August Derleth
Encyclopedia
August William Derleth was an American writer and anthologist. Though best remembered as the first publisher of the writings of H. P. Lovecraft
, and for his own contributions to the so-called Cthulhu Mythos
genre of horror
, as well as his founding of the publisher Arkham House
(which did much to bring supernatural fiction into print in hardcover in the US that had only been readily available in the UK), Derleth was a leading American regional writer
of his day, as well as prolific in several other genres, including historical fiction
, poetry
, detective fiction
, science fiction
and biography
.
A 1938 Guggenheim Fellow, Derleth considered his most serious work to be the ambitious Sac Prairie Saga, a series of fiction, historical fiction, poetry, and non-fiction naturalist works designed to memorialize life in the Wisconsin he knew. Derleth can also be considered a pioneering naturalist and conservationist in his writing.
. He was educated in local parochial and public high school. Derleth wrote his first fiction at age 13. He was interested most in reading, and he made three trips to the library a week. He would save his money to buy books (his personal library exceeded 12,000 later on in life). Some of his biggest influences were Ralph Waldo Emerson
's essays, Walt Whitman
, H. L. Mencken
's The American Mercury
, Samuel Johnson
's The History of Rasselas, Prince of Abissinia
, Alexandre Dumas
, Edgar Allan Poe
, Walter Scott
, and Henry David Thoreau
's Walden
.
Forty rejected stories and three years later, according to anthologist Jim Stephens, he sold his first story, "Bat's Belfry", to Weird Tales
magazine. Derleth wrote throughout his four years at the University of Wisconsin
, where he received a B.A.
in 1930. During this time he also served briefly as associate editor of Minneapolis-based Fawcett Publications
Mystic Magazine.
Returning to Sauk City in the summer of 1931, Derleth worked in a local canning factory and collaborated with childhood friend Mark Schorer
(later Chairman of the University of California, Berkeley
English Department). They rented a cabin, writing Gothic and other horror stories and selling them
to Weird Tales
magazine. Derleth won a place on the O'Brien Roll of Honor for Five Alone, published in Place of Hawks, but was first found in Pagany magazine.
As a result of his early work on the Sac Prairie Saga, Derleth was awarded the prestigious Guggenheim Fellowship; his sponsors were Helen C. White, Nobel Prize-winning novelist Sinclair Lewis
and poet Edgar Lee Masters
of Spoon River Anthology
fame.
In the mid-1930s, Derleth organized a Ranger's Club for young people, served as clerk and president of the local school board
, served as a parole officer, organized a local men's club and a parent-teacher association
. He also lectured in American regional literature at the University of Wisconsin and was a contributing editor of Outdoors Magazine.
With longtime friend Donald Wandrei
, Derleth in 1939 founded Arkham House
. Its initial objective was to publish the works of H.P Lovecraft, with whom Derleth had corresponded since his teenage years. At the same time, he began teaching a course in American Regional Literature at the University of Wisconsin.
In 1941, he became literary editor of The Capital Times newspaper in Madison
, a post he held until his resignation in 1960. His hobbies included fencing, swimming, chess, philately
and comic-strips (Derleth reportedly deployed the funding from his Guggenheim Fellowship to bind his comic book collection, most recently valued in the millions of dollars, rather than to travel abroad as the award intended.). Derleth's true avocation
, however, was hiking the terrain of his native Wisconsin lands, and observing and recording nature with an expert eye.
Derleth once wrote of his writing methods, "I write very swiftly, from 750,000 to a million words yearly, very little of it pulp material."
He was married April 6, 1953, to Sandra Evelyn Winters. They divorced six years later. Derleth retained custody of the couple's two children, April Rose and Walden William. April earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in English from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 1977. She became majority stockholder, President, and CEO of Arkham House in 1994. She remained in that capacity until her passing. She was known in the community as a naturalist and humanitarian. April passed away on March 21, 2011. http://www.arkhamhouse.com/
In 1960, Derleth began editing and publishing a magazine called Hawk and Whippoorwill, dedicated to poems
of man and nature.
Derleth died of a massive and sudden heart attack on July 4, 1971, and is buried in St. Aloysius Cemetery in Sauk City.
Derleth wrote more than 150 short stories and more than 100 books during his lifetime.
and Proust's Remembrance of Things Past.
This, and other early work by Derleth, made him a well known figure among the regional literary figures of his time: early Pulitzer Prize
winners Hamlin Garland
and Zona Gale
, as well as Sinclair Lewis, the last both an admirer and critic of Derleth.
As Edward Wagenknecht writes in Cavalcade of the American Novel: "What Mr. Derleth has that is lacking...in modern novelists generally, is a country. He belongs. He writes of a land and a people that are bone of his bone and flesh of his flesh. In his fictional world, there is a unity much deeper and more fundamental than anything that can be conferred by an ideology. It is clear, too, that he did not get the best, and most fictionally useful, part of his background material from research in the library; like Scott, in his Border novels, he gives, rather, the impression of having drunk it in with his mother's milk."
Jim Stephens, editor of An August Derleth Reader, (1992), argues: "what Derleth accomplished....was to gather a Wisconsin mythos which gave respect to the ancient fundament of our contemporary life."
The author inaugurated the Sac Pairie Saga with four novellas comprising Place of Hawks, published by Loring & Mussey in 1935. At publication, The Detroit News
wrote: "Certainly with this book Mr. Derleth may be added to the American writers of distinction."
Derleth's first novel, Still is the Summer Night, was published two years later by the famous Charles Scribners'
editor Maxwell Perkins
, and was the second in his Sac Pairie Saga.
Village Year, the first in a series of journals–meditations on nature, Midwestern village American life, and more–was published in 1941 to praise from The New York Times Book Review
: "A book of instant sensitive responsiveness...recreates its scene with acuteness and beauty, and makes an unusual contribution to the Americana of the present day." The New York Herald Tribune
observed that "Derleth...deepens the value of his village setting by presenting in full the enduring natural background; with the people projected against this, the writing comes to have the quality of an old Flemish picture, humanity lively and amusing and loveable in the foreground and nature magnificent beyond." James Grey, writing in the St. Louis Dispatch
concluded, "Derleth has achieved a kind of prose equivalent of the Spoon River Anthology."
In the same year, Evening in Spring was published by Charles Scribners & Sons. This work Derleth considered among his finest. What The Milwaukee Journal
called "this beautiful little love story," is an autobiographical novel of first love beset by small town religious bigotry. The work received critical praise: The New Yorker
considered it a story told "with tenderness and charm," while the Chicago Tribune concluded: "It's as though he turned back the pages of an old diary and told, with rekindled emotion, of the pangs of pain and the sharp, clear sweetness of a boy's first love." Helen Constance White, wrote in The Capital Times that it was "...the best articulated, the most fully disciplined of his stories."
These were followed in 1943 with Shadow of Night, a Scribners' novel of which The Chicago Sun
wrote: "Structurally it has the perfection of a carved jewel...A psychological novel of the first order, and an adventure tale that is unique and inspiriting."
In November 1945, however, Derleth's work was attacked by his one-time admirer and mentor, Sinclair Lewis. Writing in Esquire
, Lewis said, "It is a proof of Mr. Derleth's merit that he makes one want to make the journey and see his particular Avalon: The Wisconsin River
shining among its islands, and the castles of Baron Pierneau and Hercules Dousman. He is a champion and a justification of regionalism. Yet he is also a burly, bounding, bustling, self-confident, opinionated, and highly sweatered young man with faults so grievous that a melancholoy perusal of them may be of more value to apprentices than a study of his serious virtues. If he could ever be persuaded that he isn't half as good as he thinks he is, if he would learn the art of sitting still and using a blue pencil, he might become twice as good as he thinks he is–which would about rank him with Homer." Derleth good humoredly reprinted the criticism along with a photograph of himself sans sweater, on the back cover of his 1948 country journal: Village Daybook.
A lighter side to the Sac Prairie Saga is a series of quasi-autobiographical short stories known as the "Gus Elker Stories," amusing tales of country life that Peter Ruber
, Derleth's last editor, said were "...models of construction and...fused with some of the most memorable characters in American literature." Most were written between 1934 and the late 1940s, though the last, "Tail of the Dog", was published in 1959 and won the Scholastic Magazine short story award for the year. The series was collected and republished in Country Matters in 1996.
