Not at Night was unusually successful, and it had six printings in its first year, and more subsequently. Also, it inspired a further ten volumes in the series (not just from Weird Tales, but using many sources), and a final "Not at Night" Omnibus in 1937, which presented the editor's selection from previous volumes. The omnibus also included a short introduction (dated February 1936) by Thomson in which she described the origin of the first volume.
The idea had been conceived on the top of a bus (they were open-decked buses in those days) just as it pulled away from its Oxford Circus stop about six o'clock one evening, I was on that bus with the Director of Selwyn & Blount, Ltd. He was, I remember, lamenting, like every other publisher, that he wanted something new and couldn't find it . . . and something popular. I believe that he claims the bright moment when Not at Night took birth, but I think it was a case of two minds on the same thought at the same moment--at any rate, I know that I am responsible for the title of the Series!
The price of the projected book was a matter of fierce argument. Finally we agreed upon two shillings in the belief that Not at Night would be the kind of book that a man would buy at a railway-bookstall, throwing down a single coin and running for his train. We wanted, above all, to produce books that would be within the reach of a very large number of people . . .
The jacket for the first volume (and for many of the later ones), was designed by that clever advertising agent, Betty Prentis, who was then working as a freelance artist under her trade name of Eliza Pyke. It was "Eliza", with her sense of dramatic colour, who contributed not a little towards a "brighter bookstalls" movement!
Publication-day dawned and we held our hands in trepidation. Were we backing a wrong horse? Within a week we knew that we were on the right one. Not at Night was launched and we daringly planned a second and a third to follow in the ensuing years. For originally this was a one-book scheme. The popularity of the Series never waned, and it became a matter of price to make each subsequent volume equal the quality of the previous one; for--in our modest opinion--it was impossible to surpass it!
And thus the first multi-volumed series of weird stories came about. It even sparked a short revival of three Not at Night volumes in paperback in the early 1960s.
Thank you for this very interesting article. In a bit of synchronicity, I had just been reading Montague Summers' introduction to his own Supernatural Omnibus (1931), which includes an extensive history of weird fiction, and makes the argument (which some might think quaint) that real belief in supernatural agencies is almost a prerequisite to the production of first-rate work in this field. On this topic, he says:
ReplyDelete"It seems to me that it is exactly this lack of spirituality which so fatally flaws the vast majority of tales in a series generally known as Not at Night, which has now attained six volumes of similar if slightly varying titles. If there is a note of spiritual horror, whether it be vampire horror, as in Four Wooden Stakes, or Satanism, as in The Devil's Martyr and The Witch-Baiter, the story is raised to another plain far higher than the rather nauseous sensationalism of fiendish serums, foul experiments of lunatic surgeons, half-human plants, monstrous insects and the like."
But despite his general disdain for the series, one notes that he appears to have read six volumes of it (and so likely read the remaining ones when they appeared).
However one judges the quality of the Not at Night, it remains a fact that the series overall showed the large potential for sales of such books, and many other publishers noted it and tried their own volumes, with varying results. My memory of reading the Summers's anthologies is that The Supernatural Omnibus had better stories than Summers's later ones, though there were some excellent stories in those too.
ReplyDeleteIs there a good biography of Montague Summers?
ReplyDeleteFrank Belknap Long and Greye La Spina were not particularly well-known writers then, nor are they now, while some of the other authors in the series had solid publication histories.
ReplyDeleteA quarter of the stories belonged to English authors who had no connection whatsoever with Weird Tales.
As the placement of my parenthetical aside indicates, I meant that as names Long and La Spina are at least heard-of today, not back then. And as I said, all of the stories in the first Not at Night volume had appeared in Weird Tales. I don't know what your statement "A quarter of the stories belonged to English authors who had no connection whatsoever with Weird Tales" is supposed to mean.
DeleteI meant the whole series when I spoke about English authors. But the first English story appeared only in the third volume of "You'll Need a Night Light". I think that the unpublished stories of English authors now that all issues of Weird Tales are available are of particular interest.
DeleteThank you for letting know about the significant date.
Some of us will live to see the Creeps' centenary.
Ah, you meant the series as a whole. I know the methodology of the series evolved as it went on. I wonder if Selwyn & Blount could afford to buy more things after they were bought out by Hutchinson in 1927 or 1928.
DeleteP.S. I meant to add that the names of Frank Belknap Long and Greye La Spina are known to moderns, at least in the US, because Arkham House published books by them, and the Arkham line is very collected.
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