Focus on the Avon Fantasy Reader series
February 20th, 2007 by Alan Chudnow
The late 1940s and early 1050s saw the rapid decline of the old pulp magazines. Formerly the largest outlet by far for short fiction, these cheaply produced magazines suffered from the paper shortages of the Second World War era becoming increasingly more expensive to produce. Many publishers began either to close their doors outright or started phasing out the pulp publications in favor of the mass market paperback or “pocketbook”.
Toward the end of the pulp era a few new publications were produced that straddled the line between the two forms. One favorite of these is the Avon Fantasy Reader. Published between 1947 and 1952 the Avon Fantasy Reader was created by Donald A. Wollheim (who later founded DAW Books) and consisted mostly of reprinted work although Wollheim did include new pieces on occasion.
Like the pulp magazines of the time the Avon Fantasy Readers were produced using cheap newsprint, thin wrappers, stapled bindings and were formatted in the smaller “digest” size that was adopted by the pulp publications to cut costs. Unlike the pulp magazines they had no interior illustrations and the text was laid out in the traditional one-column book format rather than the two column format of the magazines. Though modern collectors now consider these publications pulp magazines rather than books they are widely prized by many who would not normally consider themselves magazine collectors, probably as much for their wonderfully shameless pulp cover illustrations as for their content.
The original Avon Fantasy Reader series ran eighteen issues ostensibly published monthly but in actuality it came out irregularly. In 1952 Wollheim began a companion publication, the Avon Science Fiction Reader which focused on sf reprints. It ran only three issues before Wollheim left Avon for Ace Books and both series were abandoned by Avon. The following year Avon attempted to revive the Reader series combining the two previous series under the title Avon Science Fiction and Fantasy Reader.
The resurrected series was under the editorship of Sol Cohen who focused the content on original work rather than reprints. Only two issues were produced before the project was abandoned.
The series continues to be in demand with prices for individual editions ranging from $20 to $30 and up. For those interested in acquiring these series I have provided a checklist of all three titles complete with contents lists on the Collectingsf.com web site. Cover illustrations will follow.
