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Post by dem bones on Feb 10, 2009 19:30:03 GMT
Corgi Horror and the Supernatural in the 'sixties Some of these may be slightly contentious - and there are no doubt several glaring omissions for you to torment me with, you fiends! - but this is as far as i've got so far ..... Allan Norwood - The Flesh And The Fiends - (1960) Curt Siodmak - Donovan's Brain (1960) John Lymington - Night Of The Big Heat (1961) Vernon Lee - The Virgin Of The Seven Daggers (1962) Vernon Lee - Ravenna and Her Ghosts (1962) Richard Matheson - Shock (1962) The Gordons - Experiment In Terror (1962) John Lymington - The Coming Of The Strangers (1963) Robert Bloch - The Dead Beat (1963) C. S. Cody - The Witching Night (?) (1963) A. V. Sellwood & Peter Haining Devil Worship in Britain (1964) *"non-fiction"* Frederick Pickersgill (ed.) - No Such Thing As A Vampire (1964) Robert Bloch - Terror (1964) Robert Bloch - Blood Runs Cold (1964) Anon (ed.) - The Masque Of The Red Death And Other Tales Of Horror (1964) John Lymington - The Night Spiders (1964) Robert Bloch - Psycho (1964) Mary Shelley - Frankenstein (1964) Robert Louis Stevenson - Dr. Jekyll & Mr Hyde (1964) Anon (ed.) - Black Tales (1965) August Derleth (ed.) - When Evil Wakes (1965) Robert Bloch - The Skull Of The Marquis De Sade (1965) Frederick Pickersgill (ed.) - Horror-7 (1965) Frederick Pickersgill (ed.) - And Graves Give Up Their Dead (1965) John Collier - Of Demons And Darkness (1965) Ray Bradbury - Dandelion Wine (1965) Richard Sale - Not Too Narrow, Not Too Deep (1965) Marquis De Sade - Justine: Or The Misfortunes Of Virtue [Translated by Alan Hull Walton ] (1965) Richard Matheson - Shock 2 (1965) John Carnell (ed.) - Weird Shadows From Beyond (1965) Arthur Machen - The Novel of the Black Seal and Other Stories (1965) Arthur Machen - The Novel of the White Powder (1965) Arthur Machen - Black Crusade: a Fantasy of Exotic Horror [The Three Impostors] (1966) Alex Hamilton (ed.) - The Cold Embrace (1966) Kurt Singer (ed.) - I Can't Sleep At Night (1966) Anon [James Pearson & A. J. Ronald ?] (ed/s.) - The Premature Burial & Other Tales Of Horror (1966) Donald Speed (ed.) - My Blood Ran Cold (1966) Arthur Machen - The Hill Of Dreams (1967) Boris Karloff (ed) - Horror Anthology (1967) Richard Matheson - Shock 3 (1967) Alex Hamilton - Beam Of Malice (1968) Richard Matheson - The Shrinking Man (1969) ....... Corgi Horror and the Supernatural in the 'seventies to follow soon .....
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Post by justin on Feb 10, 2009 20:43:44 GMT
A quick glimpse at the shelves of The Fanatic Library uncovers a couple of additions (dirty nappy in one hand, pulp horror classic in the other)
The Dreamers by Roger Manvell, 1964 "A marrow-chilling shocker"
Nightmare by Anne Blaisdell, 1964, "A real chiller"
It's not until you place them next to one another that you realise what a superb set of covers the Corgis sported, more 'horrific' than any NEL of that period. Josh Kirby is responsible for more than his fair share.
Another superb checklist Dem....
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Post by justin on Feb 10, 2009 20:45:42 GMT
And A Stir of Echoes by Matheson but it's right at the back of a shelf... sorry!
