FFB: Robert Arthur's Young Readers' Ghosted Anthologies, Continued: ALFRED HITCHCOCK'S GHOSTLY GALLERY (Random House, 1962) and ALFRED HITCHCOCK'S SPELLBINDERS IN SUSPENSE (RH, 1967): Friday Fright Night

Previous blog entries from the Random House YA anthology series:

Muriel Fuller, ed.: Alfred Hitchcock's Haunted Houseful (1961) (noted in passing)

Robert Arthur, ed.: Alfred Hitchcock's Monster Museum (1965); and here, as a partial Dell reprint

...and here, with other books for young readers

Henry Veit, ed.: Alfred Hitchcock's Witch's Brew (1977)

Other volumes in the Random House YA series:

Robert Arthur, editor:

Alfred Hitchcock's Sinister Spies (1966)

Alfred Hitchcock's Daring Detectives (1969)

Robert Arthur, author:

Alfred Hitchcock's Solve-Them-Yourself Mysteries (1963)

the initial AH and the Three Investigators novels (beginning 1964)

Henry Veit, editor:

Alfred Hitchcock's Supernatural Tales of Terror and Suspense (1973)

• Alfred Hitchcock's Ghostly Gallery • anthology edited by Robert Arthur [as by Alfred Hitchcock] 
• Date: 1962
• Publisher: Random House
• Pages: vii+206
• Alfred Hitchcock's Ghostly Gallery • interior artwork by Fred Banbery
• v • Introduction (Alfred Hitchcock's Ghostly Gallery) • essay by Robert Arthur [as by Alfred Hitchcock]
• 1 • Miss Emmeline Takes Off • short fiction by Walter Brooks (ss) The Saturday Evening Post Sep 8 1945
• 13 • Housing Problem • short story by Henry Kuttner and C. L. Moore [as by Henry Kuttner] 
Charm [October 1944]
• 20 • The Valley of the Beasts • (1921) • novelette by Algernon Blackwood and Wilfred Wilson [as by Algernon Blackwood] (ss) from The Wolves of God, Cassell 1921
• 43 • The Haunted Trailer • short story by Robert Arthur; variant of Death Thumbs a Ride (ss) Weird Tales Jan 1942
• 64 • The Upper Berth • (1885) • novelette by F. Marion Crawford (nv) The Broken Shaft: Unwin’s Annual for 1886, ed. Sir Henry Norman, T. Fisher Unwin 1885; also as “What Was in the Upper Berth?”
• 88 • The Wonderful Day • (1940) • novelette by Robert Arthur as Miracle on Main Street (nv) Argosy Jul 6 1940
• 120 • The Truth About Pyecraft • (1903) • short story by H. G. Wells (ss) The Strand Magazine Apr 1903
• 151 • In a Dim Room • [Jorkens] • (1945) • short story by Lord Dunsany (ss) The (London) Evening News Jul 18 1945
• 156 • Obstinate Uncle Otis • [Murchison Morks] • (1941) • short story by Robert Arthur (ss) Argosy Jul 19 1941
• 167 • The Waxwork • (1931) • short story by A. M. Burrage (ss) in Someone in the Room, Jarrolds 1931
• 182 • The Isle of Voices • (1893) • novelette by Robert Louis Stevenson (ss) The National Observer Feb 4 1893
  

• Alfred Hitchcock's Spellbinders in Suspense
• published in 1967 in the USA by Random House (hardback)
• edited by Robert Arthur
• illustrated by Harold Isen
• x + 206 pages

Contents

i • Frontispiece blurb by Robert Arthur (as by Alfred Hitchcock): These are mystery-suspense stories. Some will keep you on the edge of your chair with excitement. Others are calculated to draw you along irresistibly to see how the puzzle works out. I have even included a sample or two of stories that are humorous, to show you that humor and mystery can also add up to suspense.

So here you are, with best wishes for hours of good reading.

v • A Brief Message from Our Sponsor • Robert Arthur (as by Alfred Hitchcock) • introduction

1 • The Chinese Puzzle Box by Agatha Christie [Hercule Poirot], (ss) The Sketch Oct 3 1923, as “The Case of the Veiled Lady”

11 • The Most Dangerous Game by Richard Connell (nv) Collier’s Jan 19 1924

22 • The Birds by Daphne du Maurier (nv) Good Housekeeping Oct 1952

65 • Puzzle for Poppy by "Patrick Quentin" (Richard Webb and Hugh Wheeler) (ss) Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine Feb 1946

79 • Eyewitness by Robert Arthur (ss) Detective Fiction Weekly Jan 28 1939; as "Eye Witness"

94 • Man from the South by Roald Dahl (ss) Collier’s Sep 4 1948; as "Collector's Item"

