Authors: H.P. Lovecraft
Eldritch Tales (82 page)
Around 1936, Brooklyn fan (and later literary agent and legendary comic book editor) Julius Schwartz had attempted to sell a collection of Lovecraft’s work to a British book publisher, but his efforts had come to nothing.
‘No volume of Lovecraft’s stories has to my knowledge ever been published in Great Britain,’ Derleth reassured Gollancz. ‘The World people have the right only to sales in Canada, in addition to the United States. Certain of the Lovecraft stories were published in the
Not at Night
collections published by Selwyn & Blount a decade or so ago; more recently, only “The Dunwich Horror” and “The Rats in the Walls” have appeared in the Fraser-Wise anthology,
Great Tales of Terror and the Supernatural
, published, I believe, by Hammond, Hammond & Company Ltd in 1947. Anthology publication in Great Britain in no way impairs British book collection rights. The only other tale to have been so anthologized, as far as I know, apart from the “Erich Zann” story you mention, has been “The Outsider”,which appeared in James Nelson’s
The Murder Sampler
, published over there by an associate of Doubleday, the American publisher.’
Concluding his letter on a more business-like note, Derleth proposed to Gollancz that if, after due consideration, he still wanted to go ahead and publish a collection of Lovecraft’s work, then he should make an estimate of the word-count and indicate which stories he would like to include in the book.
Derleth also suggested a few additions and modifications to the original offer that Gollancz had proposed. These included a new Foreword to the British edition to be written by Derleth, the advance payment to be split fifty pounds on signature of the contract and fifty pounds on publication, and, perhaps most interesting of all, that ‘Arkham House should have the exclusive right to sell the Gollancz edition of this or any further Lovecraft collection in the United States and Canada.’
He signed off by adding that he was sending Gollancz a copy of the Arkham House stocklist under separate cover.
Victor Gollancz replied on May 29, before he left New York, basically agreeing with Derleth’s story suggestions but, being concerned about the length of the book, asking Derleth to suggest a possible contents listing that omitted the two short novels.
In the meantime, Derleth had already dispatched a copy of the manuscript of ‘The Case of Charles Dexter Ward’ to Gollancz’s London office in Henrietta Street, Covent Garden, before replying on June 3 to the same address.
His letter contained two proposed contents of varying lengths. ‘The wordage adds up to a little over 120,000,’ he explained of the first list of eighteen titles, which also included alternatives and details of any previous appearances in the UK, ‘but you intend to publish a shorter book in any case; so that this list of “best” stories must necessarily be modified to your needs. These stories are perhaps Lovecraft’s best from a literary point-of-view as well as from the perspective of effective fiction.
‘This would seem to afford you ample latitude in making a selection of stories. Such short titles as “Dagon”, “Polaris”, “Beyond the Wall of Sleep”, and “The Temple” could be included to pad out the contents page without actually taking up very much space. “The Unnamable” and “The Festival” fit into this category, too, though none is Lovecraft’s best work.’
Derleth then went on to present a cut-down version of the contents, with the explanation: ‘If I were to launch Lovecraft in England, I would not particularly consider previous anthologization. I would publish, considering space limitations of say 90,000 words, the following stories:
THE OUTSIDER
THE RATS IN THE WALLS
PICKMAN’S MODEL
THE CALL OF CTHULHU
THE DUNWICH HORROR
THE WHISPERER IN DARKNESS
THE COLOUR OUT OF SPACE
THE HAUNTER OF THE DARK
THE THING ON THE DOORSTEP
THE MUSIC OF ERICH ZANN’
Once again, he also suggested a few substitutions, should they be needed, concluding: ‘But this selection is your problem, and I shall introduce the stories in accordance with your decision in this matter. It might be well, when you let me know your choice, to indicate a word limit for the foreword.’
Having finally returned from his business trip to New York, Victor Gollancz replied to Derleth again. ‘I have now read all the stories and agree completely with your selection,’ he wrote on June 23, adding that he had decided that the book should consist of the ten stories initially recommended by Derleth.
‘I shall be obliged if you would let me have your Foreword (which should definitely introduce Lovecraft to the British public) as soon as possible,’ confirmed Gollancz. ‘Please make the length approximately that of your Introduction to the World Publishing Company volume.’
After promising to send off the contract in the next few days, Gollancz concluded his letter with two postscripts. In the first, he told Derleth that he was calling the collection
The Haunter of the Dark & Other Tales of Horror
. In the second note, he asked Derleth to ‘Keep me in touch with any “discoveries” in the supernatural field which may come your way.’
Four days later Derleth mailed back his draft of the Introduction. ‘It is approximately the same length as that for the World Publishing Company volume,’ he confirmed. ‘To expedite matters, I wish you would feel perfectly free to make such alterations in the introduction as you would wish to make without consulting me.’
