Arkham House Archive for Sale
Lloyd Currey and John Knott are pleased to offer the David H. Rajchel Arkham House Archive, one of the most impressive and important collections of material related to fantastic fiction to ever appear on the market. Consisting of over 4,000 individual items, the archive is a virtual who’s who in fantasy, horror, and science fiction.
August Derleth’s contributions to the field of weird fiction as an editor and publisher are well known. Derleth and his business partner, Donald Wandrei, established Arkham House to preserve the legacy of H. P. Lovecraft with the publication of The Outsider and Others in 1939. In addition to publishing the first collections of short fiction by such luminaries as Ray Bradbury, Robert Bloch, Fritz Leiber, Ramsey Campbell and others Arkham House also brought the work of William Hope Hodgson to an American audience with the publication of The House on the Borderland and Other Novels in 1945. The press also preserved the memory of Robert E. Howard with the publication of SKULL FACE AND OTHERS (1946). Derleth’s practice of introducing writers of weird fiction from the UK to a broader audience continued throughout his career and included Marjorie Bowen, J. S. Le Fanu, Margery Lawrence, M. P. Shiel, and H. R. Wakefield.
The David H. Rajchel Arkham House Archive illustrates how Derleth’s influence extended well beyond Arkham House. Derleth’s landmark science fiction and fantasy anthologies of the 1940s and 1950s, many published by Pellgrini and Cudhay, brought Derleth into contact with most of the major authors of fantastic fiction of his day, such as Charles Beaumont, Robert Bloch, Robert Heinlein, Henry Kuttner, Frederik Pohl, Clifford Simak, Clark Ashton Smith, Theodore Sturgeon and many others.
The archive gives insight into Derleth as editor, publisher and writer and is a remarkable collection of materials of one of the most important twentieth century small publisher's archives offered for sale in the last several decades. The core of the archive is correspondence, often extensive, from several hundred authors whose work Derleth published under his own imprints or in his highly important non-Arkham House anthologies published in the 1940s and 1950s, as well as manuscripts, mostly typewritten (including fair copies and carbons), submitted by Arkham House authors.
For more details contact L.W. Currey, Inc. or John W. Knott, Jr., Bookseller.
