THE CLOCK STRIKES TWELVE

First Arkham House Edition: xi, 248 pages, original black cloth titled and decorated gilt on the spine, a very good copy in the dust jacket  -  the jacket is printed on thick stock paper and designed by Ronald Clyne and spirit varnished - it is frayed along the edges and at the top and bottom of the spine and slightly rubbed.

The colophon on the final unnumbered page reads, 'Four thousand copies of this book have been printed by Intertype Garamond by the Collegiate Press, George Banta Publishing Company, Menasha, Wisconsin. The paper is Winnebago Eggshell. The binding cloth is Holliston Black Novelex.'

The bibliography records 4040 copies as the total edition the 40 copy difference being explained as printer's overruns.

This edition is expanded from the London edition published in 1940 by Herbert Jenkins Limited,  adding four stories — "A Fishing Story," "Used Car," "Death of a Poacher" and "Knock! Knock! Who's There?" — and the introduction "Why I Write Ghost Stories," not included in the 1940 edition.

In his introduction Wakefield writes: 'We have to remember and face the fact that we have not and cannot have, any acquaintance with, let us say, more than a millionth part of what is loosely called 'reality' … Sometimes I fancy I see something flicker and hear something stir. And that is why I sometimes write a ghost story.'