My first encounter with the series was with The Bumper Book of Ghost Stories, a fat omnibus of two later volumes, which I found at the Windy City Pulp & Paper show last year. All three of the first Pan Book of Ghost Stories were edited by Lady Cynthia Asquith, who was also a contributor (under the name Cynthia Asquith.) The fourth volume was edited by James Turner altogether the series had half a dozen editors by the time it petered out in 1980. The books were a mix of original fiction and reprints. If things had continued at that pace, we wouldn’t have much of a series to talk about, but fortunately they picked up a bit, with the third appearing in hardcover in 1955.

The Second Ghost Book had a hardcover edition in 1952 from James Barrie, and was reprinted in paperback by Pan (under the imprint Great Pan) in 1956. The first, originally titled The Ghost Book, was published in hardcover from Hutchinson in 1926, and didn’t appear in paperback until 1945. They were published between 19, and there are a lot of them. Take for example the highly regarded Pan Ghost Books. That’s not remotely true of British paperbacks. I have by no means a complete collection (or anything close to a complete collection), but after nearly four decades of collecting I’ve seen almost all the really desirable stuff, and I’m intimately familiar with the market. I’ve done a fair job of collecting American horror and dark fantasy paperback anthologies over the years.

The Third Ghost Book by Cynthia Asquith