"Walden West," published in 1961, is considered by many Derleth's finest work. This prose meditation is built out of the same fundamental material as the series of Sac Prairie journals, but is organized around three themes: "the persistence of memory...the sounds and odors of the country...and Thoreau's observation that the 'mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation.'" A blend of nature writing, philosophic musings, and careful observation of the people and place of "Sac Prairie." Of this work, George Vukelich, author of "North Country Notebook," writes: "Derleth's Walden West is...the equal of Sherwood Anderson's Winesburg,Ohio, Thornton Wilder's Our Town, and Edgar Lee Masters' Spoon River Anthology." This was followed eight years later by "Return to Walden West," a work of similar quality, but with a more noticeable environmentalist edge to the writing, notes critic Norbert Blei
.
A close literary relative of the Sac Prairie Saga was Derleth's Wisconsin Saga, which comprises several historical novels.
, whose creator, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
, he admired greatly. These included one published novel as well (Mr. Fairlie's Final Journey). The series features a (Sherlock Holmes-styled) British detective named Solar Pons
, of Praed Street
in London. The series was greatly admired by such notable writers and critics of mystery and detective fiction as Ellery Queen
(Frederic Dannay), Anthony Boucher
, Vincent Starrett
and Howard Haycraft.
In his 1944 volume The Misadventures of Sherlock Holmes, Ellery Queen wrote of Derleth's The Norcross Riddle, an early Pons story: "How many budding authors, not even old enough to vote, could have captured the spirit and atmosphere with as much fidelity?" Queen adds, "...and his choice of the euphonic Solar Pons is an appealing addition to the fascinating lore of Sherlockian nomenclature." Vincent Starrett, in his foreword to the 1964 edition of The Casebook of Solar Pons, wrote that the series is "...as sparkling a galaxy of Sherlockian pastiches as we have had since the canonical entertainments came to an end."
Despite close similarities to Doyle's creation, Pons lived in the post-World War I
era, in the decade of the 1920s. Though Derleth never wrote a Pons novel to equal The Hound of the Baskervilles, editor Peter Ruber wrote: "...Derleth produced more than a few Solar Pons stories almost as good as Sir Arthur's, and many that had better plot construction."
Although these stories were a form of diversion for Derleth, Ruber, who edited The Original Text Solar Pons Omnibus Edition
(2000), argued: "Because the stories were generally of such high quality, they ought to be assessed on their own merits as a unique contribution in the annals of mystery ficton, rather than suffering comparison as one of the endless imitators of Sherlock Holmes."
Some of the stories were self-published, through a new imprint called "Mycroft & Moran
", an appellation of humorous significance to Holmesian scholars. For approximately a decade, an active supporting group was the Praed Street Irregulars, patterned after the Baker Street Irregulars
.
In 1946, Conan Doyle's two sons made some attempts to force Derleth to cease publishing the Solar Pons series, but the efforts were unsuccessful and eventually withdrawn.
Derleth's mystery and detective fiction also included a series of works set in Sac Prairie and featuring Judge Peck as the central character.
, as well as Ralph Waldo Emerson
and Henry David Thoreau
. Arguably most important among his works for younger readers, however, is the Steve and Sim Mystery Series. The ten-volume series is set in Sac Prairie of the 1920s and can thus be considered in its own right a part of the Sac Prairie Saga, as well as an extension of Derleth's body of mystery fiction. Robert Hood, writing in the New York Times said: "Steve and Sim, the major characters, are twentieth-century cousins of Huck Finn and Tom Sawyer; Derleth's minor characters, little gems of comic drawing." The first novel in the series, The Moon Tenders, does, in fact, involve a rafting adventure down the Wisconsin River
, which led regional writer Jesse Stuart
to suggest the novel was one that "older people might read to recapture the spirit and dream of youth." The connection to the Sac Prairie Saga was noted by the Chicago Tribune
: "Once again a small midwest community in 1920s is depicted with perception, skill, and dry humor."
Derleth was a correspondent and friend of H. P. Lovecraft
– when Lovecraft wrote about "le Comte d'Erlette" in his fiction, it was in homage to Derleth. Derleth invented the term "Cthulhu Mythos" to describe the fictional universe described in the series of stories shared by Lovecraft and other writers in his circle. Derleth's own writing emphasized the struggle between good and evil, in line with his own Christian
world view and in contrast with Lovecraft's depiction of an amoral universe. Derleth also treated Lovecraft's Old Ones as representatives of elemental forces, creating new fictional entities to flesh out this framework.
When Lovecraft died in 1937, Derleth and Donald Wandrei
assembled a collection of Lovecraft's stories and tried to get them published. Existing publishers showed little interest, so Derleth and Wandrei founded Arkham House
in 1939 for that purpose. The name of the company derived from Lovecraft's fictional town of Arkham
, Massachusetts
, which features in many of his stories. In 1939 Arkham House published The Outsider and Others
, a huge collection that contained most of Lovecraft's known short stories. Derleth and Wandrei soon expanded Arkham House and began a regular publishing schedule after its second book, Someone in the Dark
, a collection of some of Derleth's own horror stories, was published in 1941.
Following Lovecraft's death, Derleth wrote a number of stories based on fragments and notes left by Lovecraft. These were published in Weird Tales and later in book form, under the byline "H. P. Lovecraft and August Derleth", with Derleth calling himself a "posthumous collaborator." This practice has raised objections in some quarters that Derleth simply used Lovecraft's name to market what was essentially his own fiction; S. T. Joshi
refers to the "posthumous collaborations" as marking the beginning of "perhaps the most disreputable phase of Derleth's activities".
A significant number of H. P. Lovecraft
fans and critics, such as Dirk W. Mosig
, S. T. Joshi
, and Richard L. Tierney
were dissatisfied with Derleth's invention of the term Cthulhu Mythos (Lovecraft himself used Yog-Sothothery) and his belief that Lovecraft's fiction had an overall pattern reflecting Derleth's own Christian world view.
Nevertheless, Derleth's founding of Arkham House and his successful effort to rescue Lovecraft from literary obscurity are widely acknowledged by practitioners in the horror field as seminal events in the field. For instance, Ramsey Campbell
has acknowledged Derleth's encouragement and guidance during the early part of his own writing career, and Kirby McCauley has cited Derleth and Arkham House as an inspiration for his own anthology, Dark Forces
. Arkham House and Derleth published Dark Carnival, the first book by Ray Bradbury
, as well. Brian Lumley
cites the importance of Derleth to his own Lovecraftian work, and contends in a 2009 introduction to Derleth's work that he was "...one of the first, finest, and most discerning editors and publishers of macabre fiction."
Important as was Derleth's work to rescue H.P. Lovecraft from literary obscurity at the time of Lovecraft's death, Derleth also built a body of horror and spectral fiction of his own; still frequently anthologized. The best of this work, recently reprinted in four volumes of short stories–most of which were originally published in Weird Tales, illustrates Derleth's original abilities in the genre. While Derleth considered his work in this genre less important than his most serious literary efforts, the compilers of these four anthologies, including Ramsey Campbell, note that the stories still resonate after more than fifty years.
In 2009, The Library of America selected Derleth’s story The Panelled Room for inclusion in its two-century retrospective of American Fantastic Tales.
as a series that would connect Americans to their heritage through the history of the great rivers of the nation. Skinner wanted the series to be written by artists, not academicians. Derleth, while not a professional historian, was, according to former Wisconsin state historian William F. Thompson, "...a very competent regional historian who based his historical writing upon research in the primary documents and who regularly sought the help of professionals... ." In the foreword to the 1985 reissue of the work by The University of Wisconsin Press, Thompson concluded: "No other writer, of whatever background or training, knew and understood his particular 'corner of the earth' better than August Derleth."
Derleth wrote several volumes of poems, as well as biographies of Zona Gale
, Ralph Waldo Emerson
and Henry David Thoreau
.
He also wrote introductions to several collections of classic early 20th century comics, such as Buster Brown
, Little Nemo in Slumberland, and Katzenjammer Kids
, as well as a book of children's poetry entitled A Boy's Way. Derleth also wrote under the nom de plumes Stephen Grendon, Kenyon Holmes and Tally Mason.
Derleth's papers and comic book collection (valued at a considerable sum upon his death) were donated to the Wisconsin Historical Society
in Madison.
Solar Pons
Horror & Lovecraft-Mythos
Science fiction
Other
H. P. Lovecraft
Howard Phillips Lovecraft --often credited as H.P. Lovecraft — was an American author of horror, fantasy and science fiction, especially the subgenre known as weird fiction....
