Today, January 20, is the birthday of Abraham Merritt (1884-1943). At one time, Merritt was arguably the priemere writer of fantastic fiction in the United States, if not the world. For a while there was a fantasy magazine named after him. Sadly, outside of a small number of aficianados of fantasy, he pretty much forgtotten today.

Not entirely, though. Centipede Press as reprinted some of his novels in nice hardcover editions. Paperback copies of his works are available on the secondary market.

Merritt didn’t write a great deal of fiction because he had a full-time job as an editor of The American Weekly, first as an assistant editor from 1912 to 1937, and then as the main editor until his death.

that didn’t leave a lot of time for writing.

I’ve seen speculaton (don’t ask me where, it was years ago) that he might have written some fiction under a pen name for The American Weekly. I don’t know if that is true or not, or how that might be verified. But it is true, and someone could find and publish that fiction, that would be great. Optimist that I am (/sarcasm), I’m not going to hold my breath.

I’ve not read all of his work, only a few novels and the collected short stories (not a thick book). Merritt is one of hte writers I should delve deeply into. He was a major influence on an entire generation, including Lovecraft, Howard, Moore, and others. If you can get a copy of “The Challenge From Beyond”, you should check it out. It’s a round robin story with five chapters. Each chapter was written by a different author.

The authors were (in no particular order) A. Merritt, Robert E. Howard, H. P. Lovecraft, C. L. Moore, and Frank Belknap Long.

Each writer took the story in a differetn direction that previous ones, so it has some issues. But it’s a fun story just because of who the authors are. The image on the left is the edition published a few years ago by the Robert E. Howard Foundation Press. That’s why Howard’s name in largest on the cover.