Todd Mason pointed out that there was some confusion about Alfred Hitchcock’s Witches Brew. I thought there were two different versions of this book with different covers, different stories, but they had the same title. After some literary detective work, I found THREE different versions of Alfred HItchcock’s Witches Brew. with SIX different covers. Check this out:
TABLE OF CONTENTS:
1. To Whet Your Appetite… by Alfred Hitchcock (ghost written)
2. The Wishing-Well by E.F. Benson
3. That Hell-Bound Train by Robert Bloch
4. As Gay As Cheese by Joan Aiken
5. Madame Mim by T.H. White
6. Blood Money by M. Timothy O’Keefe
7. His Coat So Gay by Sterling E. Lanier (a Brigadier Ffellowes novelette)
8. They’ll Never Find You Now by Doreen Dugdale
9. The Widow Flynn’s Apple Tree by Lord Dunsany
10. In the Cards by John Collier
11. Strangers in Town by Shirley Jackson
12. The Proof by John Moore
TABLE OF CONTENTS:
1. Introduction by Alfred Hitchcock (ghost written)
2. Premonition by Charles Mergendahl
3. A Shot from the Dark Night by Avram Davidson
4. I Had a Hunch, and… by Talmage Powell
5. A Killing in the Market by Robert Bloch
6. Gone as by Magic by Richard Hardwick
7. The Big Bajoor by Borden Deal
8. The Gentle Miss Bluebeard by Nedra Tyre
9. The Guy that Laughs Last by Philip Tremont
10. Diet and Die by Wenzell Brown
11. Just for Kicks by Richard Marsten
12. Please Forgive Me by Henry Kane
13. A Crime Worthy of Me by Hal Dresner
14. When Buying a Fine Murder by Jack Ritchie
Table of Contents:
Benson, E. F. The wishing well.
Bloch, Robert. That hell-bound train.
Aiken, Joan. As gay as cheese.
White, T. H. Madame Mim.
O’Keefe, M. Timothy. Blood money.
Lanier, Sterling. His coat so gay.
Dugdale, Doreen. They’ll never find you now.
Dunsany, Lord. The widow Flynn’s apple tree.
Collier, John. In the cards.
Jackson, Shirley. Strangers in town.
Moore, John. The proof,
Damn, you could make a respectable hobby just out of collecting ALFRED HITCHCOCK’S WITHES BREW.
Dan, Todd Mason ignited my Collector instinct with the search for ALFRED HITCHCOCK’S WITCHES BREW. It was fun tracking down all these different editions!
Good timing George and great covers
Sergio, you’re right about the covers. Very cool!
Who knew? I have seen the same title (can’t remember which) on a couple of the Hitchcock collections that seemed to have different contents before but three different collections with six different covers? Your head could explode trying to collect these.
Jeff, this will be a cataloger’s Nightmare when I donate them to SUNY at Buffalo!
Sadly, there are still just two versions of WITCHES BREW…the site you reprint the original table of contents from was/is wrong, and used the YA WB contents as the contents of the AHMM-derived anthology (or al least its first edition). Sergio was right the first time…and there have been more than one edition of both books, but only two books…you’ll note your first and third TOCs cited above are identical. The Dell book was always, and only, the second TOC…the YA item always the first/third TOC.
Sadly, there are still just two versions of WITCHES BREW…the site you reprint the original table of contents from was/is wrong, and used the YA WB contents as the contents of the AHMM-derived anthology (or al least its first edition). Sergio was right the first time…and there have been more than one edition of both books, but only two books…you’ll note your first and third TOCs cited above are identical. The Dell book was always, and only, the second TOC…the YA item always the first/third TOC.
Happy Halloween, George. Cold, windy and rainy here today and over the weekend, so we don’t expect many, if any, kiddies at the door tomorrow.
If I can still trust my eyes – one of them looks like a Penguin (UK?) edition.
For me it was always annoying that many books from the US were modified for the UK editions in contents, title – or at least they got a different cover …
I soon gave up the idea of collecting these different editions – I’m not really a completist.
