Those Thick Onnibuses from the Thirties

I was looking over my anthology shelves recently, and got to wondering how all those thick anthologies from the 1930s came about in the UK, and which one was the first. Initially I thought of those three Omnibuses of Crime, edited by Dorothy L. Sayers, and then I recalled that those Omnibuses were the US titles. Gollancz had published each of them originally as Great Short Stories of Detection, Mystery and Horror (September 1928; second series, July 1931; third series, September 1934). In May 1931, Gollancz had published The Holiday Omnibus, which included novels like The Purple Cloud by M.P. Shiel and shorter works like "Mrs. Raeburn's Waxwork" by Eleanor Smith. (Of course there were other horror anthologies of the time, including the "Not at Night" series in the 1920s-1930s, and the "Creeps" series in the 1930s; but they were mostly normal-sized books, though each series did an omnibus in due course, The "Not at Night" Omnibus (April 1937), and The Creeps Omnibus (October 1935), comprising the first three volumes of the Creeps series.)  

It appears that Hutchinson was the first firm to follow up, and they produced an extensive series of omnibuses of various types. The first was A Century of Creepy Stories, which came out in June 1934. Next up was The Evening Standard Book of Strange Stories in October 1934. The December release of New Tales of Horror, by Eminent Authors, ghost-edited by John Gawsworth, initiated a series of four thick anonymously-edited Gawsworth anthologies from other publishers: Thrills, Crimes and Mysteries (1935); Crimes, Creeps and Thrills (1936); Thrills (1936); Masterpiece of Thrills (1936) 

Some of Hutchinson's omnibuses had named editors (Rafael Sabatini, Hugh Walpole, Dennis Wheatley, P.G. Wodehouse, Francis Brett Young); some had named introducers (G.K. Chesterton); some are uncredited. Of the latter, there is the curious example of Fifty Years of Ghost Stories (October 1935) and A Century of Ghost Stories (May 1936), which subsumed the printed text of the former book (pp. 11-702) into the 1013 pages of the latter. Fifty Years of Ghost Stories was reprinted on its own by Hutchinson in 1949; and in 1970, Hutchinson made up two anthologies from some of the contents of the earlier volumes: Let's Talk of Graves: Tales from 'A Century of Ghost Stories' (1970) and Walk in Dread: Twelve Classic Eerie Tales (1970). The US firm Taplinger would reprint the second book, and they found the original editor still working at Hutchinson. This was Dorothy M. Tomlinson (1910-2002), the daughter of the writer H.M. Tomlinson, who began her forty-plus year career at Hutchinson in 1934. Tomlinson contributed an interesting introduction to Taplinger's Walk in Dread (1972), describing how she had been asked to compile an anthology of ghost stories for Hutchinson a few years after she had joined the firm. She noted that her first inclusion was E. Nesbit's "John Charington's Wedding"--which appears only in the larger 1936 Century of Ghost Stories (where it is erroneously credited to "Evelyn" Nesbit), and not in the 1935 Fifty Years of Ghost Stories. The situation of that story, and the fact that Tomlinson joined the firm in 1934 make me think that she was probably not responsible for Fifty Years of Ghost Stories; and certainly not the editor of A Century of Horror Stories (1934), which is sometimes attributed to her. But we can certainly attribute to her A Century of Ghost Stories (1936) and Walk in Dread (1970 and 1972). 

This small boom in omnibuses ran out in 1938-39 as war began. Here follows a chronological listing of the main Hutchinson omnibuses, with some notes on some oddball titles at the very end. 

