Alfred Hitchcock put his name to several collections of ghost/horror stories which were aimed at children and first published in the US from the early 1960s. The one shown here is the UK edition of his Haunted Houseful, dating from around the mid-60s, and judging from the marvelously lurid cover, the target audience was somewhat older on this side of the pond. Click on the image to go to an external page for more information.
The artist was Josh Kirby who later on produced artwork for the Terry Pratchett Discworld novels. One story that I remember from this collection is a fairly light-hearted one called The Water Ghost of Harrowby Hall. You can read it here, just as it appeared in the US edition of the book.
There is some rather splendid artwork inside the cover of the US edition. For larger pictures and more artwork from the book, click on the thumbnail below.
Love this book, we had the illustrated version at our elementary school. I recently found another copy but let it go because the spine was falling apart. I took scans of the images, but I think I regret letting it go now that I'm seeing it recreated in all these cool links..
ReplyDeleteHopefully a better copy will come your way! In fact, there are a couple on eBay right now which seem to be in vgc.
ReplyDeleteThere was another Hitchcock anthology that I had as a child and that I intend doing an item about fairly soon.