Derleth’s succinct three-page foreword, ‘An Introduction to H.P. Lovecraft’, achieved its intended aim of introducing the late American horror author to a whole new readership. ‘This first selection of Lovecraft’s stories to be published outside America is representative of his best work,’ concluded Derleth. ‘Here are such memorable early stories as “The Outsider”, “The Rats in the Walls”, and “The Colour Out of Space”, which is strangely suggestive of events in our own atomic age, though it was first published in 1927; here, too, are the best of the Cthulhu Mythology short stories – “The Dunwich Horror”, “The Thing on the Doorstep”, and others. That these are the best short stories H.P. Lovecraft wrote cannot be gainsaid; but they are not all the best. These stories demonstrate conclusively that H.P. Lovecraft has a secure place, however minor, in the same niche as Poe, Hawthorne, and Bierce.’
Despite his reticence about his mentor’s position in the pantheon of horror writers, Derleth was no doubt already preparing his British audience for more of Lovecraft’s work. As it turned out, they did not have long to wait.
2. Terrors and Tribulations
In his letter of June 27, 1950, Derleth had responded at some length to Victor Gollancz’s request to be kept in touch with any discoveries Derleth might make in the supernatural fiction field.
‘As for “discoveries” in the supernatural field,’ he wrote, ‘I should be inclined to think that, apart from Lovecraft, the only Arkham authors in whose work you might conceivably be interested are Clark Ashton Smith, of whose work we have published three volumes, and the late Rev. Henry S. Whitehead, whose two collections under our imprint represent almost his entire prose fiction in the field. Should you be interested in seeing any of these volumes, you have only to let me know and I shall see to it that copies of the books are sent to you.’
Despite a pencilled notation on the original letter that indicates that this information was passed on to someone else in Gollancz, doubtless in the editorial department, nothing came of Derleth’s recommendations and it was not until the 1970s that both Smith’s and Whitehead’s books from Arkham House were reprinted in the UK, not by Gollancz, but by Neville Spearman Ltd.
In fact, it seems out of character for Derleth to have been so reserved at putting forward more authors’ names for possible consideration in the British market, as Neville Spearman also went on to publish other well-known Arkham House titles by the likes of Robert E. Howard, Robert Bloch, Carl Jacobi, David H. Keller, Fritz Leiber and even Derleth himself.
Meanwhile, following on from the success of the publication of The Haunter of the Dark & Other Tales of Horror in 1951, Gollancz decided to issue Lovecraft’s 48,000-word novella The Case of Charles Dexter Ward as a stand-alone volume later that same year.
It was written over three months in early 1927 but never published during the author’s lifetime. Derleth had retyped Lovecraft’s original handwritten manuscript, as he recalled in the May 1941 issue of Weird Tales:
‘The story was written in longhand on the reverse side of letters he had received, some 130 or 140 sheets of all sizes and colors. He didn’t believe in margins or “white space”. Every sheet was crowded from top to bottom, from left edge to right, with his small, cramped handwriting.
‘That was his original draft; you can imagine what happened when he got through revising, words and sentences crossed out or written in, whole paragraphs added, inserts put on the back of the sheet where they got tangled up with the letters from his correspondents, and the inserts rewritten with additional paragraphs to be put in the insert which was to be put in its proper place in the story.
‘Lovecraft’s handwriting was not easy to read under the best of circumstances; he had his own peculiarities of spelling, often used Latin and Greek phrases, and often used coined words of his own. These made the problem of deciphering his complex puzzle-pages even more difficult. All in all, working after my classes at the U., it took me four months to get through the labyrinth.’
For the novella’s first publication, Arkham House had borrowed the typescript prepared years earlier by Derleth from Lovecraft’s literary executor, Robert H. Barlow, and then had it professionally re-typed over a period of two months.
Once again, the press reviews of the Gollancz edition were glowing: The Manchester Evening Mail called it a ‘superb spine chiller’, while the News Chronicle advised its readers, ‘If you have the least touch of weakness for witchcraft do not miss The Case of Charles Dexter Ward’.
