A Guide to H. P. Lovecraft First Editions
Early Editions Didn't Sell Well, But Try to Find One Today
Aug 30, 2009
At the time of his death in 1937, the stories of H. P. Lovecraft were in danger of of being entirely forgotten.
Lovecraft first found expression in the ‘journals’ put out by fellow members of the United Amateur Press Association. At first contributing articles and poetry, he soon found an enthusiastic audience for his weird fiction. From 1916 to 1923, Lovecraft honed his craft with more than two dozen stories in different amateur publications such as The United Amateur, The Vagrant, Home Brew and others. These cheaply printed publications were circulated almost exclusively among amateur press colleagues, often with print runs of less than a dozen copies.
Many of Lovecraft’s best known stories come from this period, including “Herbert West: Re-Animator,” The Lurking Fear,” “Dagon,” and “The Music of Erich Zann.” These journals are incredibly rare, and as Lovecraft's fame and influence continues to grow, it remains a buyer's market.
Lovecraft's Frustration: The Shunned House
In 1923, Lovecraft began his long association with Weird Tales, and began to further develop his seminal vision of cosmic indifference and alien entities worshiped as gods. Though popular among readers, Lovecraft was unable to interest a publisher in a collection of his work.
A friend, W. Paul Cook, decided to self-publish The Shunned House as a chapbook, in an edition of 300 copies in 1928. Cook's finances and health took a sudden turn for the worse, and he failed to have the sheets bound. They remained in his basement until 1933, when another friend, Robert Barlow, took 115 copies with the intention of binding them himself. Only eight copies were bound before Barlow was distracted by other business.
Roughly fifty copies of the unbound sheets were later sold through Arkham House. In 1961, Arkham House bound a hundred copies and sold them without a dustjacket. Due to this complicated history and low print-run, any version of this book will qualify as the rarest of Lovecraft first editions.
Lovecraft's Salvation: Arkham House
After Lovecraft's death, two of his friends and fellow Weird Tales authors, August Derleth and Donald Wandrei ,formed Arkham House with the primary intent of rescuing Lovecraft’s fiction from oblivion. Named after Lovecraft’s fictional version of Salem, the small press published its first collection, The Outsider and Others, in 1939. Priced at $5.00, it was well-reviewed but took years to finally sell out.
Today it is the premier Lovecraft first edition, selling for thousands of dollars. Its rarity is further compounded by the fact that the dustjacket was printed on poor quality paper, causing it to brown and chip. Gary de la Ree reprinted the dustjacket on higher quality paper in 1974 and many otherwise pristine copies of the book have the reprinted dustjacket. An original jacket commands a higher price.
Arkham House’s second Lovecraft collection was Beyond the Wall of Sleep (1943), in an edition of 1,217 copies. Like its predecessor, it took years to sell out but now commands four figure prices whenever a copy comes up for sale. Marginalia appeared in 1944.
Lovecraft had encouraged his friends to use his mythical creations and to add their own. August Derleth coined the name “the Cthulhu Mythos” to encompass all such fiction. Taking two short fragments found in Lovecraft’s papers, Derlth wrote a short novel, The Lurker at the Threshold, which Arkham House published in 1945. Technically a Lovecraft first edition, the larger part of the work belongs to Derleth. The Survivor and Others (Arkham House, 1957) is likewise the work of Derleth, based on notes and diary entries. The Shuttered Room and Other Pieces by H. P. Lovecraft and Divers Hands (Arkham House, 1959) includes more of the Dereleth ‘collaborations’, some of Lovecraft’s juvenile tales and nonfiction by friends and admirers.
Though still sought after, the prices on these books fall precipitously from the heights established by the first two collections. All had larger print runs, and went through multiple editions.
Later Publications
Dreams and Fancies, a selection of letters recounting his dreams paired with the stories that may have been inspired by them, appeared in 1962. Collected Poems and The Dunwich Horror and Others came out in 1963, followed by At the Mountains of Madness and Other Novels(1964) and Dagon and Other Macabre Tales(1965). These last three volumes collect all of Lovecraft's fiction as it appeared in various publications; in 1985-86, S. T. Joshi revised all the stories according to Lovecraft's original manuscripts. New dustjacket art distinguishes these from the originals, though in a sense, the revised edition is another 'first.' The revised edition has also gone through multiple printings.
Lovecraft's Selected Letters was a long-time dream of Derleth's, and the first of five volumes appeared in 1965. Of these, the hardest to find in a first edition is Vol. 3.
Arkham House arranged new combinations of Lovecraft stories, often with marginalia from the author's papers. The Dark Brotherhood and Other Pieces(1966), and Three Tales of Horror (1967) are in this category. The 1969 Tales of the Cthulhu Mythos featured only two stories by Lovecraft, but collected new and previously printed Mythos stories by other authors.
Lovecraft earned most of his income from “revision” work he did for aspiring authors. He often kept little beyond their title, working his obscure mythology into ‘their’ work. The Horror in the Museum and Other Revisions, collected these stories in 1970. Joshi revised the texts and reordered them for a 1989 edition.
As his fame has grown, his stories have become more widely admired, and more widely available than anyone could ever have imagined,. But there is something about an 'original,' and Lovecraft's contemporary fame has made demand for those first Arkham House editions, published when the Lovecraft name was not a marketing phenomenon, ever more desirable.
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