Arkham House was never truly financially successful, but the publishing house grew in the decades following its founding nonetheless. 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 company's name is derived from Lovecraft's fictional New England city, Arkham. Like us for recipes, giveaways and more. These were Witch House by Evangeline Walton and The Lurker at the Threshold by August Derleth (based on an outline by H. P. Lovecraft). "In two years, you will see signs of mass adoption. 2023, Urban Milwaukee, Inc. All rights reserved. In 2010, The Arkham Sampler (1948-49) was reissued in a limited edition (250 sets) two-volume facsimile reprint of the now-rare magazine issued by Arkham House that ran four issues a year 1948-1949. Featuring several wings, an enormous sewer system, and even has the Arkhamverse's first Batcave. That year Battered Silicon Dispatch Box issued four new volumes of stories by August Derleth under the umbrella title "The Macabre Quarto" under a joint imprint with Arkham House, which constituted the latter's only output since 2006. Tired of seeing banner ads on Urban Milwaukee? 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. Derleth also issued the first books of their immediate successors in the tradition, Robert Bloch, Fritz Leiber, Ray Bradbury and Joseph Payne Brennan. 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. Among the handful of books published during this decade were two slim volumes of verse by Clark Ashton Smith, prequels to his mammoth SELECTED POEMS (1971), THE FEASTING DEAD, a very short vampire novel by British writer John Metcalfe, NINE HORRORS AND A DREAM, the first collection of weird tales by the American poet Joseph Payne Brennan, and THE SHUTTERED ROOM AND OTHER PIECES, a miscellany of work by and about H. P. Lovecraft with "an abundance of interesting matter" (Joshi). For details, see the extensive 95-page calendar of the Arkham House Archive. With four books in print, Arkham House began to see a return on their investment. Highlights from this productive period include five books by Clark Ashton, beginning with THE ABOMINATIONS OF YANDO (1960) and ending with SELECTED POEMS (1971), "a landmark volume whose importance to weird literature -- and perhaps to American literature in general -- cannot be overstated" (Joshi); twelve books by H. P. Lovecraft, including the first three volumes of SELECTED LETTERS (1965; 1968; 1971), a long-awaited, important work and one of Arkham House's major publishing achievements; PLEASANT DREAMS -- NIGHTMARES (1960), the second Arkham House collection of Robert Bloch's short fiction; FIRE AND SLEET AND CANDLELIGHT (1961), a major anthology of weird verse from the 1930s to the 1960s edited by Derleth; THE DARK MAN AND OTHERS (1963), the second Arkham House collection of Robert E. Howard's tales; NIGHTMARE NEED (1964), the "first major volume" of Joseph Payne Brennan's "quietly understated but powerful weird verse" (Joshi); DEEP WATERS (1967), a selection of William Hope Hodgson's best weird tales, THE MIND PARASITES (1967) by Colin Wilson, "perhaps the most philosophically challenging Lovecraft pastiche ever written" (Joshi); 3 TALES OF HORROR (1967), three weird tales by Lovecraft richly illustrated by Lee Brown Coye; STRANGE GATEWAYS (1967), a long overdue collection of the best weird fiction of E. Hoffmann Price; and TALES OF THE CTHULHU MYTHOS (1969), an anthology compiled by August Derleth "that has come to be regarded as a definitive anthology of tales utilizing the framework of the "Cthulhu Mythos" (Joshi). Sign-in to take full advantage of your membership, including an ad-free website and improved browsing experience. They published a compilation of Derleths weird fiction, titled Someone in the Dark, in 1941, following it up with Out of Space and Time, by Lovecraft Circle member Clark Ashton Smith, in 1942 and their second Lovecraft collection Beyond the Wall of Sleep in 1943. IF it is out of business, I feel the least they can do is let us fans know. Upon Keller's return to his home in Stroudsburg, Pennsylvania, he wrote a check for the needed sum and sent it to Derleth as a loan at 35% interest on Derleth's personal note. Does anyone know if Arkham House are still in business? From 1950 through 1959 Arkham House published fourteen books, of which three were subsidized by their authors and a literary executor and two were co-published with Pellegrini & Cudahy. 