Fancies and Goodnights
First edition cover
|
|
| Author | John Collier (fiction writer) |
|---|---|
| Cover artist | Margot Tomes |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Genre | Science fiction |
| Publisher | Doubleday Books |
|
Publication date
|
1951 |
| Media type | Print (Hardback and paperback) |
| Pages | 364 |
| OCLC | 1310633 |
Fancies and Goodnights is a collection of fantasy short 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.
The collection is viewed as a classic of its genre. It won the International Fantasy Award for fiction in 1952, as well as an Edgar Award for "outstanding contribution to the mystery short story." 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.
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."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."P. Schuyler Miller praised Collier as "one of the great individual talents in the modern literature of fantasy and the macabre."
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."
...
Wikipedia