Even the usually demure The Lady, England’s oldest magazine for women, enthused: ‘If you like the grim and uncanny fantasy story, then The Case of Charles Dexter Ward should not be missed . . . H.P. Lovecraft, a master of the art, whose Haunter of the Dark is well remembered by connoisseurs of terror fiction – and rightly.’
However, despite glowing reviews of the book which, like its predecessor, went rapidly out of print, it would be another fifteen years before Victor Gollancz would publish a further volume of Lovecraft’s fiction.
There is nothing in the files to indicate why there was this long hiatus in the publishing schedule.
Responding to a batch of clippings sent by Gollancz’s Lester Anderson concerning Count Haraszthy (the founder of Sauk City, Wisconsin), a thank-you letter from August Derleth dated July 22, 1963, not only mentions his latest regional novel, The Shadow in the Glass (which he disparagingly dismisses as ‘a v. dull, tedious novel’), but also the forthcoming ‘Stephen Grendon’ Arkham House collection, Mr George and Other Odd Persons, candidly revealing that the author is really himself. An Arkham House catalogue was also apparently included with the correspondence.
In September 1966, Victor Gollancz reissued The Haunter of the Dark while simultaneously publishing At the Mountains of Madness and Other Tales of Terror at a price of thirty shillings (£1.50 today) per copy. The contents were identical to the 1964 Arkham House edition, which even included ‘The Case of Charles Dexter Ward’, published as a stand-alone volume by Gollancz fifteen years earlier.
‘These tales of horror are in the true Gothic tradition,’ enthused Francis Iles in the Guardian newspaper, ‘and written in a deliberately Gothic style, full of hinted terrors and unholy stenches. This is something out of the ordinary, a real collector’s piece for connoisseurs of the unusual; and at 448 closely printed pages for 30s, it can also be reckoned a “best buy”.’
For their edition of At the Mountains of Madness, Gollancz dealt directly with Arkham House’s New York representatives, the Scott Meredith Literary Agency. The contract, dated February 11, 1966, confirms that Gollancz paid an advance of £200.00 for this volume. With home sales of 1,681 copies and colonial sales – known as export sales these days – of 373 copies, the first printing easily earned out.
For their next Lovecraft volume, Gollancz went through Scott Meredith’s London office. In a contract dated January 3, 1967, they paid a smaller advance of £150.00 for the usual British Commonwealth rights (excluding Canada).
Dagon and Other Macabre Tales was released on June 22 that same year, again at thirty shillings for the hardcover edition. Once more, the contents followed the Arkham House edition, published in 1965.
Although sales were slightly down on the previous Lovecraft collection – 1,500 sold in home and 294 in the colonial markets – the book quickly made back what Gollancz had paid for it.
‘And now, to all intents and purposes, we are completing publication of the works of H.P. Lovecraft,’ trumpeted the dust-jacket flap, which also managed to mis-spell Edgar Allan Poe’s middle name as ‘Allen’. ‘Practically all the stories as yet un-published in England are here . . . rounded out with Lovecraft’s impressive long essay, “Supernatural Horror in Literature” – an important and much sought-after item.’
However, an astute British reader, P.J. Jeffery of Leigh-on-Sea, Essex, noticed that in Lovecraft’s ground-breaking essay, lines 5 and 7 on page 365 were identical and wrote to the publisher. Having photographed the original Arkham volume fo
r the British edition, Gollancz’s science fiction editor and managing director John Bush contacted Derleth in a letter dated April 17, 1968, and asked how the paragraph should read, so that it could be corrected in any subsequent printing.