105 • Black Magic by Sax Rohmer [Bazarada], (ss) Collier’s Feb 5 1938

119 • Treasure Trove by F. Tennyson Jesse [aka Wynifried Margaret Tennyson Jesse] [Solange Fontaine], (ss) McCall’s Apr 1928

126 • Yours Truly, Jack the Ripper by Robert Bloch (ss) Weird Tales Jul 1943

146 • The Treasure Hunt by Edgar Wallace [J. G. Reeder], (ss) Flynn’s Nov 22 1924

162 • The Man Who Knew How by Dorothy L. Sayers [Pender], (ss) Harper’s Bazaar Feb 1932; also as “The Man Who Knew”

175 • The Dilemma of Grampa Dubois by Clayre Lipman and Michel Lipman (ss) The American Family a 1952 issue

182 • P. Moran, Diamond-Hunter by Percival Wilde [P. Moran], (nv) Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine Apr 1946

Robert Arthur, having inherited the editorship of the Random House "Alfred Hitchcock" anthologies aimed at adult readers either with or just after 1959's Alfred Hitchcock Presents: My Favorites in Suspense (in the spot where Arthur would be credited in his later volumes, Patricia Hitchcock under her married name is cited instead), had produced another volume in that series, 1961's AHP: Stories for Late at Night (and might also at least helped put together 1957's AHP: Stories They Wouldn't Let Me Do on TV at Simon & Schuster) before Random House decided they also might have a market for a juvenile-readers' series, and tapped veteran children's editor Muriel Fuller to assemble the nicely illustrated and designed Alfred Hitchcock's Haunted Houseful (1961). However, Fuller's book was somewhat lacking in punch; a quarter of the text was taken up with a long excerpt from The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, excellent material but even better in context and while suspenseful, not exactly the kind of thing kids picking up a Haunted AH book might be looking for. A chestnut of a Doyle Sherlock Holmes story was mixed with stories a bit more on point from some good writers, such as Manly Wade Wellman, but nearly all of those stories were from young readers' magazines Boy's Life and Story Parade. This was the kiddie roller-coaster.

By the time the second AH volume for young readers was released, Arthur had the gig. None of his selections were from magazines aimed at kids, yet all were accessible to young readers. Perhaps the self-indulgence of Fuller in running the Twain excerpt for much of her book was seen as more off-putting than Arthur including three of his own stories, if good ones, as a means of presumably supplementing his take of the editorial budget (or perhaps he sold rights to himself for budget prices to allow for only two stories in the public domain to be included). This was definitely a full-strength anthology for little monster-lovers. While Arthur was never afraid to run a chestnut in his YA books as well (such as "The Upper Berth", certainly, and to a lesser extent the Burrage, Wells and Stevenson stories), he was also offering fairly recent stories for 1962, in the Kuttner and Moore (even if it was dealing in its outre manner with an early postwar situation) and most of the others.

By the time of the 1967 suspense volume, the success of both Random House series was assured, as was that of the third series Arthur had launched with them, the Three Investigators novels. Unfortunately, Arthur's health was beginning to fail by this time, even if his ability to assemble an entertaining anthology was undiminished; the mix of impressive chestnuts young readers might not've yet encountered (such as cover story "The Most Dangerous Game", probably the most plagiarized short story in the 20th Century in English; I find myself disagreeing with Friday Fright Night host Curtis Evans in his relative assessment of the original story and the first film made from it, by largely the same folks behind the first King Kong; I prefer the original text) and even slightly more "edgy" newer stories such as Roald Dahl's "Man from the South". Of course, I'd also take slight issue with the notion that Robert Bloch's "Yours Truly, Jack the Ripper" (another remarkably widely-plagiarized story!) is a realistic mystery/suspense story so much as horror...Daphne Du Maurier's "The Birds" wanders up to the edge of that divide, as well...though including either the Dahl, which had already become one of the most famous of Alfred Hitchcock Presents: tv episodes, nor "The Birds", source story for the inferior 1963 Hitchcock film, probably wasn't too much a matter of controversy around the Random House offices. 

I certainly loved this series of anthologies as a young reader, and inhaled them along with the Random House adult-oriented volumes from about 1974 onward (and the Dell paperbacks taken from them and their similarly-packaged series of best-ofs from Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine), the RH volumes as edited by Arthur up till his death in 1969, and the adult series continued by Harold Q. Masur from the next volume till the death of Hitchcock himself in 1979; Henry Veit was to produce the two YA anthologies cited above after Arthur's last.

Curtis Evans will have the links for this week's, possibly the last Friday Fright Night this year?, at his blog tonight, and I'll have a fortnight's worth of Friday's "Forgotten" Books at my blog sometime tonight as well, with others added as I find them tomorrow.