Established in 1946 by Lloyd Arthur Eshbach[1] in Reading, Pennsylvania, it was most notable for publishing the works of authors such as Robert A. Heinlein and E. E.

Lloyd Arthur Eshbach ordered a copy of Skylark of Space from its publisher, the Buffalo Book Company, in 1945 or 1946.

Donnell as illustrator and Lyman H. Houck as bookkeeper) and one other friend of theirs (Herb MacGregor shipping the books), Eshbach used the mailing list to start Fantasy Press.

Donnell as illustrator, Lyman Houck (an accountant friend and fellow Mason) as bookkeeper, and Herb MacGregor shipping the books.

Eshbach wrote his authors and reverted the rights to their books while he took a job with a religious publishing house in Myerstown, Pennsylvania.

He then wrote an entirely new novel, First Lensman, to tie the first novel in with the four adventures of Kimball Kinneson which had originally made up the rest of the series.

Fantasy Press folded after 1955, a victim of the glut of science fiction books and magazines on the market by that time.

The collector's market by itself was simply not large enough at that time to support the specialty presses without general reader sales added in.

Eshbach knew when to call it quits before the house totally burned to the ground, and reverted rights for all of his books to his authors - as he had no money to pay them with - and formally retreated from the stage of fan publishing.

In 1956 he took 500 sets of the remaining unbound sheets for three of his titles and had them bound in paper covers as part of the Fantasy Press "Golden Science Fiction Library", which he then marketed (mostly at conventions)[8] for $1.00 apiece.

But the bulk of these sheets were sold to Donald M. Grant, himself a publisher of mostly fantasy books, who bound quantities of each of them for sale.

As the bindings used by both Grant and Greenberg were in most cases different from the originals, this practice created a bewildering number of "variants" that sometimes have collectors today shaking their heads.

Eshbach also sold Grant a fair quantity of flat dust jackets for Fantasy Press books, some of which are still available on the collector's market today.