Arkham House

The project after Lovecraft’s death

Lovecraft’s death in March 1937 left his work dispersed among magazines, amateur publications, manuscripts and correspondence. Derleth’s 1959 history describes an initial proposal to collect the best stories and Wandrei’s insistence that the longer undertaking should include the letters and other material. This was a program of gathering and preservation before it became a conventional publishing list.

Attempts to place the first collection with established publishers failed. Derleth reports rejection by Scribner’s and Simon & Schuster on grounds related to the volume’s size, the market and Lovecraft’s limited commercial reputation. A private imprint offered control over publication but transferred the financial risk to its founders.

The chosen name came from Lovecraft’s fictional Arkham. It linked the publisher to the work it intended to preserve, although the business itself operated in Wisconsin. The distinction matters: Arkham House is a real publisher named for an invented town, not a fictional building within that town.

Sources: August Derleth — Arkham House: The First 20 Years, 1939–1959

The first book: The Outsider and Others

The Outsider and Others was delivered in late 1939 in an edition of 1,268 copies. Its contents brought together a wide range of fiction, including dream tales, New England horror and the long scientific narratives, together with Supernatural Horror in Literature. Derleth and Wandrei supplied the introductory account and arranged the collection.

The George Banta Company of Menasha printed the book. Advance purchasers were offered a price of $3.50 against the regular $5 price, but only 150 prepaid orders had arrived by publication. Derleth describes Wandrei contributing $400 and the remaining immediate expense being supported through the loan for his own house. These are historical prices and the founder’s account of financing, not present-day valuations.

The book took about four years to sell out its original printing. Its later desirability should not conceal how uncertain the initial market appeared. The first volume’s importance lay in making a substantial body of work available together, even before it became a sought-after collectible.

Sources: August Derleth — Arkham House: The First 20 Years, 1939–1959

The second Lovecraft omnibus and recovered material

Beyond the Wall of Sleep followed in 1943, with 1,217 copies recorded in Derleth’s bibliography. It widened the record beyond the first omnibus. Its contents included The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath and The Case of Charles Dexter Ward, shorter fiction, revisions and collaborations, poetry, the autobiography and the Commonplace Book.

The effect was to make several different aspects of Lovecraft’s writing available within one large volume. Readers could encounter dream fantasy beside scientific horror, autobiographical reflection beside a fictitious occult history, and solo work beside texts with more complicated credits. The selection helped establish an image of an author with a broad literary practice rather than only a handful of famous monsters.

Marginalia, published in 1944, continued the gathering process. Such collections require attention to their exact contents and editorial circumstances. The appearance of material under a Lovecraft-related title does not erase another writer’s contribution or turn every recollection and commentary in the volume into Lovecraft’s own prose.

Sources: August Derleth — Arkham House: The First 20 Years, 1939–1959

Expansion beyond a memorial press

The second Arkham House title was Derleth’s Someone in the Dark in 1941. Clark Ashton Smith’s Out of Space and Time followed in 1942, and Lost Worlds appeared in 1944. These books demonstrate how quickly the press moved from one author’s preservation to the collection of a wider fantastic tradition.

The 1944 list also included Donald Wandrei’s The Eye and the Finger and Henry S. Whitehead’s Jumbee and Other Uncanny Tales. In 1945, Robert Bloch’s The Opener of the Way and Evangeline Walton’s Witch House extended the range. The latter is identified in Derleth’s history as the press’s first fantasy novel.

This program gave stories originally encountered separately in magazines a different reading context. A collection could make a writer’s range, recurring subjects and stylistic development easier to perceive. It also depended on editorial selection: the book form is a constructed presentation of the work, not simply a neutral container for everything an author had written.

Sources: August Derleth — Arkham House: The First 20 Years, 1939–1959

British supernatural writing and modern American voices

The press also brought older or less readily available British supernatural fiction to American readers. Its early program included J. Sheridan Le Fanu, Algernon Blackwood, A. E. Coppard, H. Russell Wakefield and William Hope Hodgson. The 1946 list combined such writers with members of Lovecraft’s circle and with A. E. van Vogt’s science-fiction novel Slan.

In 1947 Arkham House published Ray Bradbury’s Dark Carnival, Carl Jacobi’s Revelations in Black and Fritz Leiber’s Night’s Black Agents, among other titles. These names show that the house’s significance cannot be reduced to the propagation of a single Mythos canon. It supported different styles and generations within fantastic literature.

Derleth presents the importation and recovery of British work as part of establishing the imprint’s standing. That is his editorial rationale. The resulting list also allows readers to trace older influences alongside newer developments, placing Lovecraft within a broader history rather than making him the origin of all supernatural fiction.

Sources: August Derleth — Arkham House: The First 20 Years, 1939–1959

Design, allied imprints and The Arkham Sampler

Frank Utpatel designed a house colophon first used in The Eye and the Finger. Jacket artists named in Derleth’s account include Ronald Clyne, Utpatel, Hannes Bok, Howard Wandrei and others. The physical book—its format, jacket and recognizable publishing mark—was part of how the small press presented its list to readers.

Mycroft & Moran began in 1945 for unusual detective fiction, including Derleth’s Solar Pons stories. Stanton & Lee accommodated a different group of publications, including cartoon work and regional material. These were allied imprints with distinct programs, not alternate titles for Lovecraft’s fictional places.

The Arkham Sampler, a quarterly issued in 1948 and 1949, combined fiction, poetry, letters, articles and bibliographical material. Derleth says the second year failed to cover costs and that its demands on his time contributed to discontinuation. The magazine’s brief life illustrates both the ambition to support a literary community and the practical limits of a small publishing operation.

Sources: August Derleth — Arkham House: The First 20 Years, 1939–1959

Print runs, mail order and economic limits

Derleth’s retrospective repeatedly returns to the problem of scale. An audience could be enthusiastic without being large enough to support a substantial printing. Too much stock occupied space and tied up capital; rising production costs made familiar prices harder to maintain. He reports learning to favor editions nearer two thousand copies, with adjustments for particular books, after some larger printings proved impractical.

Prepaid mail orders helped meet printer’s bills. When fewer readers ordered directly and a greater proportion of sales passed through wholesalers and retailers, the publisher’s income per copy fell. That change mattered even when the books continued to find readers. Derleth also credits income from his own writing with helping sustain the operation.

These statements come from the founder’s 1959 history and should be read as his account of the business. They explain why publication plans could be delayed, canceled or transferred elsewhere. An announcement is evidence of intention; a published book, with identifiable edition details, is evidence of completion.

Sources: August Derleth — Arkham House: The First 20 Years, 1939–1959

Using the publishing record

The appended bibliography in The First 20 Years records titles, dates, contents, prices and quantities for the period it covers. It is a useful route into specific editions, but its chronological boundary must remain visible. Books listed as future projects in 1959 are not automatically books published that year.

The press’s early history also demonstrates why textual history belongs in a Lovecraft encyclopedia. Collection editors decide what to include, how to group it and what contextual material accompanies it. Readers encounter those decisions before they can compare manuscripts or earlier magazine versions. The author’s work, the editor’s presentation and later interpretations of the Mythos should be linked without being treated as the same source.

Sources: August Derleth — Arkham House: The First 20 Years, 1939–1959