But while Derleth’s letter was making its way across the Atlantic, another problem had arisen, one that had the potential to terminate the whole project before it ever got off the ground.
Despite Derleth’s flattering claim in his first letter to Victor Gollancz that he had already ‘had several offers for such publication’, and his assertion that he controlled the rights to the Lovecraft stories, he had failed to mention that for the past year the London literary agency of Pearn, Pollinger & Higham, Ltd had been attempting to sell
Best Supernatural Stories of H.P. Lovecraft
into the British market. When they discovered that Gollancz had already done a deal directly with Arkham House, they were not very pleased.
Co-director Laurence Pollinger wrote to Victor Gollancz on June 29 from his offices around the corner in The Strand to find out what was going on. Gollancz replied the following day:
‘My dear Laurence,
Many thanks for your letter of 29th June.
As I told Gerald just now, there is a mistake here. When I was first put on to Lovecraft, and was told that Derleth controlled the rights, I wrote to the latter to find out the position. He told me that he did control the rights in all Lovecraft’s stories: that he had had requests for volume rights from England: that he had always refused them: but that he would like to work with me. Negotiations then followed and we discussed terms. We found no difficulty in arriving at an agreement, which was clinched. This gives me the sole right to publish certain of the Lovecraft stories in volume form here, with an option to publish all the rest of his work in later volumes. My first volume will consist of a selection made by Derleth which includes most of the stories in the volume published by the World people, to which you refer – and Derleth is himself at the moment writing a special introduction for me to this first collection.
Yours ever,’
That same day Gollancz wrote to Derleth, to no doubt express his displeasure at being put in such a difficult position.
Derleth hurriedly responded on July .: ‘I hasten to assure you that Mr Oscar J. Friend of Otis Kline Associates was instructed some weeks ago to ask Pearn, Pollinger and Higham to withdraw
The
[sic]
Best Supernatural Stories of H.P. Lovecraft
, which they have been vainly trying to sell for approximately five years. I have thus no direct connexien [sic] with Mr Pollinger at all, and it is the firm headed by Mr Friend which has been offering the Lovecraft works through Pearn, Pollinger and Higham.’
Not only had Derleth let slip in his haste that his claim of ‘several offers’ for Lovecraft’s work may have been stretching the truth a bit, but Laurence Pollinger confirmed it in a letter to Gollancz the following day, although his account did not exactly conform to Derleth’s version of events: ‘I find we received copy of this book from the American agent, Otis Kline on 4th August, 1949, and since that time it has been submitted to ten publishers without success. In view of what you write me I am withdrawing it from the publisher who is now considering it.’
Pollinger also revealed that he had heard that same morning from the Kline agency, which had been founded by adventure novelist Otis Adelbert Kline. Kline, like Lovecraft, had also been a contributor to
Weird Tales
in the 1930s, before concentrating on his career as a literary agent (most famously for Robert E. Howard).
‘I am just in receipt of a letter from Arkham House telling me that they have made their own arrangements for publication of Howard P. Lovecraft material in England and asking me to withdraw all Lovecraft titles from further offer,’ instructed Otis Kline Associates. ‘I am writing Arkham in some reproof of such action, but will you please withdraw all Lovecraft material.’
Laurence Pollinger was more sanguine about the outcome. ‘As you will appreciate Arkham House is the American publisher of this book,’ he wrote to Gollancz. ‘I take it that you have no objections to my writing to Kline telling him that you have contracted with Derleth for the publication of these stories here. Doubtless upon receipt of this he will then check with Arkham House as to whether they or Derleth should have signed the agreement with you.’
With this final hurdle delaying H.P. Lovecraft’s debut British collection now removed, a contract dated July 5, 1950, was signed between Victor Gollancz Ltd and Arkham House Publishers.
The Haunter of the Dark & Other Tales of Horror
finally appeared in hardcover from Victor Gollancz in 1951 and quickly went out of print. It was reissued in 1966 and 1969, and a second impression was published in 1971 and reprinted in 1977. The distinctive yellow dust-jacket posed the rhetorical question, ‘Who is Lovecraft?’, before proceeding to answer itself in some detail.
Although in a different order, all ten stories in the volume had also appeared in the World Publishing edition of
Best Supernatural Stories of H.P. Lovecraft
, which additionally included ‘In the Vault’, ‘The Picture in the House’, ‘Cool Air’ and ‘The Terrible Old Man’.
‘Remarkable . . . It is not too much to say that they are masterpieces in the genre of the super-naturally horrible,’ raved the
Birmingham Post
, while the
Yorkshire Post
declared: ‘Connoisseurs of the “uncanny” must not miss a most remarkable collection of stories by the American H.P. Lovecraft. His is a narrow but powerful imagination, which has created and peopled a world of its own.’
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.