Dark Magic

SNOW, Jack. Dark Music And Other Spectral Tales. NY: Herald, 1947. 8vo, [viii] 208pp. Aquamarine cloth with spine stamped in blue. Lower spine end a tad rubbed, else a very fine copy in original color pictorial dust jacket (two light vertical creases to rear panel). Unusually fine and one of the only copies we have ever seen without any tears or chips to the dust jacket.

First edition. A collection of 12 tales ranging from the macabre and sinister to the more charming and juvenile. Jack Snow was a writer in the NBC Advertising and Promotions Department. The same year this book was published, Snow’s first Oz novel, The Magical Mimics in Oz was published by Reilly & Lee. Snow would go on to write The Shaggy Man of Oz and Who’s Who in Oz. Four of the stories in this collection had originally appeared in the magazine Weird Tales, including the sinister “Midnight,” which had appeared in the May 1946 issue of Weird Tales with Ray Bradbury's story "The Smiling People." Bradbury had been impressed with Snow’s story and originally agreed to write an introduction to this collection, but supposedly upon hearing that the publisher was including a number of Snow’s juvenile tales, backed out of writing the introduction. It is speculated that the publisher had already printed jackets containing Ray Bradbury’s name on the bottom of the front panel, and that the darker colored section at the bottom of this panel reflects the publisher putting an “ink block” over the famed author’s name. While our copy retains the darker colored section on the front panel, it is impossible to see any text underneath and we are unable to strictly confirm this suspicion.