, and for his own contributions to the so-called Cthulhu Mythos
Cthulhu Mythos
The Cthulhu Mythos is a shared fictional universe, based on the work of American horror writer H. P. Lovecraft.The term was first coined by August Derleth, a contemporary correspondent of Lovecraft, who used the name of the creature Cthulhu - a central figure in Lovecraft literature and the focus...
genre of horror
Horror fiction
Horror fiction also Horror fantasy is a philosophy of literature, which is intended to, or has the capacity to frighten its readers, inducing feelings of horror and terror. It creates an eerie atmosphere. Horror can be either supernatural or non-supernatural...
, as well as his founding of the publisher Arkham House
Arkham House
Arkham House is a publishing house specializing in weird fiction founded in Sauk City, Wisconsin in 1939 by August Derleth and Donald Wandrei to preserve in hardcover the best fiction of H.P. Lovecraft. The company's name is derived from Lovecraft's fictional New England city, Arkham. Arkham House...
(which did much to bring supernatural fiction into print in hardcover in the US that had only been readily available in the UK), Derleth was a leading American regional writer
Regionalism (literature)
In literature, regionalism or local color refers to fiction or poetry that focuses on specific features – including characters, dialects, customs, history, and topography – of a particular region...
of his day, as well as prolific in several other genres, including historical fiction
Historical fiction
Historical fiction tells a story that is set in the past. That setting is usually real and drawn from history, and often contains actual historical persons, but the principal characters tend to be fictional...
, poetry
Poetry
Poetry is a form of literary art in which language is used for its aesthetic and evocative qualities in addition to, or in lieu of, its apparent meaning...
, detective fiction
Detective fiction
Detective fiction is a sub-genre of crime fiction and mystery fiction in which an investigator , either professional or amateur, investigates a crime, often murder.-In ancient literature:...
, science fiction
Science fiction
Science fiction is a genre of fiction dealing with imaginary but more or less plausible content such as future settings, futuristic science and technology, space travel, aliens, and paranormal abilities...
and biography
Biography
A biography is a detailed description or account of someone's life. More than a list of basic facts , biography also portrays the subject's experience of those events...
.
A 1938 Guggenheim Fellow, Derleth considered his most serious work to be the ambitious Sac Prairie Saga, a series of fiction, historical fiction, poetry, and non-fiction naturalist works designed to memorialize life in the Wisconsin he knew. Derleth can also be considered a pioneering naturalist and conservationist in his writing.
Life
The son of William Julius Derleth and Rose Louise Volk, Derleth grew up in Sauk City, WisconsinSauk City, Wisconsin
Sauk City is a village in Sauk County, Wisconsin, United States. The population was 3,109 at the 2000 census. The first incorporated village in the state, the community was founded by Agoston Haraszthy and his business partner, Robert Bryant...
. He was educated in local parochial and public high school. Derleth wrote his first fiction at age 13. He was interested most in reading, and he made three trips to the library a week. He would save his money to buy books (his personal library exceeded 12,000 later on in life). Some of his biggest influences were Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson was an American essayist, lecturer, and poet, who led the Transcendentalist movement of the mid-19th century...
's essays, Walt Whitman
Walt Whitman
Walter "Walt" Whitman was an American poet, essayist and journalist. A humanist, he was a part of the transition between transcendentalism and realism, incorporating both views in his works. Whitman is among the most influential poets in the American canon, often called the father of free verse...
, H. L. Mencken
H. L. Mencken
Henry Louis "H. L." Mencken was an American journalist, essayist, magazine editor, satirist, acerbic critic of American life and culture, and a scholar of American English. Known as the "Sage of Baltimore", he is regarded as one of the most influential American writers and prose stylists of the...
's The American Mercury
The American Mercury
The American Mercury was an American magazine published from 1924 to 1981. It was founded as the brainchild of H. L. Mencken and drama critic George Jean Nathan. The magazine featured writing by some of the most important writers in the United States through the 1920s and 1930s...
, Samuel Johnson
Samuel Johnson
Samuel Johnson , often referred to as Dr. Johnson, was an English author who made lasting contributions to English literature as a poet, essayist, moralist, literary critic, biographer, editor and lexicographer...
's The History of Rasselas, Prince of Abissinia
The History of Rasselas, Prince of Abissinia
The History of Rasselas, Prince of Abissinia, often abbreviated to Rasselas, is an apologue about happiness by Samuel Johnson. The book's original working title was “The Choice of Life". He wrote the piece to help support his seriously ill mother with an intended completion date of January 22, 1759...
, Alexandre Dumas
Alexandre Dumas, père
Alexandre Dumas, , born Dumas Davy de la Pailleterie was a French writer, best known for his historical novels of high adventure which have made him one of the most widely read French authors in the world...
, Edgar Allan Poe
Edgar Allan Poe
Edgar Allan Poe was an American author, poet, editor and literary critic, considered part of the American Romantic Movement. Best known for his tales of mystery and the macabre, Poe was one of the earliest American practitioners of the short story and is considered the inventor of the detective...
, Walter Scott
Walter Scott
Sir Walter Scott, 1st Baronet was a Scottish historical novelist, playwright, and poet, popular throughout much of the world during his time....
, and Henry David Thoreau
Henry David Thoreau
Henry David Thoreau was an American author, poet, philosopher, abolitionist, naturalist, tax resister, development critic, surveyor, historian, and leading transcendentalist...
's Walden
Walden
Walden is an American book written by noted Transcendentalist Henry David Thoreau...
.
Forty rejected stories and three years later, according to anthologist Jim Stephens, he sold his first story, "Bat's Belfry", to Weird Tales
Weird Tales
Weird Tales is an American fantasy and horror fiction pulp magazine first published in March 1923. It ceased its original run in September 1954, after 279 issues, but has since been revived. The magazine was set up in Chicago by J. C. Henneberger, an ex-journalist with a taste for the macabre....
magazine. Derleth wrote throughout his four years at the University of Wisconsin
University of Wisconsin–Madison
The University of Wisconsin–Madison is a public research university located in Madison, Wisconsin, United States. Founded in 1848, UW–Madison is the flagship campus of the University of Wisconsin System. It became a land-grant institution in 1866...
, where he received a B.A.
Bachelor's degree
A bachelor's degree is usually an academic degree awarded for an undergraduate course or major that generally lasts for three or four years, but can range anywhere from two to six years depending on the region of the world...
in 1930. During this time he also served briefly as associate editor of Minneapolis-based Fawcett Publications
Fawcett Publications
Fawcett Publications was an American publishing company founded in 1919 in Robbinsdale, Minnesota by Wilford Hamilton "Captain Billy" Fawcett . At the age of 16, Fawcett ran away from home to join the Army, and the Spanish-American War took him to the Philippines. Back in Minnesota, he became a...
Mystic Magazine.
Returning to Sauk City in the summer of 1931, Derleth worked in a local canning factory and collaborated with childhood friend Mark Schorer
Mark Schorer
Mark Schorer was an American writer, critic, and scholar born in Sauk City, Wisconsin.-Biography:Schorer earned an MA at Harvard and his Ph.D. in English at the University of Wisconsin–Madison in 1936...
(later Chairman of the University of California, Berkeley
University of California, Berkeley
The University of California, Berkeley , is a teaching and research university established in 1868 and located in Berkeley, California, USA...
English Department). They rented a cabin, writing Gothic and other horror stories and selling them
to Weird Tales
Weird Tales
Weird Tales is an American fantasy and horror fiction pulp magazine first published in March 1923. It ceased its original run in September 1954, after 279 issues, but has since been revived. The magazine was set up in Chicago by J. C. Henneberger, an ex-journalist with a taste for the macabre....
magazine. Derleth won a place on the O'Brien Roll of Honor for Five Alone, published in Place of Hawks, but was first found in Pagany magazine.
As a result of his early work on the Sac Prairie Saga, Derleth was awarded the prestigious Guggenheim Fellowship; his sponsors were Helen C. White, Nobel Prize-winning novelist Sinclair Lewis
Sinclair Lewis
Harry Sinclair Lewis was an American novelist, short-story writer, and playwright. In 1930, he became the first writer from the United States to be awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature, "for his vigorous and graphic art of description and his ability to create, with wit and humor, new types of...
and poet Edgar Lee Masters
Edgar Lee Masters
Edgar Lee Masters was an American poet, biographer, and dramatist...
of Spoon River Anthology
Spoon River Anthology
Spoon River Anthology , by Edgar Lee Masters, is a collection of short free-form poems that collectively describe the life of the fictional small town of Spoon River, named after the real Spoon River that ran near Masters' home town. The collection includes two hundred and twelve separate...
fame.
