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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“If to take up books were to take them in, and if to see them were to consider them, and to run through them were to grasp them, I should be wrong to make myself out quite as ignorant as I say I am.”
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