The Hamlyn Book of Ghosts in Fact and Fiction

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In this colourful volume, the kids of the 1980s could learn all about assorted monsters from dinosaurs to the xenomorph! Some of the illustrations are surprisingly strong for a youth market book, notably that of Vlad the Impaler locking a horde of peasants in a hut and torching it. A poor condition book can still make a good reading copy but is generally not collectible unless the item is very scarce.

Hamlyn Book of Ghosts in Fact and Fiction Paperback - Biblio The Hamlyn Book of Ghosts in Fact and Fiction Paperback - Biblio

The other volumes, which I’ll post about separately, are The Hamlyn Book of Horror (1979), The Hamlyn Book of Mysteries (1983), and The Hamlyn Book of Monsters (1984). Special thanks to The Cobwebbed Room for an excellent entry on the Hamlyn series, including full artist credits and contents lists. There was a Beaver paperback edition of this horror starter pack in 1977, but this hardcover version seems to have been a fixture in the kids section of just about every public library in London (and elsewhere? In this episode Mr Jim Moon continues to explore the eerie and macabre works for younger folks produced by Daniel Farson with a look at a ghostly television serial he co-wrote. His 27 books include biographies (including one on his great-uncle, Bram Stoker), several memoirs of bohemian Soho (of which he was a contributing rake), travelogues, and two horror novels.

In this little episode, Mr Jim is once more delving into the world of horror books for kids, and the writings of Mr Daniel Farson. Our resources are crucial for knowledge lovers everywhere—so if you find all these bits and bytes useful, please pitch in. We build and maintain all our own systems, but we don’t charge for access, sell user information, or run ads. From the first, I set myself against "literature"; the story was the thing, and no amount of style could persuade me to select a story that lacked genuine, unadulterated horror.

The Hamlyn Book of Horror and S.F. Movie Lists - Wikipedia The Hamlyn Book of Horror and S.F. Movie Lists - Wikipedia

Web icon An illustration of a computer application window Wayback Machine Texts icon An illustration of an open book. Open Library is an initiative of the Internet Archive, a 501(c)(3) non-profit, building a digital library of Internet sites and other cultural artifacts in digital form. More Hamburger icon An icon used to represent a menu that can be toggled by interacting with this icon.Ghosts in Fact and Fiction is not quite as garishly illustrated as Usborne’s All About Ghosts, though Hamlyn would ramp up the intensity for The Hamlyn Book of Horror. In this episode, Mr Jim Moon has a flip through a battered but much loved tome in the Great Library of Dreams, a huge favourite with monster-obsessed kids in the 1970s and 1980s - The Hamlyn Book of Horror by Daniel Farson! All but one were written by Daniel Farson (Bernard Brett wrote The Hamlyn Book of Mysteries), and all featured spectacular wraparound cover art by Oliver “Zack” Frey. Things I remember from it were discovering for the first time that there was a real historical Dracula, Sawney Bean, stories of someone's corpse being so tall they had to break the legs to get it into the coffin (think this might have been a Stoker relative), and my first encounter with a figure with "an intensely horrible face of crumpled linen". Hyde and various works of Poe dominate the chapter but there are welcome short entries on Bierce, Victor Hugo, Le Fanu and M.