British Fantasy Library

The British Fantasy Library or BFL was an organisation founded by Ron Holmes and Nigel Lindsay after the dissolution of the British Fantasy Society in 1946. They published an official organ, Booklist.

In September 1947 the first issue of Ken Slater's Operation Fantast was distributed alongside Booklist and Slater soon started running 'a sort of "bring-and-buy" agency for the BFL's surplus magazines and books'. According to Slater, the original incarnation of Operation Fantast was essentially the liaison department of the BFL. In December Walt Willis saw an advertisement for the BFL in a prozine and wrote off for details. Holmes replied, sending BFL material and a copy of Operation Fantast leading Willis to contact Slater.

Holmes dropped out of fandom in 1948 and John Gunn took over Booklist. Lindsay also became less involved and the BFL increasingly became a postal lending library while Operation Fantast became fully independent.

The BFL had offered to distribute fanzines alongside its Booklist and Willis and James White sought to take advantage of this for the first issue of Slant. Receiving no reply to his letters, Willis offered to mail Booklist himself and receive 200 copies and a mailing list on Christmas Day 1948. At this point there were 41 paid up members of the BFL.

It's unclear when the BFL ended but likely not longer after.

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Club

1946—

This is a club page. Please extend it by adding information about when and where the club met, when and by whom it was founded, how long it was active, notable accomplishments, well-known members, clubzines, any conventions it ran, external links to the club's website, other club pages, etc. When there's a floreat (Fl.), this indicates the time or times for which we have found evidence that the club existed. This is probably not going to represent the club's full lifetime, so please update it if you can!