Tag Archives: August Derleth

Derleth

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Yesterday, February 24, was the birthday of Augusts Derleth (1909-1971). I was on the road all day, mostly with work, and didn’t have a chance to post anything.

Entire books could be written about Derleth, and have been. I’m not going to try to get that detailed,  I’ll let other writers talk about Derleth and Lovecraft and whether Derleth harmed or helped Lovecraft with his “posthumous collaborations”.

Derleth wrote more than just Lovecraftian fiction. He wrote a number of novels and stories set in his native Wisconsin at a location named Sac Prairie. He also wrote a number of Solar Pons stories. Those works are outside the scope of this blog.

What some people forget, and many don’t know, is that Derleth also wrote a number of fantasy and horror stories that aren’t Lovecraftian. He also wrote poetry, but I’m not familiar with any of his poetic works. Continue reading →

Robert E. Howard Guest Birthday Post by Will Oliver

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Today, January 22, is the birthday of Robert E, Howard (1906-1936). I’ve done a number of birthday posts on Howard over the years. This year I decided to do something different and post an article by Will Oliver.

Will sent me this article a couple of months ago. We’ve gone back and forth on some of the words Howard uses in it. One particular racial term, actually. Will quotes Howard directly. I consider the word in question offensive. Most people do. But I also find whitewashing the past (no pun intended) offensive as well. If we don’t know the past with all its inherent ugliness, we risk repeating it.After some discussion, we’ve decided that I’m going to use the first letter of the word and replace the other letters with asterisks.

Consider this your trigger warning. If even Continue reading →

“Beyond the Black River: Is It Really “Beyond the Brazos River”? Part 3

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This is the third of a three part series of guest posts by John Bullard. Before I turn the blog over to John, I would like to take a moment and thank him for all the work he has done not only researching and writing this series, but his editing of the Howard letters for the next edition of the collected letters.  It’s this type of behind the scenes efforts that often go unacknowledged.  So John, on behalf of Howard fans and scholars everywhere, thank you.

Click the links to read Part 1 and Part 2.  Be advised there are spoilers.

Now here’s John.

In Part 2, we saw some of the historical Texans and their stories that Howard used to base incidents in his story “Beyond the Black River” on, hereinafter referred to as BBR. We also saw that Howard’s life-long love of talking to and learning these stories from old people he would meet saturated his thoughts and dreams, leading him to create other incidents and characters in the story. In this final part, we will see the one story that influenced Howard the most in writing BBR, and then his use of historical people that his ancestors interacted with from family histories which he used to flesh out his story. Finally, we’ll see his use of a famous incident in Texas history to bring BBR to an end, clearly showing that BBR was indeed a story about the settlement of Texas, and not a story taken from the American Colonial wars with the Eastern First Nations. Continue reading →

Brief Reflections on August Derleth

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August Derleth

Today, February 24, marks the birth of August Derleth (1909-1971). He founded Arkham House publisher to keep the work of H. P. Lovecraft in print. For this we all owe him a great debt of gratitude.  Derleth was something of a controversial figure in the field for the way he handled the literary estate of H. P. Lovecraft, especially his “posthumous collaborations” in which he completed some stories Lovecraft left unfinished at his death.

My purpose with this post is not to focus on Arkham House, but on an aspect of Derleth’s legacy that is sadly neglected today, and that’s his work as a writer of weird fiction.

It’s been over a decade since there was a collection of Derleth’s work published. I did a quick check online, and the starting price for a collection of his ghost stories was $200.  Too rich for my blood.

I was going to review a couple of short pieces I have in anthologies, “Muggeridge’s Aunt” and “The Shuttered House”. Both were fairly standard ghost stories.  While not rising to the level of a James or Wakefield, they were still well told and provided a pleasant way to while away a few spare minutes. The problem is the former isn’t readily available in either electronic or print format, and the latter is only in a facsimile of The Avon Fantasy Reader Number 1. For these birthday posts, I’m not going to review stories that aren’t readily available.

I would hope some ambitious publisher would take a chance and produce an inexpensive collection, or better yet a set, of Derleth’s weird fiction.