Other notable institutions in Arkham are the Arkham Historical Society and the Arkham Sanitarium. The company's name is derived from Lovecraft's fictional New England city, Arkham. As of September 14, 2022 the Arkham House web site, arkhamhouse.com, has been down for several weeks. Allow me to point your attention towards Arkham, Massachusetts, home of the esteemed Miskatonic University. Arkham House is an American publishing house specializing in weird fiction.It was founded in Sauk City, Wisconsin, in 1939 by August Derleth and Donald Wandrei to publish hardcover collections of H. P. Lovecraft's best works, which had previously been published only in pulp magazines.The company's name is derived from Lovecraft's fictional New England city, Arkham, Massachusetts. Most of what is known about Lovecraft, everything from his writing habits to his great love of cats, is from examining the thousands of letters he wrote in his lifetime. American publishing house specializing in weird fiction, This article is about the publishing house. So, I still believe in the industry," Zhou added. Wandrei returned for a while after the death of Derleth to oversee the publishing house, but James Turner and the Derleths children have taken turns heading up the company. 4 talking about this. 83 years, I bet August is turning over in his grave. I'd think - if they are still in business - that they would get their website back up online. Although THE OUTSIDER AND OTHERS took four years to sell out its only printing and the other three titles sold slowly as well, Derleth was convinced "that there was a distinct -- if relatively small -- market for collections of weird, fantastic, science-fiction short stories, and I determined to publish as many such collections as possible, with emphasis on the hitherto unpublished, but not scorning works long out of print" (Derleth). James Robert Smith & Stephen Mark Rainey, 2006). IF it is out of business, I feel the least they can do is let us fans know. Starting with DARK MIND, DARK HEART (1962), Derleth encouraged a new generation of writers while sustaining the old school of WEIRD TALES contributors" (Mike Ashley). The story follows Walter Gilman, a promising math student arriving in Arkham to write his theory paper on Non-Euclidean calculus. 90. Protected in archival Brodart cover. Why CCH Pounder Had Reservations About Accepting Her Role On 'NCIS: New Orleans' Luckily, Pounder was wrong about that. Derleth found out about Lovecrafts death in a letter from Howard Wandrei, one of Lovecrafts correspondents. I've also heard they tend to cancel orders abruptly. While Derleths works focused on the very real world of middle Wisconsin, the works he edited and published talked of terrifying ancient monsters, werewolves, vampires, ghosts, aliens, barbarians and all other things that go bump in the night. "It was as an editor and publisher that Derleth made his most significant contributions to weird fiction. They soon agreed to self-publish the book, making it the first published under the Arkham House imprint. Anyone able to shed any light on the matter? Writer and editor August Derleth, seen here at his desk in the Place of Hawks. 1947. One of Lovecrafts ghostwriting collaborations was penning a story for Weird Tales credited to magician Harry Houdini titled Imprisoned With the Pharaohs, in 1924. Learn how and when to remove this template message, "Splatterhouse easter eggs and references guide", "The Real Ghostbusters (a Titles & Air Dates Guide)", "A Short Tour of Lovecraftian New England", Facts Concerning the Late Arthur Jermyn and His Family, H. P. Lovecraft: Against the World, Against Life, Lovecraft: A Look Behind the Cthulhu Mythos, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Arkham&oldid=1138785932, Fictional populated places in Massachusetts, Short description is different from Wikidata, All Wikipedia articles written in American English, Articles with unsourced statements from January 2022, Wikipedia articles with style issues from March 2015, Articles with unsourced statements from March 2015, Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License 3.0, Arkham appears in "The Collect Call of Cthulhu", episode 32 from season 2 of, "An Arkham Halloween", a short story appearing in Bewildering Stories, in which The, Arkham is the setting for all of the stories in the 2006 anthology, Arkham is mentioned in two novels by author, This page was last edited on 11 February 2023, at 16:21. Arkham (/ r k m /) is a fictional city situated in Massachusetts.An integral part of the Lovecraft Country setting created by H. P. Lovecraft, Arkham is featured in many of his stories and those of other Cthulhu Mythos writers.. Arkham House, a publishing company started by two of Lovecraft's correspondents, August Derleth and Donald Wandrei, takes its name from this city as a tribute. To put it bluntly and he did Derleth told me flat out I would never be a professional writer.. Their first published book was The Outsider and Others by Lovecraft. I really wish Dad would get credit for what he has done not just for Lovecrafts popularity, but for the entire fantasy genre, Walden said. Click to view Beyond The Christmas Carol: Charles Dickenss Christmas Stories. Bloch continued to read Weird Tales, later recalling in his autobiography that he would wake up early on the first of every month to rush down the street to the Ogden Smoke Shop. We are a publishing business that specializes in weird fiction / pulp / horror hard cover titles. Most of Lovecrafts life was spent in Providence, Rhode Island, where he boarded with his elderly aunts, living off a meager inheritance and occasionally selling his writing. Books shelved as arkham_house-own: The Clock Strikes Twelve and Other Stories by H. Russell Wakefield, Skull-Face and Others by Robert E. Howard, Acque p. 2030 copies; limited edition; The book includes the short works: Dreams and Fancies ( including a series of letters), Recapture, Night-Gaunts, Memory, The Statement of Randolph Carter, Celephais, The Doom that Came to Sarnath, Nyarlathotep, The Evil Clergyman, The Thing in the Moonlight, and, The Shadow out . It was an experience he would later chronicle vividly in his autobiography,Once Around the Bloch. No greater compliment could have been paid me or Arkham House.'"