And of course it worked the same in the other direction, books from the UK published again in the USA …
PS:
Who was the real editor of these books?
Or were there different editors even?
Wolf– Robert Arthur was editing the YA anthologies till his death, even as he was editing the ALFRED HITCHCOCK PRESENTS: anthologies kinda/sorta keyed to the tv series originally…after Arthur’s premature death in 1969, Harold Q. Masur edited several further AH PRESENTS: anthologies (aimed at adults), and Henry Veit edited ALFRED HITCHCOCK’S WITCH’S BREW, which I think might be the only YA anthology edited by someone other than Arthur.
…And, WITCHES BREW being one of the anthologies taken from the magazine, it was probably edited by whoever was editing the magazine at that time.
My earlier comments have disappeared somehow (never having posted), but for better or worse, there are only two anthologies: one drawn from AHMM (the Dell) and one edited by Henry Veit for the Random House YA series…they have had multiple editions as you demonstrate above…but, again, the Hitchcock website you consulted tor the first TOC above screwed up and claimed the Dell book had the Random House TOC. Sergio was correct in suspecting as much to begin with.
You’ll note that the first and third TOCs you have up above are the same…
Table of Contents:
Benson, E. F. The wishing well.
Bloch, Robert. That hell-bound train.
Aiken, Joan. As gay as cheese.
White, T. H. Madame Mim.
O’Keefe, M. Timothy. Blood money.
Lanier, Sterling. His coat so gay.
Dugdale, Doreen. They’ll never find you now.
Dunsany, Lord. The widow Flynn’s apple tree.
Collier, John. In the cards.
Jackson, Shirley. Strangers in town.
Moore, John. The proof,
…except that the third TOC doesn’t mention the intro. That is the Random House book edited by Viet.
This is the Dell book, from their series taken from AHMM:
TABLE OF CONTENTS:
1. Introduction by Alfred Hitchcock (ghost written)
2. Premonition by Charles Mergendahl
3. A Shot from the Dark Night by Avram Davidson
4. I Had a Hunch, and… by Talmage Powell
5. A Killing in the Market by Robert Bloch
6. Gone as by Magic by Richard Hardwick
7. The Big Bajoor by Borden Deal
8. The Gentle Miss Bluebeard by Nedra Tyre
9. The Guy that Laughs Last by Philip Tremont
10. Diet and Die by Wenzell Brown
11. Just for Kicks by Richard Marsten
12. Please Forgive Me by Henry Kane
13. A Crime Worthy of Me by Hal Dresner
14. When Buying a Fine Murder by Jack Ritchie
All the contusion in this case has been driven by the Hitchcock site screwup.
Todd, the third version of ALFRED HITHCOCK’S WITCHES’ BREW lacks the original introduction.
Fair enough! But, nonetheless, theres the difference between the Dell/AHMM WITCHES’ BREW and the Random House WITCH’S BREW…the paperbacks of the YA originals for some reason (thrift in some manner?) would drop some of the contents of the RH anthologies. Unusual thus that they would only cut the intro, if they do.
But there’s no real connection between the Dell series and the RH/Viking Paperback (it was Viking, no?) series…despite the similar, not quite identical, titles…
But, yes, the Dell editions of the RH adult hardcovers make for enough problems!
Todd, I do not envy the SUNY at Buffalo catalogers the task of identifying these different versions. Six different covers is a lot to contend with!
Basically, there are still two different books with similar titles, albeit one has had a variant edition missing its original ghosted intro.
One’s an anthology drawn from AHMM, and one’s an unrelated anthology aimed at young readers from a decade later…one’s a Dell book in their series of AHMM best-ofs (arguably) and one’s from the series of very well-illustrated Random House YA books (which lost all their illos and some of their content, why the latter I dunno, in some paperback reprints).
It’s a bit like insisting that THE INVISIBLE MAN by Wells and INVISIBLE MAN by Ellison are variants on each other.
Todd, you’re right. The variants are different. But the confusion persists.