In the mid-1930s, Derleth organized a Ranger's Club for young people, served as clerk and president of the local school board
Board of education
A board of education or a school board or school committee is the title of the board of directors or board of trustees of a school, local school district or higher administrative level....
, served as a parole officer, organized a local men's club and a parent-teacher association
Parent-Teacher Association
In the U.S. a parent-teacher association or Parent-Teacher-Student Association is a formal organization composed of parents, teachers and staff that is intended to facilitate parental participation in a public or private school. Most public and private K-8 schools in the U.S. have a PTA, a...
. He also lectured in American regional literature at the University of Wisconsin and was a contributing editor of Outdoors Magazine.
With longtime friend Donald Wandrei
Donald Wandrei
Donald Albert Wandrei was an American science fiction, fantasy and weird fiction writer, poet and editor. He wrote as Donald Wandrei. He was the older brother of science fiction writer and artist Howard Wandrei...
, Derleth in 1939 founded Arkham House
Arkham House
Arkham House is a publishing house specializing in weird fiction founded in Sauk City, Wisconsin in 1939 by August Derleth and Donald Wandrei to preserve in hardcover the best fiction of H.P. Lovecraft. The company's name is derived from Lovecraft's fictional New England city, Arkham. Arkham House...
. Its initial objective was to publish the works of H.P Lovecraft, with whom Derleth had corresponded since his teenage years. At the same time, he began teaching a course in American Regional Literature at the University of Wisconsin.
In 1941, he became literary editor of The Capital Times newspaper in Madison
Madison, Wisconsin
Madison is the capital of the U.S. state of Wisconsin and the county seat of Dane County. It is also home to the University of Wisconsin–Madison....
, a post he held until his resignation in 1960. His hobbies included fencing, swimming, chess, philately
Philately
Philately is the study of stamps and postal history and other related items. Philately involves more than just stamp collecting, which does not necessarily involve the study of stamps. It is possible to be a philatelist without owning any stamps...
and comic-strips (Derleth reportedly deployed the funding from his Guggenheim Fellowship to bind his comic book collection, most recently valued in the millions of dollars, rather than to travel abroad as the award intended.). Derleth's true avocation
Avocation
An avocation is an activity that one engages in as a hobby outside one's main occupation. There are many examples of people whose professions were the ways that they made their livings, but for whom their activities outside of their workplaces were their true passions in life...
, however, was hiking the terrain of his native Wisconsin lands, and observing and recording nature with an expert eye.
Derleth once wrote of his writing methods, "I write very swiftly, from 750,000 to a million words yearly, very little of it pulp material."
He was married April 6, 1953, to Sandra Evelyn Winters. They divorced six years later. Derleth retained custody of the couple's two children, April Rose and Walden William. April earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in English from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 1977. She became majority stockholder, President, and CEO of Arkham House in 1994. She remained in that capacity until her passing. She was known in the community as a naturalist and humanitarian. April passed away on March 21, 2011. http://www.arkhamhouse.com/
In 1960, Derleth began editing and publishing a magazine called Hawk and Whippoorwill, dedicated to poems
Poetry
Poetry is a form of literary art in which language is used for its aesthetic and evocative qualities in addition to, or in lieu of, its apparent meaning...
of man and nature.
Derleth died of a massive and sudden heart attack on July 4, 1971, and is buried in St. Aloysius Cemetery in Sauk City.
Career
The Sac Prairie Saga
Derleth wrote an expansive series of novels, short stories, journals, poems, and other works about Sac Prairie (whose prototype is Sauk City). Derleth intended this series to comprise up to 50 novels telling the projected life-story of the region from the 19th century onwards, with analogies to Balzac's Human ComedyLa Comédie humaine
La Comédie humaine is the title of Honoré de Balzac's multi-volume collection of interlinked novels and stories depicting French society in the period of the Restoration and the July Monarchy .-Overview:...
and Proust's Remembrance of Things Past.
This, and other early work by Derleth, made him a well known figure among the regional literary figures of his time: early Pulitzer Prize
Pulitzer Prize
The Pulitzer Prize is a U.S. award for achievements in newspaper and online journalism, literature and musical composition. It was established by American publisher Joseph Pulitzer and is administered by Columbia University in New York City...
winners Hamlin Garland
Hamlin Garland
Hannibal Hamlin Garland was an American novelist, poet, essayist, and short story writer. He is best known for his fiction involving hard-working Midwestern farmers.- Biography :...
and Zona Gale
Zona Gale
Zona Gale was an American author and playwright. She became the first woman to win the Pulitzer Prize for drama, in 1921.-Biography:Gale was born in Portage, Wisconsin, which she often used as a setting in her writing...
, as well as Sinclair Lewis, the last both an admirer and critic of Derleth.
As Edward Wagenknecht writes in Cavalcade of the American Novel: "What Mr. Derleth has that is lacking...in modern novelists generally, is a country. He belongs. He writes of a land and a people that are bone of his bone and flesh of his flesh. In his fictional world, there is a unity much deeper and more fundamental than anything that can be conferred by an ideology. It is clear, too, that he did not get the best, and most fictionally useful, part of his background material from research in the library; like Scott, in his Border novels, he gives, rather, the impression of having drunk it in with his mother's milk."
Jim Stephens, editor of An August Derleth Reader, (1992), argues: "what Derleth accomplished....was to gather a Wisconsin mythos which gave respect to the ancient fundament of our contemporary life."
The author inaugurated the Sac Pairie Saga with four novellas comprising Place of Hawks, published by Loring & Mussey in 1935. At publication, The Detroit News
The Detroit News
The Detroit News is one of the two major newspapers in the U.S. city of Detroit, Michigan. The paper began in 1873, when it rented space in the rival Free Press's building. The News absorbed the Detroit Tribune on February 1, 1919, the Detroit Journal on July 21, 1922, and on November 7, 1960,...
wrote: "Certainly with this book Mr. Derleth may be added to the American writers of distinction."
Derleth's first novel, Still is the Summer Night, was published two years later by the famous Charles Scribners'
Charles Scribner's Sons
Charles Scribner's Sons, or simply Scribner, is an American publisher based in New York City, known for publishing a number of American authors including Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Kurt Vonnegut, Stephen King, Robert A. Heinlein, Thomas Wolfe, George Santayana, John Clellon...
editor Maxwell Perkins
Maxwell Perkins
William Maxwell Evarts Perkins , was the editor for Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald and Thomas Wolfe. He has been described as the most famous literary editor.-Career:...
, and was the second in his Sac Pairie Saga.
Village Year, the first in a series of journals–meditations on nature, Midwestern village American life, and more–was published in 1941 to praise from The New York Times Book Review
The New York Times Book Review
The New York Times Book Review is a weekly paper-magazine supplement to The New York Times in which current non-fiction and fiction books are reviewed. It is one of the most influential and widely read book review publications in the industry. The offices are located near Times Square in New York...
: "A book of instant sensitive responsiveness...recreates its scene with acuteness and beauty, and makes an unusual contribution to the Americana of the present day." The New York Herald Tribune
New York Herald Tribune
The New York Herald Tribune was a daily newspaper created in 1924 when the New York Tribune acquired the New York Herald.Other predecessors, which had earlier merged into the New York Tribune, included the original The New Yorker newsweekly , and the Whig Party's Log Cabin.The paper was home to...
observed that "Derleth...deepens the value of his village setting by presenting in full the enduring natural background; with the people projected against this, the writing comes to have the quality of an old Flemish picture, humanity lively and amusing and loveable in the foreground and nature magnificent beyond." James Grey, writing in the St. Louis Dispatch
St. Louis Post-Dispatch
The St. Louis Post-Dispatch is the major city-wide newspaper in St. Louis, Missouri. Although written to serve Greater St. Louis, the Post-Dispatch is one of the largest newspapers in the Midwestern United States, and is available and read as far west as Kansas City, Missouri, as far south as...
concluded, "Derleth has achieved a kind of prose equivalent of the Spoon River Anthology."
