8.4 /10 1 Votes
Language English Media type Print (Hardback) Originally published 1947 | 4.2/5 Goodreads Publication date 1947 Pages 313 pp Country United States of America | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Cover artist George Burrows (photo montage) Genres Fiction, Fantasy, Short story, Horror fiction, Science Fiction, Horror, Speculative fiction Similar Ray Bradbury books, Short Stories | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Dark Carnival is a short story collection, the debut book of Ray Bradbury, first published October 1947 by Arkham House. It has had numerous reprints.
About the stories
Dark Carnival was Bradbury's first published book. 3,112 copies were printed by Arkham House, under the editorial direction of August Derleth. All but six of the stories had been first published elsewhere, although Bradbury revised some of the texts.
Fifteen of the 27 stories were reprinted in The October Country in 1955, some in revised form. Those stories are "The Next in Line", "Skeleton", "The Jar", "The Lake", "The Emissary", "The Small Assassin", "The Crowd", "Jack-in-the-Box", "The Scythe", "Uncle Einar", "The Wind", "The Man Upstairs", "There Was an Old Woman", "The Cistern" and "The Homecoming".
Of the remainder, eight have been reprinted in one or more collections.
"The Night Sets", "The Maiden", "Reunion" and "Interim" have not been anthologized as of 2010.
For many years, Bradbury did not permit Dark Carnival to be reprinted, since updated versions of many of the stories were collected as The October Country. However, a limited edition of Dark Carnival, with five extra stories and a new introduction by Bradbury, was printed by Gauntlet Press in 2001.
On August 22, 2006, "The Homecoming" was published as a stand-alone short story with illustrations by Dave McKean.