Sauk City's Eldritch Son

The Wisconsin Historical Society has an exhibit celebrating the centennial of August Derleth's birth, he being a native of Sauk City. I know Derleth primarily as a horror writer and friend of H.P. Lovecraft but, as the displays down on State Street show, he was a very versatile writer who authored works in a variety of styles.

Here's the final installment of his Sac Prairie Saga, a series of ten novels.



Among the other genres Derleth wrote are poetry, detective stories, sci-fi, and historical non-fiction. The exhibit has an example of the last one in the form of The Milwaukee Road: Its First 100 Years, published in 1948.



I had no idea that that Derleth collected comics and comic books. He also collaborated with cartoonist Clare V. "Dwig" Dwiggins and produced a children's story called Oswald the Owl in 1945.



As I said above, I know Derleth mainly via his friendship with H.P. Lovecraft and Arkham House Publishers. With Halloween on the horizon, there was no shortage of items showcasing Derleth's horror writing and Arkham's output.







There is also an eldritch letter that Lovecraft wrote to Derleth in 1926.



I am trying to get my brother and friends in Chicago who are Derleth/Lovecraft fans into a bidding war for these items. I figure I can pull off a nice Mission Impossible heist to obtain the books, etc. Unfortunately, my brother is claiming some kind of fraternal privilege and tells me I ought to give him the stuff for free.

If you go, be sure to grab a free copy of Derleth's "The Slayer and the Slain" from the September 1949 issue of Weird Tales wherein you can be chilled by the ghastly secrets of the violent past which dwell in the files of the Wisconsin Historical Society itself...