Books
Beck's paperback anthology, The Frankenstein Reader (Ballantine Books, 1962), was assembled with an editorial assist by fantasy fiction scholar Haywood P. Norton. The two brought together a roster of vintage horror-fantasy tales by E.F. Benson, Ambrose Bierce, Robert W. Chambers, Ralph Adams Cram, Charles Dickens, Amelia B. Edwards, Katharine Fullerton Gerould, Richard Middleton, Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch, Robert Louis Stevenson and H.G. Wells.
In 1975, Beck wrote Heroes of the Horrors (Macmillan), illustrated biographies of the six leading horror film stars (Lon Chaney, Sr., Lon Chaney, Jr., Boris Karloff, Peter Lorre, Bela Lugosi, Vincent Price) and writers such as Robert Bloch and Richard Matheson. The book reworked much information previously unearthed for Castle of Frankenstein articles. Bhob Stewart and Beck then collaborated on a companion volume, Scream Queens: Heroines of the Horrors (Macmillan, 1978), illustrated biographical profiles of 29 fantasy film actresses and directors. The book included one article by the actor Barry Brown, plus research by Drew Simels, author of the TV movie entries in early editions of Leonard Maltin's Movie Guide series. With articles on Alice Guy-Blaché, Joan Crawford, Bette Davis, Veronica Lake, Elsa Lanchester, Agnes Moorehead, Mary Philbin, Barbara Steele, Vampira, Fay Wray and others, Scream Queens: Heroines of the Horrors also incorporated much material from the Castle of Frankenstein files of manuscripts and still photographs. Beck's fourth book, Sense of Wonder, about fantasy films of the 1940s, was never published.
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Famous quotes containing the word books:
“If some books are deemed most baneful and their sale forbid, how, then, with deadlier facts, not dreams of doting men? Those whom books will hurt will not be proof against events. Events, not books, should be forbid.”
—Herman Melville (1819–1891)
“Writing long books is a laborious and impoverishing act of foolishness: expanding in five hundred pages an idea that could be perfectly explained in a few minutes. A better procedure is to pretend that those books already exist and to offer a summary, a commentary.”
—Jorge Luis Borges (1899–1986)
“They lard their lean books with the fat of others’ works.”
—Robert Burton (1577–1640)