Fancies and Goodnights is a collection of fantasy

Fantasy

Fantasy is a genre of fiction that commonly uses magic and other supernatural phenomena as a primary element of plot, theme, or setting. Many works within the genre take place in imaginary worlds where magic is common...

 short stories by John Collier

John Collier (writer)

John Henry Noyes Collier was a British-born author and screenplay writer best known for his short stories, many of which appeared in The New Yorker from the 1930s to the 1950s. They were collected in a 1951 volume, Fancies and Goodnights, which won the International Fantasy Award and remains in...

, first published by Doubleday Books in hardcover in 1951. A paperback

Paperback

Paperback, softback or softcover describe and refer to a book by the nature of its binding. The covers of such books are usually made of paper or paperboard, and are usually held together with glue rather than stitches or staples...

 edition followed from Bantam Books

Bantam Books

Bantam Books is an American publishing house owned entirely by Random House, the German media corporation subsidiary of Bertelsmann; it is an imprint of the Random House Publishing Group. It was formed in 1945 by Walter B. Pitkin, Jr., Sidney B. Kramer, and Ian and Betty Ballantine...

 in 1953, and it has been repeatedly reprinted over more than five decades, most recently in the New York Review Books Classics line, with an introduction by Ray Bradbury

Ray Bradbury

Ray Douglas Bradbury is an American fantasy, horror, science fiction, and mystery writer. Best known for his dystopian novel Fahrenheit 451 and for the science fiction stories gathered together as The Martian Chronicles and The Illustrated Man , Bradbury is one of the most celebrated among 20th...

. A truncated British edition, omitting roughly one-quarter of the stories, was published under the title Of Demons and Darkness.

The collection is viewed as a classic of its genre. It won the International Fantasy Award

International Fantasy Award

The International Fantasy Award was an annual literary award for the best science fiction or fantasy book and, in 1951-1953, the best non-fiction book of interest to science fiction and fantasy readers. The IFA was given by an international panel of prominent fans and professionals in 1951-1955 and...

 for fiction in 1952, as well as an Edgar Award

Edgar Award

The Edgar Allan Poe Awards , named after Edgar Allan Poe, are presented every year by the Mystery Writers of America...

 for "outstanding contribution to the mystery short story." It compiles most of the stories from Collier's prior collections as well as seventeen previously uncollected stories, several original to the volume. Collier reportedly rewrote many of his early stories prior to book publication.

Contents

• "Bottle Party" (Presenting Moonshine 1939)
• "De Mortuis" (The New Yorker 1942)
• "Evening Primrose" (Presenting Moonshine 1941)
• "Witch's Money" (The New Yorker 1939)
• "Are You Too Late or Was I Too Early?" (The New Yorker 1951)
• "Fallen Star" (original)
• "The Touch of Nutmeg Makes It" (The New Yorker 1941)
• "Three Bears Cottage" (original)
• "Pictures in the Fire" (original)
• "Wet Saturday" (The New Yorker 1938)
• "Squirrels Have Bright Eyes" (Presenting Moonshine 1941)
• "Halfway to Hell" (The Devil and All 1934)
• "The Lady on the Grey" (The New Yorker 1951)
• "Incident on a Lake" (The New Yorker 1941)
• "Over Insurance" (original)
• "Old Acquaintance" (Presenting Moonshine 1941)
• "The Frog Prince" (Presenting Moonshine 1941)
• "Season of Mists" (original)
• "Great Possibilities" (original)
• "Without Benefit of Galsworthy" (The New Yorker 1939)
• "The Devil, George, and Rosie" (The Devil and All 1934)
• "Ah the University" (The New Yorker 1939)
• "Back for Christmas" (The New Yorker 1939)
• "Another American Tragedy" (The New Yorker 1940)
• "Collaboration" (Presenting Moonshine 1941)
• "Midnight Blue" (The New Yorker 1938)
• "Gavin O'Leary" (chapbook, 1945)
• "If Youth Knew, If Age Could" (Presenting Moonshine 1941)
• "Thus I Refute Beelzy" (Atlantic Monthly 1940)
• "Special Delivery" (Presenting Moonshine 1941)
• "Rope Enough" (The New Yorker 1939)
• "Little Memento" (The New Yorker 1938)
• "Green Thoughts" (Harper's Magazine
  Harper's Magazine
  Harper's Magazine is a monthly magazine of literature, politics, culture, finance, and the arts, with a generally left-wing perspective. It is the second-oldest continuously published monthly magazine in the U.S. . The current editor is Ellen Rosenbush, who replaced Roger Hodge in January 2010...
  