In the same year, Evening in Spring was published by Charles Scribners & Sons. This work Derleth considered among his finest. What The Milwaukee Journal
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel is a daily morning broadsheet printed in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, USA. It is the primary newspaper in Milwaukee, the largest newspaper in Wisconsin and is distributed widely throughout the state...
called "this beautiful little love story," is an autobiographical novel of first love beset by small town religious bigotry. The work received critical praise: The New Yorker
The New Yorker
The New Yorker is an American magazine of reportage, commentary, criticism, essays, fiction, satire, cartoons and poetry published by Condé Nast...
considered it a story told "with tenderness and charm," while the Chicago Tribune concluded: "It's as though he turned back the pages of an old diary and told, with rekindled emotion, of the pangs of pain and the sharp, clear sweetness of a boy's first love." Helen Constance White, wrote in The Capital Times that it was "...the best articulated, the most fully disciplined of his stories."
These were followed in 1943 with Shadow of Night, a Scribners' novel of which The Chicago Sun
Chicago Sun-Times
The Chicago Sun-Times is an American daily newspaper published in Chicago, Illinois. It is the flagship paper of the Sun-Times Media Group.-History:The Chicago Sun-Times is the oldest continuously published daily newspaper in the city...
wrote: "Structurally it has the perfection of a carved jewel...A psychological novel of the first order, and an adventure tale that is unique and inspiriting."
In November 1945, however, Derleth's work was attacked by his one-time admirer and mentor, Sinclair Lewis. Writing in Esquire
Esquire (magazine)
Esquire is a men's magazine, published in the U.S. by the Hearst Corporation. Founded in 1932, it flourished during the Great Depression under the guidance of founder and editor Arnold Gingrich.-History:...
, Lewis said, "It is a proof of Mr. Derleth's merit that he makes one want to make the journey and see his particular Avalon: The Wisconsin River
Wisconsin River
-External links:* * * , Wisconsin Historical Society* * * *...
shining among its islands, and the castles of Baron Pierneau and Hercules Dousman. He is a champion and a justification of regionalism. Yet he is also a burly, bounding, bustling, self-confident, opinionated, and highly sweatered young man with faults so grievous that a melancholoy perusal of them may be of more value to apprentices than a study of his serious virtues. If he could ever be persuaded that he isn't half as good as he thinks he is, if he would learn the art of sitting still and using a blue pencil, he might become twice as good as he thinks he is–which would about rank him with Homer." Derleth good humoredly reprinted the criticism along with a photograph of himself sans sweater, on the back cover of his 1948 country journal: Village Daybook.
A lighter side to the Sac Prairie Saga is a series of quasi-autobiographical short stories known as the "Gus Elker Stories," amusing tales of country life that Peter Ruber
Peter Ruber
Peter Ruber is a United States author, editor and publisher. He has been an advertising executive, book publisher, and for the past two decades, a consultant and free-lance journalist for many leading business information technology magazines...
, Derleth's last editor, said were "...models of construction and...fused with some of the most memorable characters in American literature." Most were written between 1934 and the late 1940s, though the last, "Tail of the Dog", was published in 1959 and won the Scholastic Magazine short story award for the year. The series was collected and republished in Country Matters in 1996.
"Walden West," published in 1961, is considered by many Derleth's finest work. This prose meditation is built out of the same fundamental material as the series of Sac Prairie journals, but is organized around three themes: "the persistence of memory...the sounds and odors of the country...and Thoreau's observation that the 'mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation.'" A blend of nature writing, philosophic musings, and careful observation of the people and place of "Sac Prairie." Of this work, George Vukelich, author of "North Country Notebook," writes: "Derleth's Walden West is...the equal of Sherwood Anderson's Winesburg,Ohio, Thornton Wilder's Our Town, and Edgar Lee Masters' Spoon River Anthology." This was followed eight years later by "Return to Walden West," a work of similar quality, but with a more noticeable environmentalist edge to the writing, notes critic Norbert Blei
Norbert Blei
Norbert Blei is an American writer. He has written 17 books of non-fiction, fiction, poetry and essays. In 1994, he established Cross+Roads Press, dedicated to the publication of first chapbooks by poets, short story writers, novelists and artists.-Biography:Blei was born in an ethnic ...
.
A close literary relative of the Sac Prairie Saga was Derleth's Wisconsin Saga, which comprises several historical novels.
Detective and mystery fiction
Detective fiction represented another substantial body of Derleth's work. Most notable among this work was a series of 70 stories in affectionate pastiche of Sherlock HolmesSherlock Holmes
Sherlock Holmes is a fictional detective created by Scottish author and physician Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. The fantastic London-based "consulting detective", Holmes is famous for his astute logical reasoning, his ability to take almost any disguise, and his use of forensic science skills to solve...
, whose creator, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
Arthur Conan Doyle
Sir Arthur Ignatius Conan Doyle DL was a Scottish physician and writer, most noted for his stories about the detective Sherlock Holmes, generally considered a milestone in the field of crime fiction, and for the adventures of Professor Challenger...
, he admired greatly. These included one published novel as well (Mr. Fairlie's Final Journey). The series features a (Sherlock Holmes-styled) British detective named Solar Pons
Solar Pons
Solar Pons is a fictional detective created by August Derleth as a pastiche of Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes.-Approach:On hearing that he had no plans to write more Holmes stories, the young Derleth wrote to Conan Doyle, asking permission to take over the job...
, of Praed Street
Praed Street
Praed Street is a street in London's Paddington district , most notable for the fact that Paddington Station is situated on it. It runs straight in a west-south-westerly direction from Edgware Road to Craven Road, Spring Street and Eastbourne Terrace.-History:Praed Street was originally laid out in...
in London. The series was greatly admired by such notable writers and critics of mystery and detective fiction as Ellery Queen
Ellery Queen
Ellery Queen is both a fictional character and a pseudonym used by two American cousins from Brooklyn, New York: Daniel Nathan, alias Frederic Dannay and Manford Lepofsky, alias Manfred Bennington Lee , to write, edit, and anthologize detective fiction.The fictional Ellery Queen created by...
(Frederic Dannay), Anthony Boucher
Anthony Boucher
Anthony Boucher was an American science fiction editor and author of mystery novels and short stories. He was particularly influential as an editor. Between 1942 and 1947 he acted as reviewer of mostly mystery fiction for the San Francisco Chronicle...
, Vincent Starrett
Vincent Starrett
Charles Vincent Emerson Starrett , known as Vincent Starrett, was an American writer and newspaperman.- Biography :...
and Howard Haycraft.
In his 1944 volume The Misadventures of Sherlock Holmes, Ellery Queen wrote of Derleth's The Norcross Riddle, an early Pons story: "How many budding authors, not even old enough to vote, could have captured the spirit and atmosphere with as much fidelity?" Queen adds, "...and his choice of the euphonic Solar Pons is an appealing addition to the fascinating lore of Sherlockian nomenclature." Vincent Starrett, in his foreword to the 1964 edition of The Casebook of Solar Pons, wrote that the series is "...as sparkling a galaxy of Sherlockian pastiches as we have had since the canonical entertainments came to an end."
Despite close similarities to Doyle's creation, Pons lived in the post-World War I
World War I
World War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...
era, in the decade of the 1920s. Though Derleth never wrote a Pons novel to equal The Hound of the Baskervilles, editor Peter Ruber wrote: "...Derleth produced more than a few Solar Pons stories almost as good as Sir Arthur's, and many that had better plot construction."
Although these stories were a form of diversion for Derleth, Ruber, who edited The Original Text Solar Pons Omnibus Edition
The Original Text Solar Pons Omnibus Edition
The Original Text Solar Pons Omnibus Edition is a collection of detective fiction stories by author August Derleth. It was released in 2000 by Mycroft & Moran and was published in two volumes. The set collects all of the Solar Pons stories of August Derleth. The stories are pastiches of the...
(2000), argued: "Because the stories were generally of such high quality, they ought to be assessed on their own merits as a unique contribution in the annals of mystery ficton, rather than suffering comparison as one of the endless imitators of Sherlock Holmes."
Some of the stories were self-published, through a new imprint called "Mycroft & Moran
Mycroft & Moran
Mycroft & Moran was an imprint of Arkham House publishers and was created in Sauk City, Wisconsin in 1945. The imprint was created to publish weird detective stories and the Solar Pons stories by August Derleth...