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.. Although suffering from reduced profit margins, high production costs, and competition from other genre publishers, Derleth resumed a vigorous publishing schedule in 1960. 2014 marks the 75th anniversary of Arkham House's founding, and while the company is still largely unrecognized, it is still offering an outlet for the publication of "weird fiction." It was an experience he would later chronicle vividly in his autobiography,Once Around the Bloch. In 1939 a promising Midwestern mainstream novelist and a popular Midwestern writer of pulp fiction co-founded a small press to publish a hardbound book to preserve the writing and perpetuate the memory of their dearly departed friend and mentor, Howard Phillips Lovecraft. Derleth began speaking to Howards brother Donald Wandrei, who was living in Saint Paul, Minnesota, about collecting Lovecrafts stories into a book format. (Arkham House co-founder Wandrei served four years in the U.S. Army during World War II and limited his editorial responsibilities to the works of H. P. Lovecraft as well.). If you're looking for a marriage of history and thoughtful modern updates, look no further than this . The 1950s were not good years for Arkham House. The title of the imprint was inspired by characters from the Sherlock Holmes stories: Sherlock's brother Mycroft Holmes, and the villain Colonel Sebastian Moran. Theres a connection between Arkham House and the fictional Arkham Asylum for the Criminally Insane that appears in Batman and other DC comics; Arkham Asylum is named after a sanitarium in some Lovecraft stories fictional setting of Arkham, Massachusetts. 2014 marks the 75th anniversary of Arkham Houses founding, and while the company is still largely unrecognized, it is still offering an outlet for the publication of weird fiction. In 2009, Arkham House teamed up with Canadian publisher George Vanderburgh and his imprint Battered Silicon Dispatch Box to publish a four-volume book set titled The Macabre Quarto in 2009, celebrating what would have been Derleths 100thbirthday. Two days before Thanksgiving, Trump hosted Kanye West for dinner at Mar-A-Lago, well after West's descent into pathological Jew-hatred, alongside one of the most repellent far-right creatures ever to crawl from under a rock, Nick Fuentes. August Derleth and Donald Wandrei, fans and peers who corresponded with Lovecraft regularly, founded Arkham House in Sauk City, Wisconsin in 1939, just after the Lovecrafts death. All rights reserved. "Arkham House, founded in 1939, played a crucial role in establishing the importance of the WEIRD TALES school of writers -- including Lovecraft, Clark Ashton Smith, Robert E. Howard, Henry S. Whitehead, and others -- by preserving their pulp fiction in book form for future readers, scholars and writers. By 1953, Bloch and his family had moved from Milwaukee to Weyauwega, where he would pen his most famous work, Psycho. "[5], Arkham Sanitarium appears in the short story "The Thing on the Doorstep" and may have been inspired by the Danvers State Insane Asylum, aka Danvers State Hospital, located in Danvers, Massachusetts. Courtesy an eagle-eyed bud of mine, ever perched over eBay, I landed a couple of Items of Arkham House ephemera I needed just a couple of days ago. FINE book in FINE DJ. She became majority stockholder, President, and CEO of Arkham House in 1994, in which capacity she remained until her death. Eager to read more of his work, Bloch sent him a letter, asking where he might be able to find more of his stories. A bulls going to live in it!. Many of the items I kept I saved from disposal or recycling. Just outside of Sauk City, there is a quiet road that leads to an estate. Additionally, during this time, two books were published under Derleth's Mycroft & Moran imprint, and seven books were published under his Stanton & Lee imprint. You will see in these things a writer absolutely alien to the facile little hack who grinds out minor Weird Tales junk, Lovecraft wrote. Derleth was larger than life in his writing legacy and in life itself. 