[3]. Following the death of Derleth in 1971, books completed earlier in manuscript by Campbell, Lumley and Copper were published, as were long-delayed collections of short fiction by Le Fanu, M. P. Shiel, Mary E. Wilkins Freeman and Marjorie Bowen, and Lovecraft's MISCELLANEOUS WRITINGS (1995), a volume of non-fiction conceived decades earlier by Derleth. A group of 6 early titles, including: WANDREI, Donald. It was a little over priced for those little hardbacks, but still worth it to me. 83-C-520-S. United States District Court, W.D. With story reprint sales dwindling, few new novels to publish or reprint, and Lovecraft in the public domain, Derleth's agents (both at home and abroad) were hard pressed to make sales on his behalf. Arkham House is an American publishing house specializing in weird fiction. The 1950s were not good years for Arkham House. Its a powerful legacy to leave behind, and it all began with one story the one a young Derleth sold in 1926, at the age of 16. Batman Haunted House - Escape from Arkham Asylum at Warner Bros. [2] Arkham Asylum, a fictional mental hospital in DC Comics' Batman mythos, is also named after Lovecraft's Arkham.[3]. Coppard, H. Russell Wakefield, William Hope Hodgson and Algernon Blackwood followed in 1947. Leading Specialists in Science Fiction, Fantasy, Horror, Literary First Editions, Popular Fiction and Vintage Science Fiction Magazines and Pulps. A group of 10 detective story titles, including: HODGSON, W.H. Theres so many times when an award is presented or a biography is written and they forget to mention Dad. Have questions? Create an account to follow your favorite communities and start taking part in conversations. Throughout the 1970s and 1980s, Turner expanded the company's range of authors to include such prominent science fiction and fantasy writers as Michael Bishop, Lucius Shepard, Bruce Sterling, James Tiptree, Jr., Michael Shea and J. G. Ballard, often publishing hardcover collections of shorter works. If you consult the list I did of the classic era Derleth-Wandrei ephemera in the October 2002 issue of Firsts: The Book . To his surprise and delight, Lovecraft not only wrote back, but gave a detailed listing of his magazine stories and offered to send him some tearsheets to borrow and read. Like Weird Tales, Arkham House was not some . In 1943 Arkham House published BEYOND THE WALL OF SLEEP, the second omnibus volume of Lovecraft's fiction, in an edition of 1217 copies. 1268 copies of this "landmark in the history of weird fiction and American publishing" (Joshi) were printed and most were sold for $5.00 each (then a high list price for a book of fiction). Lovecraft and Ray Bradbury. Lovecrafts sudden death came as a shock and loss for his entire circle. ), Arkham first appeared in Lovecraft's short story "The Picture in the House"[7] (1920)the story is also the first to mention "Miskatonic".[7]. This group is known as the Lovecraft Circle and would exchange story ideas and offer opinion and criticism (and sometimes a shoulder to cry on.) Derleth and Wandrei then decided to form their own company, Arkham House with the express purpose of publishing all of Lovecraft's writings in hardcover. Ive been having the devils own time with my personal life in the last six months and this is not conducive to continuous and productive writing. The story was a vampire tale titled Bats Belfry, and he sold it to a publication that billed itself as the unique magazine:Weird Tales. "Arkham House: Sundry Observations". Peter Ruber, 2000); The Far Side of Nowhere by Nelson Bond (2002); The Cleansing by John D. Harvey (a horror novel, 2002); Selected Letters of Clark Ashton Smith (ed. In the years since, Derleths impact on the sci-fi and fantasy genre has gone largely unrecognized, according to his son. I hope Damon and Danielle, are able to keep things going, and retain the home Its quite a legacy to maintain. In recent years, Ive noticed that the amount of their publications had dropped dramatically since the 80s/90s (when I used to order from them). After several failed attempts to interest major publishers in the omnibus volume, the two men realized no publisher would be willing to take a chance with the collection. Many of Arkham Houses early books were collections of stories that had first appeared in the pages of the magazine and similar pulps inexpensive magazines published up until the 50s that commonly were themed to focus on the maxi-genre of weird fiction.. Derleth showed that a small specialty publishing house could make a place for itself along side the publishing giants" (Roald D. Tweet). #8 In early 2009, it was announced that George Vanderburgh of Battered Silicon Dispatch Box, and Robert Weinberg, would jointly take over the editorial duties at Arkham House. jimgordon, scarecrow, davidmazouz. On that estate, there is a cozy-looking sandstone house, surrounded by trees, called the Place of Hawks. Lorraine, Daniel W. "Collecting Lovecraft Arkhams". Become a member for $9/month. Much of what he wrote and sold between 1960 and his death in July 1971 was work for hire, much of it nonfiction written for the newspapers and the major magazines of the day. It is said in "Herbert WestReanimator" that the town was devastated by a typhoid outbreak in 1905. It cannot be said the every one of its publications was, from an abstract literary perspective, of transcendent quality; but if it had issued nothing but the first books of Lovecraft, Robert Bloch, Ray Bradbury, and Fritz Leiber, it would eminently deserve to be remembered. And, most significantly,The Outsider and Others, the first published collection of stories by H.P. Arkham House lives on too, although its survival was not as certain. 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