Derleth replied three days later:
‘Dear Mr Bush,
Many thanks for calling attention to a deleted line on page 365 of Dagon & C. The correct line is as follows (I have copied here the entire section from the top of that page through the flawed lines)—
. . . interest exemplified in the vogue of the charlatan Cagliostro and the publication of Francis Barrett’s The Magus (1801), a curious and compendious treatise on occult principles and ceremonies, of which a reprint was made as lately as 1896, figures in Bulwer-Lytton and in many late Gothic novels, especially that remote and enfeebled posterity which straggled far down into the nineteenth century and was represented by George W.M. Reynold’s Faust and the Demon and Wagner the Wehr-Wolf. CalebWilliams, though non-supernatural, has many authentic . . .’
Never one to miss an opportunity, Derleth signed off by adding that he was taking the liberty of sending under separate cover two of his own books ‘for your reading – time permitting’.
John Bush wrote back to the eagle-eyed Mr Jeffery on April .. to tell him how the missing line should read.
Due to some confusion, or perhaps editorial oversight, Victor Gollancz had publicly announced that with the publication of Dagon and Other Macabre Tales, ‘practically all’ of H.P. Lovecraft’s work was now in print in the United Kingdom. Not unsurprisingly, several dutiful readers begged to differ.
John Bush wrote to Derleth on August 14, 1967:
‘Dear Mr Derleth,
I enclose a photostat of a letter we have just received from a Lovecraft fan. It appears that we may have been wrong in our assumption that the volumes, Dagon, The Haunter of the Dark and Other Tales of Horror and At the Mountains of Madness and Other Novels represented all Lovecraft’s complete works. It would seem that you may have published a further volume which includes the novels and stories mentioned in Mr Valentine’s letter: if so, we should be very interested in publishing this.
Would you let me have your observations on the matter; and to make things easier for you I enclose the contents pages of our editions of the three volumes.
Yours sincerely,’
It appears that Bush had already been thinking about a fourth Lovecraft collection for some time. On a postcard dated June 11, 1967, Derleth had written: ‘I am sending you a copy of the Museum Press Lurker at the Threshold rather than an Arkham House, for their typeface is larger and easier to read. It should help to make up an omnibus fully the size of Dagon or At the Mountains of Madness.’
In fact, the question of exactly which Lovecraft stories Victor Gollancz had published had already come up in March that year when a P.C. Stoyle of Taunton, Somerset, had written to Livia Gollancz, who had by now taken over the company from her late father, and asked about the publication in Britain of the ‘Cthulhu Mythos’ stories (a term that Livia Gollancz was apparently unfamiliar with).
Derleth replied to John Bush’s enquiry on August 18: ‘Yes, it is true that Gollancz have not published all the Lovecraft stories, and there is a volume that could indeed be made of those that remain.’
He then went on to relate the history of how the British publisher had acquired the rights to Lovecraft’s fiction: ‘When the late Sir Victor Gollancz visited some years ago this country (ca, 1950), he was much taken with two of our books. These were Best Supernatural Stories of Lovecraft and my own ‘In Re: Sherlock Holmes’/The Adventures of Solar Pons. I had prepared the former for World Publishing Company from our Outsider and Others, a now very rare book commanding $200 and up per copy in any condition. He wanted to take both on, but preferred to publish rather a selection of the stories from the Best, with a new introduction by me. This became your volume, The Haunter of the Dark.’
It seems that, once again, Derleth could not resist an opportunity to promote his own work. He then continued, ‘The stories omitted from the book, together with two which were added later, became (that is, in addition to the stories in Haunter), our book The Dunwich Horror & Others. I am now sending you a copy of this, together with a paperback of The Survivor & Others, and two separate volumes entitled, The Shuttered Room & C, and The Dark Brotherhood & C.’
After listing all the stories in these volumes (including his own ‘posthumous collaborations’ with Lovecraft), Derleth suggested: ‘These 16 stories could be put into one volume if you’re so inclined, perhaps under the title The Shadow Out of Time – or some similar title which need not be reflected in the book: Shadows Out of Time and Space, etc.’
