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Back in the early-1970s Dennis Wheatley was a big name. Now, as far as I can tell, he's pretty much forgotten and books that used to be best-sellers, like To The Devil A Daughter and The Devil Rides Out, go entirely unread. This isn't necessarily a bad thing, since Wheatley was a writer of no great talent, and his books were clunky, lumpy slabs of indigestible narrative, shot through with lashings of black magic and satanism. At the time this was dangerous, edgy stuff, but - largely through Wheatley's own efforts - there's now so much more awareness of magic rituals that his version of it isn't exactly shocking anymore. The Hammer movies of his novels (particularly The Devil Rides Out, adapted by Richard Matheson) are worth seeing - the books aren't worth reading.
However, for all his faults, Wheatley was a genuine student of the occult and he regularly used his high profile to try to educate and inform the general public. His finest moment, in my opinion, was this series of books in 1974-77. Somehow he persuaded Sphere to publish dozens of books - both fiction and non-fiction - on all aspects of the occult, relying solely on his name to sell the things to a mass market.
The result was an impressive collection, ranging from Goethe to Crowley, from acknowledged classics like Dracula through to neglected masterpieces like The Witch of Prague. What Wheatley's contribution was is unclear: he wrote a two-page introduction to each volume (frequently ill-informed and inaccurate), but I don't know whether he actually chose the books to be included. I also don't know how successful it all was - not very is my guess, based on the way that the number of titles published per year slowed quite dramatically, and the way that the cover format changed towards the end.
Unfortunately, I don't have a complete set of these books, but I've included those that I do possess, partly in tribute to a noble if failed publishing venture, and partly to expose the typically 1970s cover art, all of which sadly is uncredited. (Do tell me if you know who did the covers.)
 Dennis Wheatley or click on a linked title below
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