Not at Night (fiction anthology series)

Not at Night 1925 UK Edition

Details

Publisher: Selwyn & Blount, LTD. (London, UK)

Page Count: varies

Editors: Christine Campbell Thomson

Authors and Contents: (see contents, below)

Description

Not at Night series dust jacket art

An anthology series of popular Weird Tales stories, published in hardback format for a British audience; for many of the authors anthologized, this would be their first exposure both in hardback format, and to British readers. The series took its name from the first book in the series, the complete list of anthologies in the series includes:

1. Not at Night (October 1925; reprint, 1936). Not to be confused with the Herbert Asbury collection of the same title (see below) which is a limited selection (to 1928) from the British series; nor with the title published by Arrow Books which is also a selection from the series.
2. More Not at Night (Sept. 1926). Not to be confused with the title published by Arrow Books which is a selection from the series.
3. You'll Need A Night Light (Sept. 1927).
4. Gruesome Cargoes (July 1928).
5. By Daylight Only (Oct. 1929). Not be confused with the title Only By Daylight which is a paperback reissue of the Arrow compilation Still Not at Night.
6. Switch on the Light (April 1931).
7. At Dead of Night (Nov 1931).
8. Grim Death (Aug 1932).
9. Keep on the Light (July 1933).
10. Terror By Night (Aug. 1934).
11. Nightmare By Daylight (April 1936).
12. Not at Night Omnibus (April 1937). 35 stories, selected from across the whole series of 11 volumes and representing the editor's favourite stories of the series.

Contents

Not at Night, 1925 UK Edition

Editor: Christine Campbell Thomson, 1925 UK

• "Monsters of the Pit", Paul S. Powers. A man tells the tale of how he lost his arm in a remote part of Africa, thanks to a mad scientist and the monstrous things he had created.
• "Four Wooden Stakes", Victor Roman. Remson contacts his old friend Jack with an urgent request for him to visit his ancestral home. Remson's family members have been dying of an inexplicable wasting disease that strikes in the night, and only Remson is left…
• "The Third Thumb-Print", Mortimer Levitan. Guy Steel visits Professor Sanders to learn about the latter’s revolutionary new discovery: he can determine whether a person has the potential to be a murderer simply from a thumb-print. The meeting will take an unexpected and horrific turn.
• "Lips of the Dead", W.J. Stamper. When a Haitian dictator brutally executes his democratic opposition, the decapitated head of the victim prophesizes the fall of the tyrant.
• "The Devil Bed", Gerald Dean. When an antiquities dealer finds a secret drawer in his centuries-old writing desk, it puts him on the trail of an exceedingly rare bed with a murderous history — and murderous proclivities.
• "Death-Waters", Frank Belknap-Long, Jr. When two New Yorkers travel to Honduras in search of fresh spring water to bottle, one of them runs afoul of a native with supernatural powers. The native summons forces that leads to a deadly and painful end.
• "Black Curtains", G. Frederick Montefiore. Seeking inspiration for his art, a painter focuses intently on the black curtains separating his studio from his neighbor’s home. This puts him into a nightmarish fever dream about his neighbor that involves love, greed, and murder. Or was it a dream?
• "The Plant-Thing", R.G. Macready. A journalist goes to interview Professor Carter, a scientist who has bred a carnivorous plant into something much, much larger, smarter — and hungry.
• "His Family", C. Franklin Miller. In the remotest depths of the Congo, an explorer comes across a reclusive colonel who has been in hiding to protect himself and his family. But the colonel and his family also hold a terrible secret.
• "A Hand from the Deep", Romeo Poole. When the Whitby home explodes in some sort of gasoline-fueled accident, there is only one survivor — a patient who has had his arm reattached by Doctor Whitby using methods that got the doctor banned from practice. But why does the patient insist that the bandages be kept wet, not dry, and what is happening to the rest of his body?
• "The Tortoise-Shell Cat", Greye La Spina. Althea Benedict, a student at an exclusive girls’ school in New York City, immediately notices that there is something strange about her new roommate Vida. Students and teachers who run afoul of Vida seem to have very unpleasant things happen to them, and Vida seems to know about this and unable to stop it. Althea’s cousin suspects dark magic is involved.
• "The Case of the Russian Stevedore", Henry W. Whitehill. In a testimony about the horrific death of Doctor Dinwoodie, the narrator explains how the doctor, known for animal experimentation, was living in fear of a massive, hardly human, Russian Stevedore that seemed to have followed the doctor halfway around the world.
• "The Leopard's Trail", W. Chiswell Collins. Traveling in Western Africa, Chisholm and Hodgkins run afoul of a sinister native cult known as the Leopard Society and are targeted as the cult’s next victims.
• "The Last Trip", Archie Binns. The driver of a long passenger car is making his last trip for the night, which seems quite routine. However, the route of the passengers seems to be taking them inexorably toward the cemetery, and the driver has a dark secret that will come back to haunt him.
• "The Purple Cincture", H. Thompson Rich. A physician, learning of his wife’s infidelity, breeds a horrific disease that can inexorably take its victims apart, piece by piece. He infects the man who cuckolded him and seems to get away with a particular gruesome murder. However, guilt — or supernatural vengeance — brings ironic punishment back upon the doctor.