", an appellation of humorous significance to Holmesian scholars. For approximately a decade, an active supporting group was the Praed Street Irregulars, patterned after the Baker Street Irregulars
Baker Street Irregulars
The Baker Street Irregulars are any of several different groups, all named after the original, from various Sherlock Holmes stories in which they are a gang of young street children whom Holmes often employs to aid his cases.- Original :...
.
In 1946, Conan Doyle's two sons made some attempts to force Derleth to cease publishing the Solar Pons series, but the efforts were unsuccessful and eventually withdrawn.
Derleth's mystery and detective fiction also included a series of works set in Sac Prairie and featuring Judge Peck as the central character.
Youth and children's fiction
Derleth wrote many and varied children's works, including biographies meant to introduce younger readers to explorer Fr. MarquetteJacques Marquette
Father Jacques Marquette S.J. , sometimes known as Père Marquette, was a French Jesuit missionary who founded Michigan's first European settlement, Sault Ste. Marie, and later founded St. Ignace, Michigan...
, as well as Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson was an American essayist, lecturer, and poet, who led the Transcendentalist movement of the mid-19th century...
and Henry David Thoreau
Henry David Thoreau
Henry David Thoreau was an American author, poet, philosopher, abolitionist, naturalist, tax resister, development critic, surveyor, historian, and leading transcendentalist...
. Arguably most important among his works for younger readers, however, is the Steve and Sim Mystery Series. The ten-volume series is set in Sac Prairie of the 1920s and can thus be considered in its own right a part of the Sac Prairie Saga, as well as an extension of Derleth's body of mystery fiction. Robert Hood, writing in the New York Times said: "Steve and Sim, the major characters, are twentieth-century cousins of Huck Finn and Tom Sawyer; Derleth's minor characters, little gems of comic drawing." The first novel in the series, The Moon Tenders, does, in fact, involve a rafting adventure down the Wisconsin River
Wisconsin River
-External links:* * * , Wisconsin Historical Society* * * *...
, which led regional writer Jesse Stuart
Jesse Stuart
Jesse Hilton Stuart was an American writer who is known for writing short stories, poetry, and novels about Southern Appalachia. Born and raised in Greenup County, Kentucky, Stuart relied heavily on the rural locale of Northeastern Kentucky for his writings. Stuart was named the Poet Laureate of...
to suggest the novel was one that "older people might read to recapture the spirit and dream of youth." The connection to the Sac Prairie Saga was noted by the Chicago Tribune
Chicago Tribune
The Chicago Tribune is a major daily newspaper based in Chicago, Illinois, and the flagship publication of the Tribune Company. Formerly self-styled as the "World's Greatest Newspaper" , it remains the most read daily newspaper of the Chicago metropolitan area and the Great Lakes region and is...
: "Once again a small midwest community in 1920s is depicted with perception, skill, and dry humor."
Arkham House and the "Cthulhu Mythos"
H. P. Lovecraft
Howard Phillips Lovecraft --often credited as H.P. Lovecraft — was an American author of horror, fantasy and science fiction, especially the subgenre known as weird fiction....
– when Lovecraft wrote about "le Comte d'Erlette" in his fiction, it was in homage to Derleth. Derleth invented the term "Cthulhu Mythos" to describe the fictional universe described in the series of stories shared by Lovecraft and other writers in his circle. Derleth's own writing emphasized the struggle between good and evil, in line with his own Christian
Christianity
Christianity is a monotheistic religion based on the life and teachings of Jesus as presented in canonical gospels and other New Testament writings...
world view and in contrast with Lovecraft's depiction of an amoral universe. Derleth also treated Lovecraft's Old Ones as representatives of elemental forces, creating new fictional entities to flesh out this framework.
When Lovecraft died in 1937, Derleth and Donald Wandrei
Donald Wandrei
Donald Albert Wandrei was an American science fiction, fantasy and weird fiction writer, poet and editor. He wrote as Donald Wandrei. He was the older brother of science fiction writer and artist Howard Wandrei...
assembled a collection of Lovecraft's stories and tried to get them published. Existing publishers showed little interest, so Derleth and Wandrei founded Arkham House
Arkham House
Arkham House is a publishing house specializing in weird fiction founded in Sauk City, Wisconsin in 1939 by August Derleth and Donald Wandrei to preserve in hardcover the best fiction of H.P. Lovecraft. The company's name is derived from Lovecraft's fictional New England city, Arkham. Arkham House...
in 1939 for that purpose. The name of the company derived from Lovecraft's fictional town of Arkham
Arkham
Arkham is a fictional city in Massachusetts, part of the Lovecraft Country setting created by H. P. Lovecraft and is featured in many of his stories, as well as those of other Cthulhu Mythos writers....
, Massachusetts
Massachusetts
The Commonwealth of Massachusetts is a state in the New England region of the northeastern United States of America. It is bordered by Rhode Island and Connecticut to the south, New York to the west, and Vermont and New Hampshire to the north; at its east lies the Atlantic Ocean. As of the 2010...
, which features in many of his stories. In 1939 Arkham House published The Outsider and Others
The Outsider and Others
The Outsider and Others is a collection of stories by author H. P. Lovecraft. It was released in 1939 and was the first book published by Arkham House. 1,268 copies were printed. The volume is named for the Lovecraft short story "The Outsider"....
, a huge collection that contained most of Lovecraft's known short stories. Derleth and Wandrei soon expanded Arkham House and began a regular publishing schedule after its second book, Someone in the Dark
Someone in the Dark
Someone in the Dark is a collection of fantasy and horror short stories by author August Derleth. It was released in 1941 and was the second book published by Arkham House. 1,115 copies were printed. An additional 300 copies were printed by Hunter Publishing Co...
, a collection of some of Derleth's own horror stories, was published in 1941.
Following Lovecraft's death, Derleth wrote a number of stories based on fragments and notes left by Lovecraft. These were published in Weird Tales and later in book form, under the byline "H. P. Lovecraft and August Derleth", with Derleth calling himself a "posthumous collaborator." This practice has raised objections in some quarters that Derleth simply used Lovecraft's name to market what was essentially his own fiction; S. T. Joshi
S. T. Joshi
Sunand Tryambak Joshi — known as S. T. Joshi — is an award-winning Indian American literary critic, novelist, and a leading figure in the study of Howard Phillips Lovecraft and other authors of weird and fantastic fiction...
refers to the "posthumous collaborations" as marking the beginning of "perhaps the most disreputable phase of Derleth's activities".
A significant number of H. P. Lovecraft
H. P. Lovecraft
Howard Phillips Lovecraft --often credited as H.P. Lovecraft — was an American author of horror, fantasy and science fiction, especially the subgenre known as weird fiction....
fans and critics, such as Dirk W. Mosig
Dirk W. Mosig
Yōzan Dirk W. Mosig is a psychologist, historian, literary critic and ordained Zen monk noted for his critical work on H. P. Lovecraft. He was born in Germany and lived for several years in Argentina before emigrating to the United States. He received his Ph.D at the University of Florida in...
, S. T. Joshi
S. T. Joshi
Sunand Tryambak Joshi — known as S. T. Joshi — is an award-winning Indian American literary critic, novelist, and a leading figure in the study of Howard Phillips Lovecraft and other authors of weird and fantastic fiction...
, and Richard L. Tierney
Richard L. Tierney
Richard L. Tierney is an American writer, poet and scholar of H. P. Lovecraft. He is the coauthor of a series of Red Sonja novels, featuring cover art by Boris Vallejo. Some of his standalone novels utilize the mythology of Lovecraft's Cthulhu Mythos.-Youth:Tierney was born in Spencer, Iowa...
were dissatisfied with Derleth's invention of the term Cthulhu Mythos (Lovecraft himself used Yog-Sothothery) and his belief that Lovecraft's fiction had an overall pattern reflecting Derleth's own Christian world view.
Nevertheless, Derleth's founding of Arkham House and his successful effort to rescue Lovecraft from literary obscurity are widely acknowledged by practitioners in the horror field as seminal events in the field. For instance, Ramsey Campbell
Ramsey Campbell
John Ramsey Campbell is an English horror fiction author.Since he first came to prominence in the mid-1960s, critics have cited Campbell as one of the leading writers in his field: T. E. D. Klein has written that "Campbell reigns supreme in the field today", while S. T...
has acknowledged Derleth's encouragement and guidance during the early part of his own writing career, and Kirby McCauley has cited Derleth and Arkham House as an inspiration for his own anthology, Dark Forces
Dark Forces (book)
Dark Forces: New Stories of Suspense and Supernatural Horror is an anthology of 23 original horror stories, first published by The Viking Press in 1980 and as a paperback by Bantam Books in 1981. It was edited by New York City literary agent Kirby McCauley...
