Monday, July 27, 2020

John Gawsworth's Anthologies

John Gawsworth was the pen-name of Terence Ian Fytton Armstrong (1912-1970). Beginning in the early 1930s, he published a series of eight anthologies, one as edited by Gawsworth, another as edited by Fytton Armstrong, and the rest anonymously.  I have all eight anthologies, but completing the chronology of when they were actually published hasn't been possible.  Perhaps one of the UK newspaper subscription databases might help sort this out, at least as to when the first reviews might have appeared, but I don't have access to any of these. Can anyone help?

The eight anthologies, with the month of publication (when known) are as follows:

October 1932. Strange Assembly: New Stories (London: Unicorn Press), ed. John Gawsworth

January 1933. Full Score: Twenty-five Stories (London: Rich and Cowan), ed. Fytton Armstrong

December 1934. New Tales of Horror by Eminent Authors (London: Hutchinson).

Month? 1935. Thrills, Crimes and Mysteries: A Specially Selected Collection of Sixty-Three Complete Stories by Well-Known Writers (London: Associated Newspapers). With Thirty Illustrations by Norman Keene, and a Foreword by John Gawsworth.

Month? 1936. Thrills: Twenty Specially Selected New Stories of Crime, Mystery and Horror (London: Associated Newspapers). Twelve Illustrations by Norman Keene.

Month? 1936. Masterpiece of Thrills (London: Daily Express). Reportedly this book was a newspaper give-away.

October 1936. Crimes, Creeps and Thrills: Forty-Five New Stories of Detection, Horror and Adventure by Eminent Modern Authors (London: E H Samuel). With 30 unattributed illustrations.

October 1945. Twenty Tales of Terror: Great New Stories (Calcutta, Susil Gupta). This anthology reprints fourteen stories from Thrills, Crimes and Mysteries (1935) and six stories from Thrills (1936).

I'm presently trying to annotate some letters related to contributors in the 1935-1937 period, so figuring out in which months those anthologies were published would really help.  Thanks. 

4 comments:

  1. I have a few of those, but not in those fabulous dust jackets.

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  2. I wish I had them in dust-jackets. These examples are just ones I saved from the web.

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  3. We have in progress a compendium of Frederick Carter/Francis Marsden's short stories, several of which feature in these publications. There is also a fascinating introduction detailing the social and literary context of the series. There are many unpublished stories by Carter too...

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    1. That's good news! Keep us posted when the book is released.

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