Mary Danby (ed) - Realms of Darkness ; Nightmarish Tales of the Supernatural and Macabre - Octopus - 1985
Published for St Michael/Marks and Spencer, presumably to be sold in their stores, in 1985, the same year as the first edition was published (by Heinemann, I think).
With introduction by Christopher Lee
73 short stories by 73 authors, including Martin Amis, Dennis Wheatley, Agatha Christie, F Marion Crawford, J B Priestley, and Bill Pronzini.
Mary Danby was an author in her own right as well as being noted as editor of numerous anthologies of supernatural fiction. She also acted as compiler of various humorous anthologies - books of jokes, cartoons, limericks etc, though these need not detain us here.
This impressive collection brings together the modern and the classic, the obscure and the well-known. It`s true that other anthologists - Richard Dalby springs to mind - have done very much the same thing, but let`s not worry too much about that.
With such a range of authors, almost anyone who likes this sort of thing is going to find some stories they love and some they will probably read once and never again. I can think of three straight away that I didn`t care for, but given the number of stories contained in this volume, I`m not too worried about that.
More to the point, there were only a moderate number of stories here that I already had in other collections and a great number that were new to me, despite the many comparable volumes I`ve read over the years.
I`ve read that Mary Danby`s ghost/horror anthologies often duplicate each other (though I don`t know that from my own knowledge), so I would be cautious of buying too many of them.
Given the scope of this selection, it would be perfect for someone who just wants one anthology of this sort, but wants the one that they have to be a good one.
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