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Post by dem bones on Feb 11, 2009 13:02:02 GMT
Ta for the additions. You certainly won't find me arguing that a "marrow-chilling shocker" ain't worthy of its place! Tragically for me, no doubt a source of much mirth for the rest of you beastly cads, the primary source for these have been my wants lists (very plural: they've taken on a terrifying Dead Sea Scrolls aspect). The rest comes from this forum, snippets and notes found online and, lastly, my own miserable rotten 'collection' of rat-gnawed, smelly paperbacks with half the pages missing.  These sound a bit good! John Lymington - The Coming Of The Strangers (1963) "A story of horror in a seaside town... of strange, invisible and deadly creatures coming from the sea..." Daniel Telfer - Caretakers (1972) "a novel of people trapped behind the locked doors of a mental hospital, where emotions fester and tensions explode into murder and violence ....." Anne McCaffrey - Restoree (1980) "There was a sudden stench of a dead sea creature... There was the horror of a huge black shape closing over her... There was nothing" Anyway, it's weird, but even with the additions, these listings never look long enough to be anywhere near accurate. Don't know why, but I always imagined a publisher the size of Corgi would have been knocking out a macabre book a week throughout the sixties and seventies! The Corgi covers are incredibly attractive. Perhaps *lights blue touch paper* in forty years time, people will be saying the same about today's mainstream horror novels and collections ......  |
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Post by Steve on Feb 11, 2009 16:06:12 GMT
The Corgi covers are incredibly attractive. Perhaps *lights blue touch paper* in forty years time, people will be saying the same about today's mainstream horror novels and collections ... Funny thing (well, I say 'funny'), I was stood outside Waterstone's the other week in the cold, staring wistfully at their window display and wishing they had something worth reading, and I was struck by how cheap and unlovely books seem to look these days. Ironic really when you consider that you wouldn't see much change from a tenner assuming you actually wanted to buy one of the things. Back when these Corgis and such were on the shelves, books were ten a penny but publishers still put a bit of thought into what they were knocking out to the punters. Nowadays, when books have become something of a luxury item, well... where's the love? I'm just talking about the mainstream stuff mind, some of these small press horror anthologies you see now look a treat. |
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Post by David A. Riley on Feb 11, 2009 16:34:47 GMT
I agree with you wholeheartedly. The Virgin line of horror novels were singularly undistinguished. I'll have to scan a few of these in as illustration. Mainstream books are awful, by and large. As for the price of paperbacks these days, £7.99 now seems the minimum, which makes the small press seem not all that expensive by comparison. And they are usually better packaged, better presented and, dare I say it, better written.
One thing I like about many of the older paperback covers is that they gave off an element of fun - perhaps not taking their subject matter all too serious and with a promise that you are likely to enjoy what you read inside.
David
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Post by Steve on Feb 11, 2009 17:54:24 GMT
One thing I like about many of the older paperback covers is that they gave off an element of fun - perhaps not taking their subject matter all too serious and with a promise that you are likely to enjoy what you read inside. It just seems like nobody in publishing really cares anymore. Covers used to be a real 'come on', sometimes quite outrageously so, and you'd take it as read that the contents couldn't possibly live up to the promise of the cover (although it was great when they did) but it didn't matter - it all added to that sense of adventure and fun that David mentions. Nowadays you tend to wonder whether they want you to buy their books or not. |
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Post by pulphack on Feb 11, 2009 20:10:17 GMT
Well, generally I agree with you, gentlemen. I love those kind of painted and photographed covers, and the wonderful fonts that get used. They made me want to pick up a book, and still do when I see one in a second hand shop, just to see what's inside.
But I think part of it is simply because those are the books we grew up with and so that's the era of design that we love most. An association of so many things that go beyond the covers themselves. It's the same with album design - what happened to gatefold sleeves by the likes of Roger Dean and Rodney Matthews, eh? Or the stark graphics of Jamie Reid? Well, actually, in album design all those seem to have been post-modernised into new design concepts, and so pop is truly eating itself. Thing is, will the same thing happen in publishing and these cover graphics come back? Maybe - look at all these Victorian era books that are folowing the Phillip Pulman and Alan Moore markets: I picked up two by a bloke called GW Dahlquist, published by Penguin, with a stray Smiths token (nothing else there, it's crap these days) - and they look exactly like some old Victorian cover designs I have knocking about. Similarly, look at the way they're marketing all those Boys and Girls do bloody amazing things, blah blah, retro books. Appropriation of style to suggest a certain feel. Which is what Charles is doing so well with the Black Books.
To suggest publishers don't care and don't want to sell books is, in some ways, wrong. It might be more accurate to say that they haven't got a bloody clue, even though they do. There is an element who have come in from other fields of marketing, who look at it just like any other piece of packaging and follow trends. There's also a bloody awful lot of nepotism in publishing. A lot of people whose parents worked in the business, and they're there because of that, not because they have a feel for the business. A lot of people - particularly in editorial - who went to the same universities and have the same degrees, the same tutors, and the same ideas about writing. And they're very snobby.
I heard about one agent who hired a reader and charged her with going through the slush pile to look for mss aimed at rading groups (the Richard & Judy market). She told him they were all crap - and badly written and not literature... so now he's got another reader to wade through her rejects... Last week I was speaking to an editor of my acquaintance who does commercial non-fiction for a middling level publisher. He was telling me that the fiction editors are very snobby about his books, and look down at him. Yet, as he pointed out, his books sell and make the money that enables them to publish their novels that lose money.
What, you may be asking, has this to do with covers? Simply this: the attitude of these people is reflected in the way the books are packaged and presented. Mass market is reduced to the level of 'Heat' in terms of cheap graphic design, and the literature is packaged as high art. None of which has any regard for the people who actually buy the books, but is designed to impress CEO's looking for budget cuts and other editors who went to the same Uni.