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. Despite this initial rejection, Derleth soon re-evaluated Blochs work and the two became friends. Eyes on Milwaukee: Whats Actually In Brewers Ballpark Plan? And with strange aeons even Arkham House may die. PRESERVING THE LOVECRAFT LEGACY AND NOTABLE FINDS. jimgordon, scarecrow, davidmazouz. Lovecraft and Ray Bradbury. From Derleths office inside Place of Hawks came a catalogue of historically significant publications. When he expanded the scope of Arkham House's publishing ambitions beyond the preservation of Lovecraft's work, he helped to introduce the fiction of Robert E. Howard, Clark Ashton Smith, Donald Wandrei and other pulp colleagues to a new generation of readers. You must be an Urban Milwaukee member to leave a comment. The company's name is derived from Lovecraft's fictional New England city, Arkham. Create an account to follow your favorite communities and start taking part in conversations. In 1948 Arkham House published six books: THE TRAVELLING GRAVE AND OTHER STORIES by L. P. Hartley, THE WEB OF EASTER ISLAND by Donald Wandrei, THE FOURTH BOOK OF JORKENS by Lord Dunsany, ROADS by Seabury Quinn, GENIUS LOCI AND OTHER TALES by Clark Ashton Smith, and NOT LONG FOR THIS WORLD by August Derleth, plus the first four issues of THE ARKHAM SAMPLER (four more were published in 1949). An early work by Robert E. Howard, crafter of Conan the Barbarian; the U.S. debut of British horror writer Ramsey Campbell. These accomplishments stood him in good stead as both a publisher and free lance editor, in which capacities he made several of his most important contributions to the field" (Penguin Encyclopedia). Derleth was a fan and promoter of Lovecrafts work and Lovecraft, likewise, was a fan of some of Derleths work. This reclusive, multi-storey gothic manor was constructed by Eric Mercey, a Gotham socialite who'd made his millions in the cement business, and had been abandoned for about ten years when the Joker arrived. The House on the Borderland and Other Novels. Will Murray places Arkham in central Massachusetts and suggests it is based on the village of Oakham. [ARKHAM HOUSE]. One might even consider just buying them as investments. Derleth brought out the first story collections of Robert Bloch, Ray Bradbury and Fritz Leiber and was instrumental in exposing the fiction of L. P. Hartley, Cynthia Asquith, William Hope Hodgson, and other British writers to American audiences under the Arkham House imprimatur. Press question mark to learn the rest of the keyboard shortcuts. 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. Show more Hide chat replay. In a few days, their website will have been offline for a full month. Non-Payment - If we do not receive payment in full, in good cleared funds, within seven (7) business days following the sale, we are entitled in our absolute discretion to exercise one or more of the following measures, in addition to any . After Derleth's death in 1971, Donald Wandrei briefly acted as editorial director but declined to resume his interest in the firm permanently. Weird Tales was founded in 1923 and ran for 279 horror-filled issues before folding in 1954. Bloch sold his first story The Secret of the Tomb to Weird Tales in 1934. Only a generous loan from Dr David H. Keller prevented Arkham from going bankrupt during a period of cash flow problems in 1948. Recently, under the dark wings of the Blackfire publishing house, the Czech version of the acclaimed title Arkham Horror: The Card Game was finally . Arkham House has changed hands several times over the years, but is still publishing today. Batman: Arkham Collection brings you the definitive versions of Rocksteady's Arkham Trilogy games, including all post-launch content, in one complete collection. He was forced by market conditions to publish his anthologies of horror fiction himself, under his own Arkham House imprint. Like Weird Tales, Arkham House was not some . Does anyone know if Arkham House are still in business? Riddle: Bones stripped bare beneath a warning light, pay heed, seafarers, not to feel his bite. It was a business, to be sure, and he was by necessity a businessman as well as a writer, an editor, and a fan. 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