Avon Fantasy Reader No. 18
Edited by Donald A. Wollheim
Avon Novels, Inc.
1952
1^st Printing

     One of the most interesting sidebars in genre fiction concerns Robert E. Howard. Howard was popular during his lifetime, but it was after his death that his popularity took on almost mythic proportions. At one point in the 70s, most every word Howard had ever put to paper was available in print, including drafts and fragments. Even today, his Conan stories are still in print and occasional collections of his other works appear from time to time.
     With the popularity of Howard being what it was, this issue must have been a major coup for Wollheim, since "The Witch from Hell's Kitchen" had never been published anywhere before. The story, like many of Howard's works, is set at the "very dawn of recorded history" and Wollheim goes on to suggest in his introduction to the story that this tale is "clearly a prototype of the author's Cimmerian chief."
     The rest of the issue, the final one, has the usual mix, this time featuring Algernon Blackwood, Hugh Cave, and William Hope Hodgson, among the familiar and Dale Clark, Gelett Burgess, Hazel Heald, James Francis Dwyer and Edward Lucas White among the unfamiliar. Note also the list of authors on the front cover.
     Looking back over the entire run, it seems that The Reader was a grand experiment, acting as a sort of bridge between the pulps of the past and the paperback books that would soon become the mainstay of genre fiction. I can't really think of any other publication that presented such an eclectic mix of stories during its run and that existed almost entirely on reprints, at least not until the revival of interest in pulps that occurred in the 70s.
     After the 18^th issue, Avon Fantasy Reader was combined with Avon Science Fiction Reader into a new publication called Avon Science Fiction and Fantasy Reader, a periodical that published only new works. Wollheim was not connected to the new venture, as he had moved on to become the editor of Ace Books, a position he would hold for nearly twenty years.