Fancies and Goodnights

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Fancies and Goodnights
FaG129334JC.jpg
First edition cover
Author John Collier (fiction writer)
Cover artistMargot Tomes
CountryUnited States
LanguageEnglish
Genre Speculative fictioncrime
Publisher Doubleday Books
Publication date
1951
Media typePrint (hardback & paperback)
Pages364
OCLC 1310633

Fancies and Goodnights is a collection of fantasies and murder stories by John Collier, first published by Doubleday Books in hardcover in 1951. A paperback edition followed from Bantam Books in 1953, and it has been repeatedly reprinted over more than five decades, most recently in the New York Review Books Classics line, with an introduction by Ray Bradbury. A truncated British edition, omitting roughly one-quarter of the stories, was published under the title Of Demons and Darkness. [1]

Fantasy Genre of literature, film, television and other artforms

Fantasy is a genre of speculative fiction set in a fictional universe, often inspired by real world myth and folklore. Its roots are in oral traditions, which then became literature and drama. From the twentieth century it has expanded further into various media, including film, television, graphic novels, manga and video games.

John Collier (fiction writer) writer

John Henry Noyes Collier was a British-born author and screenwriter best known for his short stories, many of which appeared in The New Yorker from the 1930s to the 1950s. Most were collected in The John Collier Reader ; earlier collections include a 1951 volume, the famous Fancies and Goodnights, which won the International Fantasy Award and remains in print. Individual stories are frequently anthologized in fantasy collections. John Collier's writing has been praised by authors such as Anthony Burgess, Ray Bradbury, Roald Dahl, Neil Gaiman, Michael Chabon, Wyndham Lewis, and Paul Theroux. He appears to have given few interviews in his life; those include conversations with biographer Betty Richardson, Tom Milne, and Max Wilk.

Bantam Books Publisher from the USA

Bantam Books is an American publishing house owned entirely by parent company Random House, a subsidiary of Penguin Random House; it is an imprint of the Random House Publishing Group. It was formed in 1945 by Walter B. Pitkin, Jr., Sidney B. Kramer, and Ian and Betty Ballantine, with funding from Grosset & Dunlap and Curtis Publishing Company. It has since been purchased several times by companies including National General, Carl Lindner's American Financial and, most recently, Bertelsmann; it became part of Random House in 1998, when Bertelsmann purchased it to form Bantam Doubleday Dell. It began as a mass market publisher, mostly of reprints of hardcover books, with some original paperbacks as well. It expanded into both trade paperback and hardcover books, including original works, often reprinted in house as mass-market editions.

Contents

The collection is viewed as a classic of its genre. It won the International Fantasy Award for fiction in 1952, [2] as well as an Edgar Award for "outstanding contribution to the mystery short story." [3] It compiles most of the stories from Collier's prior collections as well as seventeen previously uncollected stories, several original to the volume. Collier reportedly rewrote many of his early stories prior to book publication. [4]

The International Fantasy Award was an annual literary award for the best science fiction or fantasy book and, in 1951-1953, the best non-fiction book of interest to science fiction and fantasy readers. The IFA was given by an international panel of prominent fans and professionals in 1951-1955 and then again in 1957.

The Edgar Allan Poe Awards, named after Edgar Allan Poe, are presented every year by the Mystery Writers of America, based in New York City. They honor the best in mystery fiction, non-fiction, television, film, and theater published or produced in the previous year.

Contents

<i>Harpers Magazine</i>

Harper's Magazine is a monthly magazine of literature, politics, culture, finance, and the arts. Launched in June 1850, it is the second-oldest continuously published monthly magazine in the U.S.. Harper's Magazine has won 22 National Magazine Awards.

<i>Lilliput</i> (magazine)

Lilliput was a small-format British monthly magazine of humour, short stories, photographs and the arts, founded in 1937 by the photojournalist Stefan Lorant. The first issue came out in July and it was sold shortly after to Edward Hulton, when editorship was taken over by Tom Hopkinson in 1940. During the 1950s Lilliput was edited by Jack Hargreaves. It had a reputation for publishing what were, for the time, fairly daring photographs of female nudes.

<i>The New Yorker</i> Magazine on politics, social issues, art, humor, and culture, based in New York City

The New Yorker is an American magazine featuring journalism, commentary, criticism, essays, fiction, satire, cartoons, and poetry. Started as a weekly in 1925, the magazine is now published 47 times annually, with five of these issues covering two-week spans. Although its reviews and events listings often focus on the cultural life of New York City, The New Yorker has a wide audience outside New York and is read internationally. It is well known for its illustrated and often topical covers, its commentaries on popular culture and eccentric Americana, its attention to modern fiction by the inclusion of short stories and literary reviews, its rigorous fact checking and copy editing, its journalism on politics and social issues, and its single-panel cartoons sprinkled throughout each issue.

Reception

Anthony Boucher reviewed Fancies and Goodnights favorably for The New York Times , saying "the very best short stories of murder of this or almost any other year appear as a minority in a volume chiefly devoted to superlative supernatural fantasy." [6] Time also reviewed the collection positively, declaring that "Though Author Collier sometimes tries to point a subtle moral in his tales, he is not so much a moralist as an entertainer. In his own little department of the bizarre, he is as good as they come." [7] P. Schuyler Miller praised Collier as "one of the great individual talents in the modern literature of fantasy and the macabre." [8]

<i>The New York Times</i> Daily broadsheet newspaper based in New York City

The New York Times is an American newspaper based in New York City with worldwide influence and readership. Founded in 1851, the paper has won 127 Pulitzer Prizes, more than any other newspaper. The Times is ranked 18th in the world by circulation and 3rd in the U.S..

Time is an American weekly news magazine and news website published in New York City. It was founded in 1923 and originally run by Henry Luce. A European edition is published in London and also covers the Middle East, Africa, and, since 2003, Latin America. An Asian edition is based in Hong Kong. The South Pacific edition, which covers Australia, New Zealand, and the Pacific Islands, is based in Sydney. In December 2008, Time discontinued publishing a Canadian advertiser edition.

P. Schuyler Miller American writer

Peter Schuyler Miller was an American science fiction writer and critic.

Everett F. Bleiler characterized Collier as "One of the modern masters of the short story . . . [a] fine stylist, remarkable wit and ironist, obviously influenced by 18th century models," but noted that Collier's "extensive" rewriting and revision of his earlier stories "tend to tone down the language, with some loss of exuberance and zest." [4]

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References

  1. ISFDB bibliography
  2. Locus Index to SF Awards
  3. Anthony Boucher, "Criminals at Large", The New York Times Book Review , May 11, 1952, p.25
  4. 1 2 Everett F. Bleiler, The Guide to Supernatural Literature, Kent State University Press, 1983, p.118
  5. Original publication information is compiled from the ISFDB Bibliography, the Contento Short Fiction Index Archived 2011-06-29 at the Wayback Machine , Everett F. Bleiler's Guidel to Supernatural Fiction, and The New Yorker site index. Nevertheless, it remains possible that some stories identified as having first appeared in Collier collections actually had earlier publication, possibly in different form.
  6. Anthony Boucher, "Criminals at Large", The New York Times Book Review , December 9, 1951
  7. "Books: Spook Department", Time, December 3, 1951
  8. "The Reference Library", Astounding Science Fiction , August 1952, p.126.