More Not at Night, 1926 UK Edition

Editor: Christine Campbell Thomson

• "The Hooded Death", Joel Martin Nichols, Jr.
• "The Man Who Was Saved", B.W. Sliney.
• "Fidel Bassin", W.J. Stamper.
• "Teeth", Galen C. Colin.
• "Vials of Wrath", Edith Lyle Ragsdale.
• "The Experiment of Erich Weigert", Sewell Peaslee Wright.
• "The Mystery Under the Sea", Donald E. Keyhoe [as by Donald Edward Keyhoe].
• "The Horror on the Links", Seabury Quinn.
• "The Yellow Spectre", Stewart Van der Veer.
• "Swamp Horror", R.J. Robbins and Will Smith.
• "The Dead Soul", Raoul Lenoir.
• "The Sea Thing", Frank Belknap Long, Jr.
• "The Black Box", H. Thompson Rich.
• "Bat's Belfry", August Derleth.
• "The Phantom Drug", A. W. Kapfer.

You'll Need a Nightlight, 1927 UK Edition

Editor: Christine Campbell Thomson

• "The Last Horror", Eli Colter.
• "The Life Serum", Paul S. Powers.
• "The Girdle", Joseph McCord.
• "Si Urag of the Tail", Oscar Cook.
• "The Beast", Paul Benton.
• "His Wife", Zita Inez Ponder.
• "Laocoon", Bassett Morgan.
• "Out of the Earth", Flavia Richardson.
• "Ti Michel", W.J. Stamper.
• "The House of Horror", Seabury Quinn.
• "The Coffin of Lissa", August Derleth.
• "The Parasitic Hand", R. Anthony.
• "The Death Crescents of Koti", Romeo Poole.
• "Ghosts of the Air", J.M. Hiatt and Moye W. Stephens.
• "The Horror at Red Hook", H.P. Lovecraft.

Not at Night, 1928 US Edition

Editor: Herbert Asbury, 1928 US; a "pirate" edition drawn from the first couple entries in the British anthologies and falsely attributed to the "British Weird Tales", Weird Tales threatened to sue the publisher, who eventually withdrew it from circulation:

