Thirty Years at Arkham House

Original author: August Derleth

Translator, Annotator: Ji Yu (Book Collection Prison) B Station Homepage Link

“Thirty Years of Arkham House” is a single volume published in 1970 by Arkham House, which was a summary and review of the past thirty years. It not only describes the review of the works published by the publishing house in the past thirty years, but also interspersed with some of Derleth’s memories of Lovecraft and many details of the publishing house in the 30 years since its establishment.

Many of the contents contained in it have been known to the public through the compilation of fans, but it is still very interesting to experience everything from Derleth’s perspective in the original work and the occasional complaints.

This translation is divided into sections by the translator himself considering the notes added in it, which is not the case with the original text. In the original book, these contents occupy a total of 14 pages, and the remaining seventy or eighty pages are the catalog of books published by Arkham House. I will not go into details.

If you are interested, you can directly search for Arkham House on Wikipedia. These books are included in the entry.

1. In 1970, Arkham House entered its fourth decade (and most likely its last). When Arkham House published its first book in late 1939, I had no intention of becoming a publisher because I had other things to do. Arkham House was originally founded to publish the novels of Howard Phillips Lovecraft, my dear friend and literary partner, who had died on March 15, 1937, two years before the publication of the house.

“When Howard Wandrei wrote to me in New York that Lovecraft had died, I read the letter quietly in the wetlands of Sauk City, where I often read in the sun.

I was alone that day, sitting on a roadside pier by the river, carrying a copy of Thoreau’s Journal, but my chaotic thoughts replaced the idea of ​​reading books, and I kept thinking about how to publish those excellent stories written by Lovecraft in the form of books.”

It would be very difficult to publish such a complete collection, and I had no illusions that I could convince New York publishers to publish it. Lovecraft was not a relatively well-known writer, and he had always written in a way that had never been widely read in the United States.

He had tried in vain to submit manuscripts of his works to publishers including Putnam and Knopf, although from the perspective of publishers and readers, Lovecraft was negative about his work.

The manuscripts he casually submitted were those with dog-eared pages, illegible handwriting, and single-line spacing, which was certainly enough to discourage the most tenacious readers and editors.

Later that day I wrote to Donald Wanderley suggesting that something should be done to keep Lovecraft’s excellent stories in print ; he replied that it was not enough to collect stories, as I had considered doing – all the writing should be collected and eventually published, including the letters, which were so illuminating and entertaining.

Without hesitation I put together the initial collection – The Stranger and Others, a title chosen not only because The Stranger was Lovecraft’s favorite story but also because Lovecraft himself was a stranger in his own day.

Alice Conger, my secretary at the time, typed the book. As Charles Scribner’s Sons was then my publisher, I sent them the manuscript. They were sympathetic to the literary merits of Lovecraft’s stories; but in the end they were forced to reject the manuscript, as the cost of publishing such a bulky book, combined with the public’s strong resistance to purchasing collections of short stories and Lovecraft’s relatively low status as a writer, made the project financially prohibitive.

Simon & Schuster rejected the manuscript for similar reasons.

It was at this time that I hit upon the idea of ​​publishing the collection under our own names. I wrote Donald Wanderley again, outlining my plans. We were both poor writers, and how rare it is to be not poor! — but I was then building a house, and a local bank had already provided a substantial loan for the purpose (but they would not lend you money without a fourfold collateral and insurance policy, as is the usual practice of banks), and it seemed to me that one course was available to the future publisher — advertising for advance orders and paying off the printer with my loan. To this Donald Wanderley, at great personal sacrifice, added what little money he could then scrape together, amounting to 20% of the production costs; and with the full cooperation of Lovecraft’s surviving aunt, Mrs. Anne E. Phillips Gamwell, and Robert H. Barlow, whom Lovecraft had appointed as his custodian (after Barlow’s death in 1951, Acre House assumed that obligation), the project took shape.

① Howard Wandrei and his brother Donald Albert Wandrei are both well-known American science fiction writers and good friends of Lovecraft and Derleth. After Lovecraft’s death, Donald Wandrei and Derleth co-founded “Arkham House”.

②Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862), an American transempiricist writer, poet and thinker. He was little known during his lifetime, but became one of the few American writers with global influence after the 20th century, and was loved by readers all over the world. His works mainly come from diaries, and most of them were published after his death.

He only published two books during his lifetime, one of which was his masterpiece Walden. Thoreau admired nature, advocated returning to nature, emphasized simple life, and attached importance to the spiritual level.

He was classified as a naturalist. Derleth often read his works and was deeply influenced by Lovecraft and Thoreau in his literary creation.

③ Interestingly, after Derleth’s death, the Wisconsin Route 12 Bridge over the Wisconsin River was named after him.

④ Putnam Publishing, an old American publishing company, was founded in 1838 and has been committed to publishing best-selling books in the New York Times. It was acquired by MCA in 1975, and MCA was acquired by Panasonic in 1990.

Then, Seagram acquired 80% of MCA’s shares from Panasonic. Shortly thereafter, Seagram changed its name to Universal Studios. In 1996, Putnam merged with Penguin Group and now belongs to Penguin Random House.

Knopf is a publishing house in New York, USA, founded in 1915 by Alfred A. Knopf Sr. and Blanche Knopf. Alfred and Blanche traveled abroad frequently and were known for publishing European, Asian and Latin American literature. In 1960, the company was acquired by Random House, which was acquired by Bertelsmann in 1998.

Now the company is part of the Knopf-Doubleday publishing group. The company’s logo is the image of the Russian shepherd designed by co-founder Blanche Knopf in 1925.

⑤Charles Scribner’s Sons (or Scribner’s or Scribner for short), founded in 1846, is an American publisher headquartered in New York City. It is famous for publishing American writers, including Henry James, Ernest Hemingway, Stephen King and others.

⑥Robert Hayward Barlow (May 18, 1918 – January 1 or 2, 1951) was an American writer, avant-garde poet, anthropologist and historian of early Mexico, and an expert on the Nahuatl language. He was a close friend of Lovecraft and was appointed by Lovecraft as the executor of his literary estate.

2

There was never any question as to the name of our press—the name “Arkham” was to be printed on the first of the three volumes we were to publish, and thus Arkham House appeared. For it was the name of a famous and widely used place in Lovecraft’s own writings—the name of Salem, Massachusetts, which was said to be haunted in his famous novels; and it seemed to us that the name was most appropriate, and even Lovecraft himself would have enthusiastically approved of it.

Once the project was decided, there was no question as to the choice of printing facility—we turned immediately to the nearest and most famous complete operation of the printing facility, the George Banta Company of Menasha, Wisconsin, whose plant is only a little over a hundred miles northeast of Sauk City.

Two years after Lovecraft’s death, we published the work for the first time in Weird Tales. Pre-orders were available for $3.50 before publication and $5.00 after publication. The book was ready for publication, with Donald Wanderley reading and proofreading it, and labels printed for shipment. By the end of 1939, 1,268 copies of the first Arkham House book were delivered to me.

It may seem hard to believe to today’s avid collectors of Lovecraft’s first works, but in reality orders for the $3.50 bill came in very slowly, and by the time of publication only 150 advances had been received. To this sum Donald Vendre added $400. Much to the consternation of the conservative local bankers, the rest of this considerable sum was obtained from a loan I had made (although this sum was soon replaced – not from sales but from my various personal writing projects). The book did not lack for publicity, and we ventured to secure large spaces in Publishers Weekly and other trade press – though it was completely ignored locally. Even today, thirty years later, fewer than one in fifty people in Sauk City and the surrounding countryside would recognize Arkham House on request.

The Stranger and Others sold at a frustratingly slow pace. One potential buyer, who was decidedly atypical, wrote to us at the outset to say that the list price of $3.50 was an absurdly high price for the book.

After publication, he sent that money for a previous copy; I recalled his insulting letter and returned it to him, reminding him that the book was now selling for $5. He then declared that he would never pay that amount. More than a decade later, he wrote to tell us that he had finally bought the book for $25; I wrote back that I could think of no one more deserving of such a price for Arkham’s first book.