August Derleth
August William Derleth ( February 24, 1909 *, † July 4, 1971 ) was an American author of horror stories, publisher and editor of anthologies. He is named in his honor conferred the August Derleth Award.
Youth
August William, the son of William Julius Derleth and Rose Louise people, grew up in Sauk County, Wisconsin, on. At the age of 16 he sold his first story to the magazine Weird Tales, were published in the fantastic tales. Also during his four- year course at the University of Wisconsin, from which he graduated in 1930, Derleth wrote more stories constantly. During this time he also worked as an editor for Mystic Magazine.
Derleth was very involved socially and mid-1930s, he organized, among others a ranger club for young people and worked as a clerk and chairman of the local committee for education and probation officers. In addition, he worked as a lecturer for the University of Wisconsin.
Friendship with Lovecraft
He was a contemporary and friend of the author HP Lovecraft. Lovecraft's figure of the Comte d' Erlette (the author of the Cultes Goules ) is an homage to Derleth, whose French ancestors d' Erlette were called. After Lovecraft's death in 1937, he took some of his unpublished stories in and revised or completed this in order to publish in Weird Tales or in book form. He used the concept of the Cthulhu Mythos, to define a mythology that stood behind Lovecraft's work. Derleth added to the myth more deities and creatures too, transformed him from partially and brought it more in the context of his own Christian vision of God's battle with evil.
Publisher Arkham House
Along with Donald Wandrei he put together a collection of Lovecraft's short stories to publish it. However, since the mentioned publishers showed little interest, they established in 1939 a publishing house called Arkham House, primarily to publish the works of Lovecraft. The publisher's name comes from the fictional town of Arkham, Massachusetts, mentions Lovecraft in several of his stories.
Arkham House, 1939 The Outsider and Others out an extensive collection of Lovecraft's short stories. Derleth and Wandrei decided to expand Arkham House, and it was followed by other regular publications, including 1941 Someone in the Dark, a collection of Derleth's own horror stories.
Later life
In 1941, Derleth editor of The Capital Times of Madison. He held until his retirement in 1961 this position.
On April 6, 1953 he married Sandra Evelyn winter. In 1959 the marriage was dissolved, with Derleth custody of the children April Rose ( 1954-2011 ) and William Walden received.
In 1960 he published the magazine Hawk and Whippoorwill, which was on the poetry of man and nature.
Works
Derleth wrote more than 150 short stories and 100 novels, including some stories about the detective Solar Pons, which has some similarities to Sherlock Holmes. He also wrote under the pseudonyms Stephen Grendon, Kenyon Holmes and Tally Mason.