The Origins of Arkham House

The Old or Ancient Ones, the Elder Gods, of cosmic good, and those of cosmic evil, bearing many names, and themselves of different groups, as if associated with the elements and yet transcending them: for there are the Water Beings, hidden in the depths; those of Air that are the primal lurkers beyond time; those of Earth, horrible animate survivors of distant eons.
August Derleth, The Return of Hastur

Five days after Lovecraft’s death, August Derleth’s colleague, Donald Wandrei, wrote to his fellow writer to inform him of the author’s passing. Derleth wrote back, insisting to Wandrei that they work together to publish Lovecraft’s work. After Charles Scribner’s Sons refused to publish the collection of stories Wandrei and Derleth put together, the two borrowed a name of one of the fictional New England locales in Lovecraft’s stories and formed Arkham House to publish the manuscript themselves. Arkham House had thirteen hundred copies of The Outsider and Others printed for five dollars (or $3.50 if preordered). They advertised in Weird Tales and other pulp magazines. The book sold poorly, and only one-hundred fifty preorders were filled, but Derleth and Wandrei nevertheless believed a market for Lovecraft’s fiction existed. Arkham House emerged in an era when science fiction and fantasy was relatively unknown. In 1941, Derleth published a collection of his own short stories, Someone in the Dark, at two dollars a copy, in an effort to keep Arkham House alive.

Beyond the Wall of SleepBy 1942, Derleth was left to manage Arkham House by himself as Donald Wandrei was drafted into World War II. That year, Derleth published Clark Ashton Smith’s Out of Space and Time and a second collection of Lovecraft stories, Beyond the Wall of Sleep. The press run was limited to 1,217 copies due to World War II restrictions. When copes of Beyond the Wall of Sleep sold out in 1944, Derleth’s beliefs about the market were affirmed, and he decided to broaden the mission of Arkham House—in addition to preserving Lovecraft’s writing, Arkham would exclusively publish unknown authors from the weird fiction genre and out of print titles. The first to join the ranks were the rest of Lovecraft’s confidants: Robert Bloch and Robert E. Howard. Between 1944 and 1945, Derleth brought in Henry S. Whitehead, Evangeline Walton, and J. Sheridan LeFanu, as well as completed Lovecraft’s short story, “The Lurker at the Threshold,” from the author’s notes.

Arkham’s two imprints, Mycroft and Moran and Stanton & Lee, existed only briefly in Arkham’s history. The former, named after characters in Sherlock Holmes stories, was devoted to publishing Derleth’s “Solar Pons” series, which were Derleth’s Sherlock Holmes pastiches. Stanton & Lee published a children’s book written by Derleth and illustrated by Clare Victor Dwiggins entitled Oliver, the Wayward Owl.

Bookshelf of Lovecraft, by Cybaea

Arkham House was never financially stable in any of its sixty-five-plus years. In 1946, Derleth acquired Algernon Blackwood, H. Russell Wakefield, and A.E. Coppard, but his house operated consistently in the red; in order to keep the company afloat, he would funnel the income from titles he authored into Arkham House’s shrinking profit margin. “The fact is that in no single year since its founding,” wrote Derleth in Thirty Years of Arkham House, “have the earnings of Arkham House met the expenses, so that it has been necessary for my personal earnings to shore up Arkham House finances.” Despite the publisher’s many financial hardships, Derleth’s Arkham House survived its competitors, who rose up after Derleth brought weird fiction to the public eye: Gnome Press (1948-1962), Fantasy Press (1946-1951), and Prime Press (1947-1951) included. Only Advent Publishers (1956) and Mirage Press (1967) continue to exist alongside Arkham today.

Before the 1950s threw a wrench into the operations of independent publishers, Arkham House was known for the quality of its hardcovers and binding (the house did not issue a paperback until 1979), as well for its publisher’s perspicacity for acquiring new talent. In 1947, Derleth published Ray Bradbury’s first collection of short stories, Dark Carnival. Happy to have his writing see the light of day, the unknown Illinois writer said of Derleth, “I’m grateful to August Derleth for changing my life and giving me hope.” Like the first edition of The Outside and Others, the first edition of Dark Carnival, which sold for three dollars in 1947, is now worth thousands of dollars to collectors. In addition to Bradbury, Arkham House was the first to publish A.E. van Vogt, E.E. Smith, Fritz Leiber, and Isaac Asimov in hardcover, and Derleth was the first to introduce American audiences to British science fiction and fantasy novelists L. P. Hartley, Cynthia Asquith, and William Hope Hodgson. But by the twentieth century’s fifth decade, large publishers like Doubleday and Scribner decided that it was time to capitalize on Derleth’s nascent niche market. They grabbed up many of Arkham’s star authors (including Asimov and Bradbury), forcing Arkham House to scale back its titles. Unable to compete, Derleth focused on publishing Lovecraft’s many letters during the 1960s in lieu of more titles.

Lovecraft’s Grave, by Michael Stephens

Throughout the sixties, Derleth anticipated the death of Arkham House and the death of the market for small, independent publishers. He invested over twenty-thousand dollars of his private funds into the company during this period, until his death at sixty-two in 1971.