'Brien
The Cone - H.G. Wells
The Screaming Skull - F. Marion Crawford

MORE HORROR STORIES - ed. Elizabeth Lee

CONTENTS:

The Dead Smile - F. Marion Crawford
Caterpillars - E.F. Benson
Monstrous Regiment - H. Russell Wakefield
Telling - Elizabeth Bowen
The Veld - Ray Bradbury
A Little Place Off The Edgware Road - Graham Greene
Nowhere Without Her - Colin Evans
The Sorcerer's Apprentice - Robert Bloch
The Travelling Grave - L.P. Hartley
The Murders in the Rue Morgue - Edgar Allan Poe

Don't have any info on Bestseller Library - all I have is that it was a division of Paul Elek Limited - who also ran Logo Press Ltd and Scientific Books Ltd.

Had never read the Charles Dickens effort from the first volume before this - story of a victim going to the trial of his murder - and I can't say I enjoyed it much either.

[dem bones]

maybe the most interesting thing about them is that the contents are identical to the two volumes of The Arrow Book Of Horror Stories] of 1965, which suggests Arrow bought (part of?) the company out. Elek also produced a lovely edition of The Monk (1960) and a couple of anthologies edited by Elizabeth Lee including Spine Chillers: An Anthology of Mystery and Horror (1961) with contributions from the usual suspects, Poe, Dickens, Wilkie Collins, Bierce, M.R. James, E.F. Benson and Lovecraft.