• "The Purple Cincture", H. Thompson Rich.
• "The Horror at Red Hook", H.P. Lovecraft.
• "A Hand from the Deep", Romeo Poole.
• "The Tortoise-Shell Cat", Greye La Spina.
• "The House of Horror", Seabury Quinn.
• "The Coffin of Lissa", August W. Derleth.
• "Swamp Horror", Will Smith and R.J. Robbins.
• "The Parasitic Hand", R. Anthony.
• "The Death Crescents of Koti", Romeo Poole.
• "The Beast", Paul Benton.
• "His Wife", Zita Inez Ponder.
• "Laocoon", Bassett Morgan.
• "The Life Serum", Paul S. Powers.
• "The Girdle", Joseph McCord.
• "Bat's Belfry", August W. Derleth.
• "The Sea-Thing", Frank Belknap Long, Jr.
• "The Horror on the Links", Seabury Quinn.
• "The Experiment of Erich Weigert", Sewell Peaslee Wright.
• "The Hooded Death", Joel Martin Nichols, Jr.
• "The Man Who Was Saved", B.W. Sliney.
• "The Plant-Thing", R.G. Macready.
• "Death-Waters", Frank Belknap Long, Jr.
• "Monsters of the Pit", Paul S. Powers.
• "Four Wooden Stakes", Victor Roman.
• "The Devil Bed", Gerald Dean.

The Gruesome Cargoes, 1928 UK Edition

Editor: Christine Campbell Thomson

• "Dead Man's Luck", Lockhart North.
• "When Hell Laughed", Flavia Richardson.
• "The Black Spider", Edmund Snell.
• "The Hunting on the Doonagh Bog", Anthony Wharton.
• "Drums of Fear", Dora Christie-Murray.
• "The Hand From the Ruins", Harold Markham.
• "A Celestial Hell", Harry De Windt.
• "The Children of Bondage", Dagney Major.
• "The Man Who Ordered a Double", Rupert Grayson.
• "When Glister Walked", Oscar Cook (variant of "The Sacred Jars" 1927).
• "Offspring of Hell", H. Thomson.
• "The Tomb", John Palmer and Hilary Saint George Saunders [as by Francis Beeding].
• "The Creeping Horror", A.A. Rawlinson.
• "The Green Eyes of Mbuiri", Benge Atlee.
• "The Padlocked House", L. Oulton.

By Daylight Only, 1929 UK Edition

Editor: Christine Campbell Thomson

• "The Chain", H. Warner Munn.
• "The Fates", John Dwight.
• "Pickman's Model", H.P. Lovecraft.
• "The Last Laugh", C. Franklin Miller.
• "At Number Eleven", Flavia Richardson (orig. published in Weird Tales Oct. 1929 as "The Gray Lady").
• "The Devils of Po Sung", Bassett Morgan.
• "The Rose Window", Charlton Lawrence Edholm.
• "The Panthers of Shevgoan", Morgan Johnson.
• "Medusa", Royal W. Jimerson.
• "Piecemeal", Oscar Cook.
• "Bells of Oceana", Arthur J. Burks.
• "The Devil's Martyr", Signe Toksvig.
• "The Cave of Spiders", William R. Hickey.
• "The Witch-Baiter", R. Anthony.
• "The Trimmer", Douglas Newton.
• "Blood", Rupert Grayson.
• "The Tenant", August Derleth.
• "White Lotus Flower", Harold Markham.
• "In Kashla's Garden", Oscar Schisgall.
• "The Copper Bowl", Captain George Fielding Eliot.

Switch on the Lights, 1931 UK

Editor: Christine Campbell Thomson

• "The Curse of Yig", Zealia Brown Reed and H.P. Lovecraft.
• "Murder by Proxy", Richard Stone I.
• "Haunted Hands", Jack Bradley.
• "The Flame Fiend", N. J. O'Neail.
• "Boomerang", Oscar Cook.
• "The Tapping", J. Dyott Matthews.
• "The Red Fetish", Frank Belknap Long, Jr.
• "The Pacer", August Derleth and Mark Schorer
• "Flower Valley", J.S. Whittaker.
• "The Rats in the Walls", H.P. Lovecraft.
• "Suzanne", J. Joseph Renaud.
• "The Thought Monster", Amelia Reynolds Long (variant of "The Thought-Monster" 1930).
• "The Red Turret", Flavia Richardson.
• "Pigmy Island", novelette by Edmond Hamilton.
• "Bhuillaneadh", R.F. Broad.

