An important, though neglected, figure in twentieth-century British horror fiction, Sir Charles Birkin (1907-1985) began his literary career as editor of the popular - and now highly collectible - <i>Creeps</i> series of horror anthologies in the 1930s, which featured tales by well-known writers such as H.R. Wakefield, Lord Dunsany and Russell Thorndike, as well as contributions by Birkin himself.
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A master of the <i>conte cruel</i>, often with a Grand Guignol finish, Birkin found true horror not in ghosts or the supernatural but in man's inhumanity to man. Never before reprinted and extremely scarce, <i>Devils' Spawn</i> (1936) collects sixteen of Birkin's stories, many of them first published in the <i>Creeps</i> volumes, including the horror gems "The Terror on Tobit" and "The Harlem Horror". Birkin's collection <i>The Smell of Evil</i> (1965) is also available from Valancourt Books.
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"Not for the squeamish. Be warned, if you are at all sensitive, leave him well alone." - Hugh Lamb
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"More than a definite touch of the great master, Edgar Allan Poe." - Dennis Wheatley
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"Few writers of horror today approach the standards of Birkin." - <i>Ulster Star</i>