Having said that, another problem is that there is no strongly defined market any more. Like any other form of popular culture, popular fiction is both diffuse in terms of mass movements, and carefully pigeonholed into niches that are targetted for a certain sale so that the images used become generic. Which, of course, screws up any kind of design innovation or off-the-wall inspiration. The last 'movement' of design I liked and was wide-spread was the kind of neon-techno-primary design that was used for Irvine Welsh and James Hawes, amongst others, about a decade or so ago. Very striking, and different to the seventies, but in its own way as distinctive. Then it all got back to the kind of thinking that saw embossed gold and titles written horizontally on the spine in the eighties - across the board from Stephen King to Pat Boothe (no 'e'?).
In short, I yearn to look in the shop window and see covers like this, but I think it's not gonna happen. Partly because that time is gone, as with all things. And partly because of the industry and the way it is...
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Post by pulphack on Feb 11, 2009 20:16:13 GMT
And I forgot... Bloch's The Dead Beat... what a way cool cover, daddio. A book to be read while listening to John Coltrane...
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Post by H_P_Saucecraft on Feb 12, 2009 20:39:08 GMT
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Post by dem bones on Feb 20, 2009 22:33:24 GMT
Damon Knight (ed.) - The Dark Side (Corgi, 1967) Damon Knight - Introduction
Ray Bradbury - The Black Ferris
Robert A. Heinlein - They
James Blish - Mistake Inside
H. L. Gold - Trouble With Water
Peter Phillips - C/ O Mr. Makepeace
Avram Davidson - The Golem
H. G. Wells - The Story Of The Late Mr. Elvesham
Theodore Sturgeon - It
Anthony Boucher - Nellthu
Richard McKenna - Casey Agonistes
T. L. Sherred - Eye For Iniquity
Fritz Leiber - The Man Who Never Grew Youngi Blurb: Turn the wheel of Science Fiction and you come to the other side, the side that does not deal with Space, or Time,. or Motion ...
Here are twelve stories — written by masters of S.F.— that explore the imagination ... tales of forgotten, impossible things — things that are faceless ... nameless ... formless ... things that come from THE DARK SIDEHere's one that was clearly published out of spite to disturb my entirely just and sane strict categorisation policy. There's an uncompromising 'Corgi Science Fiction' notification on the cover, but in his introduction Knight is emphatic that these are fantasy tales from The Dark Side (he also warns against strict categorisation, but I skipped that bit as it is clearly the raving of a madman). I've read at least half of these stories before and in every instance the source was a horror collection, so i'm gonna let this one slip through with just a couple of grumbles and a warning about its future conduct. Any book that includes It and The Black Ferris can't be all bad, after all. Again that pesky 'Corgi Science Fiction' on the cover, but no such reservations about including - John Carnell - Weird Shadows From Beyond (Corgi, 1965) John Carnell - Introduction
Mervyn Peake - Danse Macabre
John Kippax - Blood Offering
Mervyn Peake - Same Time, Same Place
Michael Moorcock - Master Of Chaos
William Tenn - Wednesday's Child
Robert Presslie - Dial 'O' For Operator
Brian W Aldiss - The Flowers Of The Forest
E.C Tubb - Fresh Guy
Eric Williams - The Garden Of Paris
Theodore Sturgeon - The Graveyard Readerblurb Ten Nightmares
A freshly turned grave with one mourner filled with hate; a telephone kiosk at night with something outside trying to get in; a ghoul playing knucklebones on a tombstone, a bodiless evening dress suit dancing in a moonlight glade; an iron shark tooth; a witch and a were-leopard ....
These are but a few of the ingredients of this nightmarish collection of weird stories. Weird is right, notably in a story which culminates in a wonderful death-by-being-lowered-slowly-into-gaping-maw-of-demon-flower! Mervyn Peake's ghost story is very prettily done, Sturgeon's Graveyard Reader is as strangely poignant as Bright Segment and Tubb's account of how the last remaining monsters get by after the big bang has driven the human race underground ends on a ghoulishly funny note.
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Post by jamesdoig on May 28, 2009 0:09:36 GMT
Saw these and had to add a couple of Machens:  Arthur Machen, The Novel of the White Powder, 1965 The Novel of the White Powder A Fragment of Life The Great God Pan  Arthur Machen, The Hill of Dreams, 1967 |
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Post by Craig Herbertson on May 28, 2009 6:28:50 GMT
Two more stunningly good covers
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Post by marksamuels on May 28, 2009 11:10:47 GMT
Nice to see those two Machen covers (I am something of a fan  ). I've got both somewhere in the Samuels garret. Here's another: Mark S. |
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Post by Craig Herbertson on May 28, 2009 13:40:06 GMT
That's one thing about this site. I recognise only three of these covers and they are all pretty top,
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). I've got both somewhere in the Samuels garret. Here's another: