August Derleth

August Derleth (February 24 1909 - July 4 1971) was an American writer and anthologist. Though best remembered as Howard Phillips Lovecraft's literary executor and for his own contributions to the Cthulhu Mythos genre of horror, Derleth was a prolific writer in several genres, including historical fiction and detective fiction.
==Life==
The son of William Julius Derleth and his wife Rose Louise Volk, he grew up in Sauk City, Wisconsin. At the age of 16, he sold his first story to Weird Tales magazine. Derleth wrote all throughout his four years at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and received a B.A. in 1930. During this time he served briefly as editor of Mystic Magazine.
In the mid-1930s he organised a Ranger's Club for young people, served as clerk and president of the local Board of Education, served as a parole officer, organised a local Men's Club and a Parent-Teacher Association. He also lectured in American Regional Literature at the University of Wisconsin.
Derleth was awarded a prestigious Guggenheim Fellowship in 1938 for his Sac Prairie Saga, a series of novels focused on Wisconsin history.Guggenheim Foundation, "August William Derleth". His sponsors included the novelist Sinclair Lewis and the poet Edgar Lee Masters.
In 1941 he became literary editor of The Capital Times newspaper in Madison, a post he held until his resignation in 1960.
Derleth was married April 6, 1953, to Sandra Evelyn Winters; he was 44 and she was 18 at the time. When the couple divorced six years later in 1959, Derleth retained custody of their two children, April Rose and Walden William. In 1960, Derleth began editing and publishing a magazine called Hawk and Whippoorwill, dedicated to poems of man and nature.
He died on July 4, 1971, and is buried in St. Aloysius Cemetery in Sauk City.
==Contributions==
Derleth was a contemporary and friend of H. P. Lovecraft — when Lovecraft wrote about "le Comte d'Erlette" in his fiction, it was in homage to Derleth. Derleth invented the term Cthulhu Mythos to describe the fictional universe described in the series of stories shared by Lovecraft and other writers in his circle. Derleth's own writing emphasized the struggle between good and evil, in line with his own Christian worldview and in contrast with Lovecraft's depiction of an amoral universe. Derleth also treated Lovecraft's Old Ones as representatives of elemental forces, creating new entities to flesh out this framework.
When Lovecraft died in 1937, Derleth and Donald Wandrei put together a collection of that author's stories and tried to get them published. With existing publishers showing little interest, they founded Arkham House in 1939 to do it themselves. The name of the company comes from Lovecraft's fictional town of Arkham, Massachusetts, which featured in many of his stories.
Following Lovecraft's death, Derleth wrote a number of stories based on fragments and notes left by Lovecraft. These were published in Weird Tales and later in book form, under the byline "H. P. Lovecraft and August Derleth", with Derleth calling himself a "posthumous collaborator". He also undertook a "posthumous collaboration" with Robert E. Howard's "The House in the Oaks".
In 1939 Arkham House published The Outsider and Others, a huge collection that contained most of Lovecraft's short stories then known to exist. Derleth and Wandrei soon decided to expand Arkham House and began a regular publishing schedule after its second book, Someone in the Dark in 1941, a collection of some of Derleth's own horror stories.
A significant number of H. P. Lovecraft fans find themselves dissatisfied with Derleth's invention of the term "Cthulhu Mythos" and his belief that Lovecraft's fiction has an overall pattern, influenced by Derleth's Christianity. Other complaints deal with the "posthumous collaborations". Still there is little but praise for Derleth for his founding of Arkham House and for successful effort to rescue Lovecraft from literary obscurity.
==Other writing==
Derleth wrote more than 150 short stories and more than 100 books during his lifetime. Notably, he penned a long running series of mystery stories about a Sherlock Holmes-like British detective named Solar Pons. His other series included the Sac Prairie Saga, the Wisconsin Saga, and the Judge Peck series.
He also wrote introductions to several collections of classic early 20th century comics such as Buster Brown, Little Nemo in Slumberland, and Katzenjammer Kids, as well as a book of children's poetry entitled A Boy's Way. He also wrote under the pseudonyms Stephen Grendon, Kenyon Holmes, and Tally Mason.
Derleth's papers and comic book collection were donated to the Wisconsin Historical Society in Madison. They have been organized by the State Archives there.
== Bibliography==
August Derleth Mythos Fiction
 	 	 	 	 	
Title 	Co-Author 	Drafted	Outlet 	Published	Genre
"The Thing That Walked on the Wind"	 	1931 	Strange Tales 	1933 	Cthulhu Mythos
"Something From Out There" 	 	1931 	Weird Tales 	1951 	Cthulhu Mythos
"The Horror From the Depths" 	Mark Schorer 	1931 	Strange Stories 	1940 	Cthulhu Mythos
"The Lair of the Star-Spawn" 	Mark Schorer 	1931 	Weird Tales 	1932 	Cthulhu Mythos
"Spawn of the Maelstrom" 	Mark Schorer 	1931 	Weird Tales 	1939 	Cthulhu Mythos
"The Return of Hastur"  	 	1932 	Weird Tales 	1939 	Cthulhu Mythose
"Those Who Seek" 	 	1932 	Weird Tales 	1932 	Mythos-Adjacent
"The Passing of Eric Holm" 	 	1933 	Strange Stories 	1939 	Cthulhu Mythos
"Ithaqua" 	 	1933 	Strange Stories 	1941 	Cthulhu Mythos
"The Sandwin Compact" 	 	1935 	Weird Tales 	1940 	Cthulhu Mythos
"Beyond the Threshold" 	 	1941 	Weird Tales 	1941 	Cthulhu Mythos
"The House on Curwen Street" 	 	1943 	Weird Tales 	1944 	Cthulhu Mythos
"The Dweller in Darkness" 	 	1944 	Weird Tales 	1944 	Cthulhu Mythos
"The Watcher from the Sky" 	 	1944 	Weird Tales 	1945 	Cthulhu Mythos
The Lurker at the Threshold 	"H. P. Lovecraft" 	1944 	The Lurker at the Threshold	1945 	Cthulhu Mythos
"The God-Box" 	 	1945 	Weird Tales 	1945 	Mythos-Adjacent
"The Gorge Beyond Salapunco" 	 	1946 	Weird Tales 	1949 	Cthulhu Mythos
"Something in Wood" 	 	1946 	Weird Tales 	1948 	Cthulhu Mythos
"The Whippoorwills in the Hills" 	 	1947 	Weird Tales 	1948 	Cthulhu Mythos
"The Keeper of the Key" 	 	1951 	Weird Tales 	1951 	Cthulhu Mythos
"The Black Island" 	 	1951 	Weird Tales 	1952 	Cthulhu Mythos
"The House in the Valley" 	 	1953 	Weird Tales 	1953 	Cthulhu Mythos
"The Survivor" 	"H. P. Lovecraft" 	1953 	Weird Tales 	1954 	Cthulhu Mythos
"The Gable Window" 	"H. P. Lovecraft" 	1953 	The Survivor 	1957 	Cthulhu Mythos
"The Seal of R'lyeh" 	 	1954 	The Mask of Cthulhu 	1957 	Cthulhu Mythos
"Wentworth’s Day" 	"H. P. Lovecraft" 	1954 	The Survivor 	1957 	Mythos-Adjacent
"The Peabody Heritage" 	"H. P. Lovecraft" 	1954 	The Survivor 	1957 	Mythos-Adjacent
"The Ancestor" 	"H. P. Lovecraft" 	1954 	The Survivor 	1957 	Mythos-Adjacent
"The Shadow Out of Space" 	"H. P. Lovecraft" 	1957 	The Survivor 	1957 	Cthulhu Mythos
"The Lamp of Alhazred" 	"H. P. Lovecraft" 	1957 	The Survivor 	1957 	Cthulhu Mythos
"The Shuttered Room" 	"H. P. Lovecraft" 	1958 	The Shuttered Room 	1959 	Cthulhu Mythos
"The Fisherman of Falcon Point" 	"H. P. Lovecraft" 	1958 	The Shuttered Room 	1959 	Cthulhu Mythos
"Witches’ Hollow" 	"H. P. Lovecraft" 	1962 	Dark Mind, Dark Heart 	1962 	Cthulhu Mythos
"The Shadow in the Attic" 	"H. P. Lovecraft" 	1964 	Over the Edge 	1964 	Mythos-Adjacent
"The Dark Brotherhood" 	"H. P. Lovecraft" 	1966 	The Dark Brotherhood 	1966 	Cthulhu Mythos
"The Horror from the Middle Span" 	"H. P. Lovecraft" 	1967 	Travellers by Night 	1967 	Cthulhu Mythos
"Innsmouth Clay" 	"H. P. Lovecraft" 	1971 	Dark Things 	1971 	Cthulhu Mythos
"The House in the Oaks" 	"Robert E. Howard"	1971 	Dark Things 	1971 	Cthulhu Mythos
"The Watchers Out of Time" 	"H. P. Lovecraft" 	1971 	The Watchers Out of Time 	1974 	Cthulhu Mythos
"The Adventure of the Six Silver Spiders" is a crossover between the Cthulhu Mythos and Derleth's Solar Pons series, a Sherlock Holmes pastiche. Derleth wrote many Solar Pons stories, and the vast majority have no Lovecraftian connection, although later authors have also crossed Pons with elements of the Mythos.
===Non-fiction===
*"Lovecraft's Sensitivity" (1949)
*"A Note on the Cthulhu Mythos" (1962)
===As Editor===
From Arkham House's founding till his death, Derleth acted as editorial director, approving of which story or not was to be published and therefore part of the Derleth Mythos. Some were posthumous and he was assisted by his Arkham House co-founder Donald Wandrei.
====Cthulhu Mythos Anthologies/Collections====
*The Outsider and Others (1939; with Wandrei)
*Beyond the Wall of Sleep (1943; with Wandrei)
*Marginalia (1944; with Wandrei)
*The Lurker at the Threshold (1945)
*Something About Cats and Other Pieces (1949; uncredited)
*The Survivor and Others (1957) "with H. P. Lovecraft"
*The Mask of Cthulhu (1958)
*Some Notes on H. P. Lovecraft (1959)
*The Shuttered Room and Other Pieces (1959; uncredited)
*Dreams and Fancies (1962; uncredited)
*The Trail of Cthulhu (1962)
*The Dunwich Horror and Other Pieces (1963)
*Collected Poems (1963)
*At the Mountains of Madness and Other Novels (1964)
*Selected Letters I-III (1965-71; with Wandrei)
*Dagon and Other Macabre Tales (1965)
*The Dark Brotherhood and Other Pieces (1965)
*Tales of the Cthulhu Mythos (1969)
*The Horror in the Museum and Other Pieces (1970)
*The Watchers Out of Time and Revisions (1974; posthumous) "with H. P. Lovecraft"
*Selected Letters IV-V (1976; with James Turner)
*Dwellers in Darkness (1976)
*In Lovecraft's Shadow (1998)
====Other Anthologies====
*Dark Mind, Dark Heart (1962)
==Sources ==
*Bleiler, Everett F. (1948). The Checklist of Fantastic Literature Chicago: Shasta Publishers, p. 98.
*Derleth, August (1962). 100 Books by August Derleth Sauk City, WI: Arkham House.
*Jaffery, Sheldon (1989). The Arkham House Companion Mercer Island, WA: Starmont House, Inc.
*Chalker, Jack L. & Owings, Mark (1998). The Science-Fantasy Publishers: A Bibliographic History, 1923-1998 Westminster, MD and Baltimore: Mirage Press, Ltd.
*Nielsen, Leon (2004). Arkham House Books: A Collector's Guide Jefferson, NC and London: McFarland & Company, Inc.
==References==
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Category:Lovecraft's Co-authors
Category:Deceased (Real World)
Category:Lovecraft's Correspondents
Category:Editors