At Dead of Night, 1931 UK

Editor: Christine Campbell Thomson

• "Creeping Fingers", Loretta G. Burrough.
• "The Owl", F.A.M. Webster.
• "Four Doomed Men", Geoffrey Vace.
• "The Curse of the House of Phipps", Seabury Quinn.
• "His Beautiful Hands", Oscar Cook.
• "The Seeds of Death", David H. Keller, M.D.
• "Passing of a God", Henry S. Whitehead.
• "Prince Borgia's Mass", August Derleth.
• "Pussy", Flavia Richardson.
• "The Wonderful Tune", Jessie D. Kerruish.
• "The Scourge of Mektoub", Paul Ernst.
• "Rats", Michael Annesley.
• "The Idol of Death", Arthur Edwards Chapman and Richard Jackson.
• "The Gray Killer", Everil Worrell.
• "Guardians of the Guavas", Charles Henry Mackintosh.

Grim Death, 1932 UK

Editor: Christine Campbell Thomson

• "If You Sleep in the Moonlight", J. Leslie Mitchell.
• "Island of Doom", Bassett Morgan.
• "Flies", Anthony Vercoe.
• "Lord of the Talking Heads", Arthur Woodward.
• "Helvellyn: Elivion or Hill of Baal", Rosalie Muspratt.
• "House of the Living Dead", Harold Ward (variant of "The House of the Living Dead").
• "The Wings", J. Dyott Matthews.
• "The Great White Fear", Oscar Cook.
• "The Black Stone", Robert E. Howard.
• "The Ghost That Never Died", Elizabeth Sheldon.
• "Behind the Blinds", Flavia Richardson.
• "The Thing in the Cellar", David H. Keller.
• "Dorner Cordaianthus", Hester Holland.
• "Night and Silence", Maurice Level (translation of "La nuit et le silence" 1906).
• "The Inn", Guy Preston.

Keep on the Light, 1933 UK

Editor: Christine Campbell Thomson

• "The Library", Hester Gaskell Holland.
• "Golden Lilies", Oscar Cook.
• "The Chadbourne Episode", Henry S. Whitehead.
• "Worms of the Earth", Robert E. Howard.
• "The Black Hare", Flavia Richardson.
• "Tiger Dust", Bassett Morgan.
• "The House of Shadows", Mary Elizabeth Counselman.
• "Green Slime", J. Dyott Matthews.
• "The Seven-Locked Room", J. D. Kerruish.
• "Legion of Evil", Warden Ledge.
• "The Head of Wu-fang", Don C. Wiley.
• "The Way He Died", Guy Preston.
• "Cult of the White Ape", Hugh B. Cave (variant of "The Cult of the White Ape").
• "Althorpe Abbey", Rosalie Muspratt.
• "Isle of the Torturers", Clark Ashton Smith.

Terror by Night, 1934 UK

Editor: Christine Campbell Thomson

• "King Cobra", Joseph O. Kesselring.
• "The Chamber of Death", Armiger Barclay.
• "The House of the Worm", Mearle Prout.
• "The Flying Head", Ernest Bonney.
• "The Man Who Saw Red", J. Wilmer Benjamin.
• "The Horror in the Museum", Hazel Heald and H.P. Lovecraft.
• "Dog Death", Oscar Cook (variant of "The Creature of Man" 1925).
• "The Metronome", August Derleth.
• "The Accursed Isle", Mary Elizabeth Counselman.
• "The Watcher in the Green Room", Hugh B. Cave.
• "Rogues in the House", Robert E. Howard.
• "The Closed Door", Harold Ward.
• "The Death Plant", Michael Gwynn.
• "Behind the Yellow Door", Flavia Richardson.
• "The Author's Tale", L.A. Lewis.

