The Master Thriller Series
The Master Thriller Series was a series of British pulp magazines that reprinted American pulp fiction in various genres. The first issue, titled "Tales of the Foreign Legion", appeared in July 1933, and was followed at approximately quarterly intervals by issues each of which were focused on a particular type of story, such as horror, mystery, or sea stories. The publisher, The World's Work, was a subsidiary of the American publisher Doubleday, and initially many of the reprints were from magazines published in the US by Doubleday or Dell. In early 1939, after 24 issues , it switched to monthly publication, and this lasted until the end of the year. The final issue, titled "Tales of Ghosts and Haunted Houses", appeared in December 1939. The quality was high to start with, but declined, with well-known names such as Somerset Maugham and Algernon Blackwood appearing early in the series, and less prestigious authors in the later titles. British reprints also began to appear, and there were a few original stories as well as the reprints. The World's Work produced several other magazines that were associated with The Master Thriller Series, but not part of it , including "Fireside Ghost Stories", "Ghosts and Goblins", and "Mystery and Detection", a series that followed #4 in The Master Thriller series, "Tales of Mystery and Detection." "Tales of Wonder", was once thought by bibliographers to be part of The Master Thriller Series but it is now known to have been a separate series from the outset. Bibliographic details. There were 32 issues of The Master Thriller Series. The publisher was The World's Work, and the editor was H. Norman Evans. All issues were in pulp format and priced at 1/-; all were 128 pages except for the final issue , which was 96 pages. The titles of the individual issues were as follows.