  1931)
• "Romance Lingers Adventure Lives" (original)
• "Bird of Prey" (Presenting Moonshine 1941)
• "Variation on a Theme" (chapbook 1935)
• "Night! Youth! Paris! and the Moon!" (The New Yorker 1938)
• "The Steel Cat" (Lilliput
  Lilliput (magazine)
  Lilliput was a small-format British monthly magazine of humour, short stories, photographs and the arts, founded in 1937 by the photojournalist Stefan Lorant. The first issue came out in July and it was sold shortly after to Edward Hulton, when editorship was taken over by Tom Hopkinson in 1940....
  
   1941)
• "Sleeping Beauty" (Harper’s Bazaar (UK edition) 1938)
• "Interpretation of a Dream" (The New Yorker
  The New Yorker
  The New Yorker is an American magazine of reportage, commentary, criticism, essays, fiction, satire, cartoons and poetry published by Condé Nast...
  
  1951)
• "Mary" (Harper’s Bazaar 1939)
• "Hell Hath No Fury" (The Devil and All 1934)
• "In the Cards" (original)
• "The Invisible Dove Dancer of Strathpheen Island" (Presenting Moonshine 1941)
• "The Right Side" (The Devil and All 1934)
• "Spring Fever" (original)
• "Youth from Vienna" (original)
• "Possession of Angela Bradshaw" (The Devil and All 1934)
• "Cancel All I Said" (original)
• "The Chaser" (The New Yorker 1940)

Reception

Anthony Boucher

Anthony Boucher

Anthony Boucher was an American science fiction editor and author of mystery novels and short stories. He was particularly influential as an editor. Between 1942 and 1947 he acted as reviewer of mostly mystery fiction for the San Francisco Chronicle...

 reviewed Fancies and Goodnights favorably for The New York Times

The New York Times

The New York Times is an American daily newspaper founded and continuously published in New York City since 1851. The New York Times has won 106 Pulitzer Prizes, the most of any news organization...

, saying "the very best short stories of murder of this or almost any other year appear as a minority in a volume chiefly devoted to superlative supernatural fantasy." Time

Time (magazine)

Time is an American news magazine. A European edition is published from London. Time Europe covers the Middle East, Africa and, since 2003, Latin America. An Asian edition is based in Hong Kong...

 also reveiwed the collection positively, declaring that "Though Author Collier sometimes tries to point a subtle moral in his tales, he is not so much a moralist as an entertainer. In his own little department of the bizarre, he is as good as they come." P. Schuyler Miller

P. Schuyler Miller

Peter Schuyler Miller was an American science fiction writer and critic.-Life:Miller was raised in New York's Mohawk Valley, which led to a life-long interest in the Iroquois Indians. He pursued this as an amateur archaeologist and a member of the New York State Archaeological Association.He...

 praised Collier as "one of the great individual talents in the modern literature of fantasy and the macabre."

Everett F. Bleiler

Everett F. Bleiler

Everett Franklin Bleiler was an editor, bibliographer, and scholar of science fiction, detective fiction, and fantasy literature. In the late 1940s and early 1950s, he co-edited the first "year's best" series of science fiction anthologies, and his Checklist of Fantastic Literature has been called...

characterized Collier as "One of the modern masters of the short story . . . [a] fine stylist, remarkable wit and ironist, obviously influenced by 18th century models," but noted that Collier's "extensive" rewriting and revision of his earlier stories "tend to tone down the language, with some loss of exuberance and zest."