Nightmare by Daylight, 1936 UK

Editor: Christine Campbell Thomson

• "Scarred Mirror", Charles Cullum.
• "One Alaskan Night", Barrett Willoughby.
• "The Dead Woman", David H. Keller.
• "The Crimson Head-Dress", Oscar Cook.
• "Little Red Shoes", Gordon Chesson.
• "The Yellow Paw", Zayu Konstanz.
• "The Flute of Seven Stops", Dion Fortune.
• "The Scream", Hester Holland.
• "Mirabel Houston", Nicholas Stafford.
• "The Horror of the Cavern", Walter Rose.
• "The Gold of Hermodike", Jessie D. Kerruish.
• "The Cossacks", E.M.P. Inglefield.
• "Grannie", R. Dawson.
• "Empty Stockings", Flavia Richardson.
• "The Crack", Oswell Blakeston.

Not at Night Omnibus, 1937 UK

Editor: Christine Campbell Thomson

• "Introduction" by Christine Campbell Thomson
• "The Curse of Yig", Zealia Brown Reed and H.P. Lovecraft.
• "Lips of the Dead", W.J. Stamper.
• "The Wonderful Tune", Jessie D. Kerruish.
• "The Death Plant", Michael Gwynn.
• "The Witch-Baiter", R. Anthony.
• "The Library", Hester Gaskell Holland.
• "The Inn", Guy Preston.
• "The Phantom Drug", A.W. Kapfer.
• "Pickman's Model", H.P. Lovecraft.
• "His Beautiful Hands", Oscar Cook.
• "Pigmy Island", Edmond Hamilton.
• "Behind the Yellow Door", Flavia Richardson.
• "The Crack", Oswell Blakeston.
• "Suzanne", J. Joseph Renaud.
• "The Accursed Isle", Mary Elizabeth Counselman.
• "Legion of Evil", Warden Ledge.
• "The House of Horror", Seabury Quinn.
• "The Way He Died", Guy Preston.
• "The Horror in the Museum", Hazel Heald and H.P. Lovecraft.
• "The Copper Bowl", George Fielding Eliot.
• "The Watcher in the Green Room", Hugh B. Cave.
• "Black Curtains", G. Frederick Montefiore.
• "The Author's Tale", L.A. Lewis.
• "The Chain", H. Warner Munn.
• "Piecemeal", Oscar Cook.
• "The Scream", Hester Holland.
• "Swamp Horror", R.J. Robbins and Will Smith.
• "The Seven-Locked Room", Jessie D. Kerruish.
• "The Chadbourne Episode", Henry S. Whitehead.
• "The Thing in the Cellar", David H. Keller.
• "The Black Hare", Flavia Richardson.
• "Flies", Anthony Vercoe.
• "The Tenant", August Derleth.
• "Little Red Shoes", Gordon Chesson.
• "The Closed Door", Harold Ward.

Comments / Trivia

Any factual trivia or comments go here.

• The series was immensely popular in its time, leading to 11 volumes in total between 1925 and 1936. The first volume alone went through at least 7 reprints; mine is from October of 1927. 100 of the series' total of 170 stories were drawn from the magazine Weird Tales.
• The series editor was a female horror writer named Christine Campbell Thomson who contributed to the series under the pseudonym 'Flavia Richardson' Some biographical details on her can be found [in this forum post].

Reviews and Links

Link to outside reviews or helpful pages.

• "skullsinthestars blog" - Detailed descriptions of contents, photographs of cover (and fascinating bookplate), and review of UK 1925 edition; a comment by a reader adds details of the US 1928 edition: "First: most of them are not terribly good. They are utterly lacking in shock value, or even surprises... and are rather amateurish, in general.... Of all the stories, only 'The Purple Cincture' holds up as really worth reading today [as] a rather ghastly early example of body horror that makes up for its otherwise predictable plot. We can get a little feeling of the horror themes that captured readers' imaginations at the time by looking at the list of stories as a whole: [mad scientists, monstrous animals, Poe-like stories of vengeance and obsession, racism]. From that brief summary, one can see that the collection mostly reflects work that was done in the past and doesn’t represent any novel departure from the classics that came before it. For me, it really highlights how much the cosmic writings of Lovecraft and others revolutionized and revitalized the field of horror...."