netherwood (13. 694)

With dozens of titles ranging from the classics of horror and speculative fiction, biographies of figures like Madame Blavatsky, members of the Hell Fire Club and Aleister Crowley and guides on tarot, palm-reading, practical magic and other forms of divination, this omnibus introduction to the Library of the Occult, published by Sphere Books beginning in 1974—capitalising on the revival of interest in the supernatural in the UK starting earlier in the decade. Every instalment of the series was selected by the project’s editor emeritus Dennis Wheatley, a prolific writer himself and among the world’s best-selling authors from the 1930s to 1960s, with a preface to each volume of the anthology. John Coulthart has put together a short synopsis to accompany each paperback, annotated with links for those works in the public domain.