CRIMES, CREEPS AND THRILLS: FORTY-FIVE NEW STORIES OF DETECTION, HORROR AND ADVENTURE BY EMINENT MODERN AUTHORS ...
London: E. H. Samuel, n.d., [1936]. Octavo, pp. [i-vi] vii-ix [x] xi-xv [xvi] 1-560, 30 full-page unattributed black and white illustrations in the text, original light blue cloth, front cover ruled in blind, spine stamped in gold. First edition. Important 560-page partially original anthology collecting forty-five adventure, crime and supernatural stories by E. H. Visiak, Richard Middleton, M. P. Shiel, H. H. Ewers, Frederick Carter, Edgar Jepson, Nugent Barker, and others. Contents include the only appearance in print of Visiak's "The Shadow," a flawed novel "reworking on a symbolic level of concepts in Captain Marryat's The Phantom Ship" [Bleiler (1983)]. "Over and above their general high quality ... [Gawsworth's] large anthologies of horror and supernatural Fiction –- ranging from quality ghost stories to mediocre contes cruels –- are notable for the amount of original material they contain, much of this coming from authors of considerable interest, including Oswell Blakeston, Thomas Burke, Frederick Carter, Louis Golding, Edgar Jepson, Arthur Machen, Richard Middleton, Eimar O'Duffy, M. P. Shiel and E. H. Visiak –- as well as Gawsworth himself, none of whose short stories have been collected separately. His early stories, like ABOVE THE RIVER (1931) and 'Scylla and Charybdis' (1934) are wistful nature fantasies in the style of Algernon Blackwood, but his later 'collaborations' with Shiel, Visiak and particularly Jepson ('The Shifting Growth' 1936, included in this collection) are more sinister and portentous, shadowing death." - Clute and Grant (eds), The Encyclopedia of Fantasy (1997), p. 392. Bleiler, The Guide to Supernatural Fiction 452. Clute and Grant (eds), The Encyclopedia of Fantasy, p. 392. Locke, A Spectrum of Fantasy, p. 9. Bleiler (1978), p. 80. Foxing to endpapers, patchy fading to front and rear covers, spine faded, cloth start to split at lower left front joint, a very good copy in a good dust jacket, light chipping to corner and base of spine, upper spine chipped slightly affecting the "C" in the title lettering, some foxing to right front cover, and spine panel a bit age darkened with a small stain. An uncommon book, more so with the jacket. (21813). Item #21813
Price: $450.00