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 blue-gray cloth, front panel ruled in blind, spine panel stamped in gold. First edition, first printing, first binding. 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. 6. Bleiler (1978), p. 80. Not in Reginald (1979; 1992). A fine copy in a very good 2/6 pictorial dust jacket with wear at edges, shallow chips from spine ends and internal tape mends along folds. A lovely copy of this book in a nice example of the rarely seen jacket. (#170146).
Price: $1,100.00
No statement of printing.