A Century of Creepy Stories  
            Hutchinson, [June 1934] 3s 6d
            [July 1934] imitation leather 5 s;  1/2 leather 7s 6d 
            [December 1934] imitation leather 5s 6d; 1/2 leather 7s 6d 
The Evening Standard Book of Strange Stories            
            Hutchinson, [October 1934] 3s 6d
            [December 1934] 1/2 leather 7s 6d; imitation leather 5s 6d 
A Century of Sea Stories [edited by Rafael Sabatini]
            Hutchinson, [November 1934]  3s 6d
            [January 1935] imitation leather 5s 6d 
 A Century of Humour [edited by P.G. Wodehouse]
            Hutchinson, [December 1934]  1/2 leather 7s 6d;  imitation 
             leather 5s 6d
A Century of Love Stories [edited Gilbert Frankau]
            Hutchinson, [January 1935]  3s 6d  
            [July 1937] ch. ed. 2s 
A Century of Detective Stories [With an Introduction by G.K. Chesterton]
            Hutchinson, [April 1935]  3s 6d
Fifty Years of Ghost Stories
            Hutchinson, [October 1935]  2s 6d
            Hutchinson, [1949]  evidently 60th Thousand, 10 s 6d 
A Century of Horror [edited by Dennis Wheatley]
            Hutchinson, [October 1935]  3s 6d  
A Century of Boys’ Stories [edited by Francis Brett Young] 
            Hutchinson, [October 1935]  3s 6d 
            [July 1937] 3s 6d
A Century of Historical Stories [edited by Rafael Sabatini] 
            Hutchinson, [January 1936]  ch ed. 3s 6d 
A Century of Western Stories [edited by George Goodchild] 
            Hutchinson, [March 1936] 3s 6d
A Century of Ghost Stories   [subsumes Fifty Years of Ghost Stories]
            Hutchinson, [May 1936] 3s 6d  
The Holiday Omnibus 
            Hutchinson, [July 1936] 3s 6d
            [July 1937]  ch ed. 2s 
The Second Century of Humour 
            Hutchinson, [September 1936]  3s 6d 
Cavalcade of History  [edited by Claud Golding] 
            Hutchinson, [March 1937]  3s 6d 
The Evening Standard Second Book of Strange Stories 
            Hutchinson, [May 1937]  3s 6d  
A Century of Nature Stories [With an Intro by J.W. Robertson Scott] 
            Hutchinson, [June 1937]  3s 6d 
A Second Century of Creepy Stories [edited by Hugh Walpole] 
            Hutchinson, [July 1937]  3s 6d
The Fireside Omnibus 
            Hutchinson, [November] 1937  3s 6d 
The Second Cavalcade of History [edited by Claud Golding] 
            Hutchinson, [January 1938] 3s 6d 
A Century of Spy Stories [edited by Dennis Wheatley] 
            Hutchinson, [May 1938] 3s 6d 
A Century of Girls’ Stories [edited by Ethel Boileau] 
            Hutchinson, [April 1939]   3s 6d 

Other:

The Book of the King’s Jubilee [edited by Sir Philip Gibbs] 
            Hutchinson, [April 1935] 3s 6d  512 pp. 
Famous Trials [by the First Earl of Birkenhead] 
            Hutchinson, [January 1935] 3s 6d  Ch. ed.  Jan 1938 3s
Holiday Omnibus
            Hutchinson, [July] 1936  3s 6d   Ch. ed.  2s July 1937 
More Famous Trials [edited by the First Earl of Birkenhead]
            Hutchinson, [July 1938]  3s 6d 
1001 Wonderful Things [edited by Walter Hutchinson]
            Hutchinson, [July 1935]  3s 6d   Ch ed. 2s. July 1936 


A Century of Popular Romances [edited by Gilbert Frankau]
            Title announced, but probably became A Century of Love
Holiday Omnibus for All Seasons
Holiday Omnibus for Christmas
            Both apparently subsumed into Holiday Omnibus 

I'd pick these as the six essential volumes of the Hutchinson series, for those especially interested in the weird genre:

A Century of Creepy Stories (1934)
The Evening Standard Book of Strange Stories (1934)       
A Century of Horror [edited by Dennis Wheatley] (1935)
A Century of Ghost Stories (1936) 
The Evening Standard Second Book of Strange Stories (1937) 
A Second Century of Creepy Stories [edited by Hugh Walpole] (1937)I 

I also find the Gawsworth-edited anthologies of considerable interest.