In a closing paragraph, Derleth made one more attempt to sell his own work by including some information on his Solar Pons detective books. ‘Sir Victor’s interest in my pastiches did not decline,’ he explained, ‘but it was not sufficient to overcome the blunting his desire to publish in England received from the firm’s legal counsel, which feared that the ever-litigous [sic] Adrian Conan Doyle would commence an action claiming an invasion of proprietary rights or some such thing. I understand that he has been severely rebuked by the courts, and has considerably mellowed in recent years; it may be that Messrs. Gollancz might be again interested in doing these collections over there.’
Scribbled in red ink next to this postscript, in John Bush’s handwriting, are the words ‘Suggest no reply’.
Derleth also used the same correspondence to mention again his ‘collaboration’ with Lovecraft: ‘The Lurker at the Threshold is not available over there, incidentally,’ he helpfully pointed out, ‘for Museum Press issued it in 1948 and have refused to reissue.’
This piece of information seems to have stimulated Bush’s interest. A pair of scribbled sheets, containing a list of possible contents for a fourth Lovecraft collection from Gollancz, includes The Lurker at the Threshold with the notation ‘one of his most famous stories’. Below this note is written: ‘Some by Lovecraft & some by L & Derleth’.
On October 18,1967, Bush wrote to E.D. Nisbet, a director of the Museum Press Ltd in London: ‘Confirming my conversation with you, we are anxious to include the story The Lurker at the Threshold by H.P. Lovecraft in the fourth volume of the complete stories of H.P. Lovecraft which we are publishing next spring. August Derleth, the proprietor of Arkham House and Lovecraft’s literary executor, writes to say that this story would not be available for us, “Museum Press issued it in 1948 and have refused to reissue”.’
Perhaps aware of the previous problems that had arisen over the rights to Lovecraft’s work between Derleth and Gollancz, Bush added: ‘Derleth has obviously got his facts mixed up a bit but, as there may be some agent or other party involved, I should be most grateful if you could throw any light on the matter.
‘I appreciate that you are perfectly willing for us to include this story in our volume, but it is well to get the facts straightened out.
‘With many thanks for your co-operation.’
E.D. Nisbet replied two days later:
‘Dear Mr Bush,
THE LURKER AT THE THRESHOLD
By H.P. Lovecraft
I have made an extensive search through our archives, which are deposited in a very dusty vault, but unfortunately I have not succeeded in finding either the agreement or the correspondence relating to the above book. It looks as if they have gone astray during one or other of the moves and reorganizations to which the firm was subjected in the past. I am therefore unable to give you any definite information about this book, since it went out of print long before the time of anyone now connected with the firm.
I am afraid it looks as if you will have to rely upon obtaining permission from the author’s literary executor, whom you may of course inform that Museum Press have relinquished all claim to any rights in the book.
Yours sincerely,
for MUSEUM PRESS LIMITED’
This was, of course, exactly the news tha
t John Bush wanted to hear. He wrote to Derleth on, appropriately, Hallowe’en 1967 to inform him that the previous publisher had been unable to find any definite information, adding: ‘In view of this letter from the Museum Press, I am assuming that we may include The Lurker at the Threshold in our new volume.’
Two days later, Bush wrote to Derleth again, noting that Gollancz did not possess a copy of the book (no mention is made to what happened to the Museum Press copy Derleth had mailed to the publisher back in June) and requesting it ‘in some shape or form and we can then get the whole volume cast off and find out what sort of proposition it is going to be so that we can make you an offer.’
Derleth was obviously elated by all that was happening and replied on November 4, 1967: ‘By all means include The Lurker at the Threshold in your new Lovecraft book; I am delighted to learn that Museum Press have relinquished claims on the book. This time though, since the sale was not made by them, I would prefer that you bypass Scott Meredith and send your contract, similar to those made with our agents, directly to me for signature, and payments likewise.’
The contracts for a fourth Lovecraft collection were drawn up and sent to Derleth on November 8. The advance offered by Gollancz had once again returned to £200.00, payable half on signature and half on publication, against a rising royalty. Derleth returned a signed copy of the contract on November 24, and terms were eventually agreed on December 13.