. Arkham House and Derleth published Dark Carnival, the first book by Ray Bradbury
Ray Bradbury
Ray Douglas Bradbury is an American fantasy, horror, science fiction, and mystery writer. Best known for his dystopian novel Fahrenheit 451 and for the science fiction stories gathered together as The Martian Chronicles and The Illustrated Man , Bradbury is one of the most celebrated among 20th...
, as well. Brian Lumley
Brian Lumley
Brian Lumley is an English horror fiction writer.Born in County Durham, he joined the British Army's Royal Military Police and wrote stories in his spare time before retiring with the rank of Warrant Officer Class 1 in 1980 and becoming a professional writer.He added to H. P...
cites the importance of Derleth to his own Lovecraftian work, and contends in a 2009 introduction to Derleth's work that he was "...one of the first, finest, and most discerning editors and publishers of macabre fiction."
Important as was Derleth's work to rescue H.P. Lovecraft from literary obscurity at the time of Lovecraft's death, Derleth also built a body of horror and spectral fiction of his own; still frequently anthologized. The best of this work, recently reprinted in four volumes of short stories–most of which were originally published in Weird Tales, illustrates Derleth's original abilities in the genre. While Derleth considered his work in this genre less important than his most serious literary efforts, the compilers of these four anthologies, including Ramsey Campbell, note that the stories still resonate after more than fifty years.
In 2009, The Library of America selected Derleth’s story The Panelled Room for inclusion in its two-century retrospective of American Fantastic Tales.
Other works
Although Derleth was not a trained historian, he wrote many historical novels, as part of both the Sac Prairie Saga and the Wisconsin Saga. He also wrote history; arguably most notable among these was The Wisconsin: River of a Thousand Isles, published in 1942. The work was one in a series entitled "The Rivers of America", conceived by writer Constance Lindsay Skinner in the Great DepressionGreat Depression
The Great Depression was a severe worldwide economic depression in the decade preceding World War II. The timing of the Great Depression varied across nations, but in most countries it started in about 1929 and lasted until the late 1930s or early 1940s...
as a series that would connect Americans to their heritage through the history of the great rivers of the nation. Skinner wanted the series to be written by artists, not academicians. Derleth, while not a professional historian, was, according to former Wisconsin state historian William F. Thompson, "...a very competent regional historian who based his historical writing upon research in the primary documents and who regularly sought the help of professionals... ." In the foreword to the 1985 reissue of the work by The University of Wisconsin Press, Thompson concluded: "No other writer, of whatever background or training, knew and understood his particular 'corner of the earth' better than August Derleth."
Derleth wrote several volumes of poems, as well as biographies of Zona Gale
Zona Gale
Zona Gale was an American author and playwright. She became the first woman to win the Pulitzer Prize for drama, in 1921.-Biography:Gale was born in Portage, Wisconsin, which she often used as a setting in her writing...
, Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson was an American essayist, lecturer, and poet, who led the Transcendentalist movement of the mid-19th century...
and Henry David Thoreau
Henry David Thoreau
Henry David Thoreau was an American author, poet, philosopher, abolitionist, naturalist, tax resister, development critic, surveyor, historian, and leading transcendentalist...
.
He also wrote introductions to several collections of classic early 20th century comics, such as Buster Brown
Buster Brown
Buster Brown was a comic strip character created in 1902 by Richard Felton Outcault who was known for his association with the Brown Shoe Company. This mischievous young boy was loosely based on a boy near Outcault's home in Flushing, New York...
, Little Nemo in Slumberland, and Katzenjammer Kids
Katzenjammer Kids
The Katzenjammer Kids is an American comic strip created by the German immigrant Rudolph Dirks and drawn by Harold H. Knerr for 37 years...
, as well as a book of children's poetry entitled A Boy's Way. Derleth also wrote under the nom de plumes Stephen Grendon, Kenyon Holmes and Tally Mason.
Derleth's papers and comic book collection (valued at a considerable sum upon his death) were donated to the Wisconsin Historical Society
Wisconsin Historical Society
The Wisconsin Historical Society is simultaneously a private membership and a state-funded organization whose purpose is to maintain, promote and spread knowledge relating to the history of North America, with an emphasis on the state of Wisconsin and the trans-Allegheny West...
in Madison.
Novels
Short story collections
Sac Prairie Saga- Place of Hawks (1935)
- Country Growth (1940)
- Wisconsin Earth: A Sac Prairie Sampler (1948)
- Sac Prairie People (1948)
- Wisconsin in Their Bones (1961)
- Country Matters (1996)
- Return to Sac Prairie (1996)
- The Lost Sac Prairie Novels (2000), including The Odyssey of Janna Meade (first published in the Star Weekly Magazine December 3, 1949); The Wind in the Cedars (also as Happiness Shall Not Escape) (first published in Redbook Magazine, January 1946), Lamplight for the Dark (first published in Redbook Magaizine January 1941); Shane's Girls (also as Happiness is a Gift) (first published in Redbook Magazine 1948)
Solar Pons
- "In Re: Sherlock Holmes"--The Adventures of Solar PonsIn Re: Sherlock Holmes"In Re: Sherlock Holmes" -- The Adventures of Solar Pons is a collection of detective fiction short stories by author August Derleth. It was released in 1945 by Mycroft & Moran in an edition of 3,604 copies. It was the first book issued under the Mycroft & Moran imprint...
- (UK: The Adventures of Solar Pons) (1945) - The Memoirs of Solar PonsThe Memoirs of Solar PonsThe Memoirs of Solar Pons is a collection of detective fiction short stories by author August Derleth. It was released in 1951 by Mycroft & Moran in an edition of 2,038 copies...
(1951) - Three Problems for Solar PonsThree Problems for Solar PonsThree Problems for Solar Pons is a collection of detective fiction short stories by author August Derleth. It was released in 1952 by Mycroft & Moran in an edition of 996 copies. It was the third collection of Derleth's Solar Pons stories which are pastiches of the Sherlock Holmes tales of Arthur...
(1952) - The Return of Solar PonsThe Return of Solar PonsThe Return of Solar Pons is a collection of detective fiction short stories by author August Derleth. It was released in 1958 by Mycroft & Moran in an edition of 2,079 copies...
(1958) - The Reminiscences of Solar PonsThe Reminiscences of Solar PonsThe Reminiscences of Solar Pons is a collection of detective fiction short stories by author August Derleth. It was released in 1961 by Mycroft & Moran in an edition of 2,052 copies...
(1961) - Mr. Fairlie's Final JourneyMr. Fairlie's Final JourneyMr. Fairlie's Final Journey is a detective fiction novel by author August Derleth. It was released in 1968 by Mycroft & Moran in an edition of 3,493 copies. The novel is part of Derleth's Solar Pons stories which are pastiches of the Sherlock Holmes tales of Arthur Conan Doyle...
(1968) - The Casebook of Solar PonsThe Casebook of Solar PonsThe Casebook of Solar Pons is a collection of detective fiction short stories by author August Derleth. It was released in 1965 by Mycroft & Moran in an edition of 3,020 copies...
(1965) - A Praed Street DossierA Praed Street DossierA Praed Street Dossier is a collection of detective fiction short stories, essays and marginalia by author August Derleth. It was released in 1968 by Mycroft & Moran in an edition of 2,904 copies. It was an associational collection to Derleth's Solar Pons series of pastiches of the Sherlock...
(1968) - The Chronicles of Solar PonsThe Chronicles of Solar PonsThe Chronicles of Solar Pons is a collection of detective fiction short stories by author August Derleth. It is the sixth volume in the series of Derleth's Solar Pons short stories, and was released in 1973 by Mycroft & Moran in an edition of 4,176 copies....
(1973) - The Solar Pons OmnibusThe Solar Pons OmnibusThe Solar Pons Omnibus is a collection of detective fiction stories by author August Derleth. It was released in 1982 by Arkham House in an edition of 3,031 copies. The collection was published in two volumes with a slipcase. The set collects all of the Solar Pons stories of August Derleth. The...
(1982) - The Final Adventures of Solar PonsThe Final Adventures of Solar PonsThe Final Adventures of Solar Pons is a collection of detective, science fiction short stories by author August Derleth. It was released in 1998 by Mycroft & Moran...
(1998)
Horror & Lovecraft-Mythos
- Someone in the DarkSomeone in the DarkSomeone in the Dark is a collection of fantasy and horror short stories by author August Derleth. It was released in 1941 and was the second book published by Arkham House. 1,115 copies were printed. An additional 300 copies were printed by Hunter Publishing Co...
(1941) - Something NearSomething NearSomething Near is a collection of fantasy and horror short stories by author August Derleth. It was released in 1945 and was the author's second book published by Arkham House. 2,054 copies were printed....
(1945) - Not Long for this WorldNot Long for this WorldNot Long for this World is a collection of fantasy and horror short stories by author August Derleth. It was released in 1948 and was the author's third collection published by Arkham House...
(1948) - The Survivor and OthersThe Survivor and OthersThe Survivor and Others is a collection of fantasy and horror short stories by August Derleth, inspired by some of H. P. Lovecraft's notes left behind after his death. Derleth, Lovecraft's literary executor billed himself as a "posthumous collaborator" with the other writer. It was released in an...
(1957) with H. P. LovecraftH. P. LovecraftHoward Phillips Lovecraft --often credited as H.P. Lovecraft — was an American author of horror, fantasy and science fiction, especially the subgenre known as weird fiction.... - The Mask of CthulhuThe Mask of CthulhuThe Mask of Cthulhu is a collection of fantasy and horror short stories by author August Derleth. It was released in 1958 by Arkham House in an edition of 2,051 copies....
(1958) - Lonesome PlacesLonesome PlacesLonesome Places is a collection of fantasy and horror short stories by American author August Derleth. It was released in 1962 by Arkham House in an edition of 2,201 copies and was Derleth's fifth collection of weird tales...
(1962) - The Trail of CthulhuThe Trail of CthulhuThe Trail of Cthulhu is a series of interconnected short stories written by August Derleth as part of the Cthulhu Mythos genre of horror fiction...
(1962) - Mr. George and Other Odd PersonsMr. George and Other Odd PersonsMr. George and Other Odd Persons is a collection of fantasy and horror short stories by American author August Derleth written under the pseudonym of Stephen Grendon. It was released in 1963 by Arkham House in an edition of 2,546 copies. Most of the stories had appeared previously in the magazine...
(1963) as Stephen Grendon - Colonel Markesan and Less Pleasant PeopleColonel Markesan and Less Pleasant PeopleColonel Markesan and Less Pleasant People is a collection of stories by authors August Derleth and Mark Schorer writing in collaboration. It was released in 1966 by Arkham House in an edition of 2,405 copies. The stories were written while the two authors shared a cabin on the Wisconsin River in...
(1966) with Mark SchorerMark SchorerMark Schorer was an American writer, critic, and scholar born in Sauk City, Wisconsin.-Biography:Schorer earned an MA at Harvard and his Ph.D. in English at the University of Wisconsin–Madison in 1936... - The Watchers Out of Time and OthersThe Watchers Out of Time and OthersThe Watchers Out of Time and Others is an omnibus collection of stories by August Derleth inspired in part by notes left by H. P. Lovecraft after his death and presented as a "posthumous collaboration" between the two writers. It was published in an edition of 5,070 copies...
(1974) with H. P. LovecraftH. P. LovecraftHoward Phillips Lovecraft --often credited as H.P. Lovecraft — was an American author of horror, fantasy and science fiction, especially the subgenre known as weird fiction.... - Dwellers in DarknessDwellers in DarknessDwellers in Darkness is a collection of stories by author August Derleth. It was released in 1976 by Arkham House in an edition of 3,926 copies. It was the author's eighth collection of stories published by Arkham House. Two stories from Derleth's Judge Peck series are included in the collection...
(1976) - In Lovecraft's ShadowIn Lovecraft's ShadowIn Lovecraft's Shadow: The Cthulhu Mythos Stories of August Derleth is a collection of fantasy and horror short stories by author August Derleth...
(1998) - Who Shall I Say is Calling & Other Stories S. Deziemianowicz, ed. (2009)
- The Sleepers and Other Wakeful Things(2009)
- August Derleth's Eerie Creatures (2009)
- That Is Not Dead: The Black Magic & Occult Stories by August Derleth (2009)
Science fiction
- Harrigan's FileHarrigan's FileHarrigan's File is a collection of stories by author August Derleth. It was released in 1975 by Arkham House in an edition of 4,102 copies. The book collects all of Derleth's science fiction...
(1975)
Other
- Consider Your Verdict (1937) as Tally Mason
Short fiction
Journals (Sac Prairie Saga)
- Atmosphere of Houses (1939)
- Village Year: A Sac Prairie Journal (1941)
- Village Daybook (1947)
- Countryman's Journal (1963)
- Walden West (1961)
- Wisconsin Country: A Sac Prairie Journal (1965)
- Return to Walden West (1970)
Poems
- Incubus (1934)
- Omega (1934)
- To a Spaceship (1934)
- Man and the Cosmos (1935)
- "Only Deserted" (1937)
- The Shores of Night (1947)
- Providence: Two Gentlemen Meet at Midnight (1948)
- Jacksnipe Over (1971)
- Something Left Behind (1971)
Poetry collections
Essays/articles
Biography
- Still Small Voice (1940) – biography of newpaperwoman and writer Zona GaleZona GaleZona Gale was an American author and playwright. She became the first woman to win the Pulitzer Prize for drama, in 1921.-Biography:Gale was born in Portage, Wisconsin, which she often used as a setting in her writing...
- H.P.L.: A Memoir (1945)
- Some Notes on H. P. LovecraftSome Notes on H. P. LovecraftSome Notes on H. P. Lovecraft is a collection of biographical notes about H. P. Lovecraft by writer August Derleth. It was released in 1959 by Arkham House in an edition of 1,044 copies.-Contents:# "The Myths"# "The Unfinished Manuscripts"...
(1959) - Concord Rebel: A Life of Henry D. Thoreau (1962)
- " Emerson, Our Contemporary' ' (1970)
History
- The Wisconsin: River of a Thousand Isles (1942)
- The Milwaukee Road: Its First Hundred Years (1948)
- Saint Ignatius and the Company of Jesus (1956)
- Columbus and the New World (1957)
- Father Marquette and the Great Rivers (1959)
- Wisconsin MurdersWisconsin MurdersWisconsin Murders is a collection of true crime accounts written by author August Derleth. It was released in 1968 by Mycroft & Moran in an edition of 1,958 copies. The stories detail sixteen cases of sudden death in Wisconsin for 1842 to 1926...
(1968)
Anthologies
As Stephen Grendon
With H. P. Lovecraft
With Marc R. Schorer
Other collaborations
- The Churchyard Yew (1947) as Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
- The Adventure of the Snitch in Time (1953) with Mack ReynoldsMack ReynoldsDallas McCord "Mack" Reynolds was an American science fiction writer. His pen names included Clark Collins, Mark Mallory, Guy McCord, Dallas Ross and Maxine Reynolds. Many of his stories were published in Galaxy Magazine and Worlds of If Magazine...
- The Adventure of the Ball of Nostradamus (1955) with Mack ReynoldsMack ReynoldsDallas McCord "Mack" Reynolds was an American science fiction writer. His pen names included Clark Collins, Mark Mallory, Guy McCord, Dallas Ross and Maxine Reynolds. Many of his stories were published in Galaxy Magazine and Worlds of If Magazine...
- The House in the Oaks (1971) with Robert E. HowardRobert E. HowardRobert Ervin Howard was an American author who wrote pulp fiction in a diverse range of genres. Best known for his character Conan the Barbarian, he is regarded as the father of the sword and sorcery subgenre....
See also
- List of authors of new Sherlock Holmes stories
- List of horror fiction authors
- List of people from Wisconsin
- Mark SchorerMark SchorerMark Schorer was an American writer, critic, and scholar born in Sauk City, Wisconsin.-Biography:Schorer earned an MA at Harvard and his Ph.D. in English at the University of Wisconsin–Madison in 1936...
- Non-canonical Sherlock Holmes works
- Sauk City, WisconsinSauk City, WisconsinSauk City is a village in Sauk County, Wisconsin, United States. The population was 3,109 at the 2000 census. The first incorporated village in the state, the community was founded by Agoston Haraszthy and his business partner, Robert Bryant...