I know that I’ll never collect them all, but I do like to pick up Arkham House books when I come across them. In this case, I recently acquired a group of four books by quite disparate authors. When I looked for information about the authors and when their books were published, I turned to Sixty Years of Arkham House by S. T. Joshi. The index in this book isn’t entirely accurate, and each entry is relatively short, covering publication date, number of copies, and a little more. Sometimes there’s an listing of contents for poems and short stories in the volume, but I guess that when covering 200 books there’s not too much room for anything else.
Joshi’s book lists 193 items published by Arkham House; I now own a mere 35 of them. This number is just under 20%, an almost insignificant percentage. I’m quite happy with the ones that I have, though, and I’ll only look for others if a) they’re within my budget and b) the condition looks decent.
The Face in the Mirror, Denys Val Baker
Published in 1971, and now the earliest of my Arkham House books; 2045 copies printed. A slim volume of tales set in the author’s native Cornwall. Prior to this book the earliest Arkham House book that I owned was published in 1975. Having now come close to the magic decade of the 1960s, it makes me quite excited to have a copy of this book.
The Height of the Scream, Ramsey Campbell
Published in 1976; 4348 copies printed. Campbells third Arkham House collection. I own just a couple of Campbell books. One is part of Borderlands Press “Little Book” series. The other is a collection from Dark Harvest with both Campbell and Charles Grant stories (Dark Harvest’s Black Wine). Aside from that, I may have a few anthologies where Campbell has contributed a story.
Dwellers in Darkness, August Derleth
Also published in 1976; 3926 copies printed. The eighth and last Arkham House collection of Derleth stories. Derleth was one of the founders of Arkham House. To acquire the prior seven of his collection likely would bust a few budgets.
The Darkling, David Kesterton
Published in 1982; 3126 copies printed. Kesterton’s name doesn’t appear in the index of Joshi’s 1999 book, and the book title’s page number listed in the index is incorrect. Joshi’s also quite dismissive of the book and author in his note, calling it a “‘Slushpile’ submission that made it’s way to publication.”
It’s such a shame that this major publisher of weird fiction fizzled into almost nothing when it had the major IP of the “Arkham House” name behind it. They’ve hardly published anything in the past two decades. Most of their books published prior to 1970 are hard to find or quite expensive. This is as expected, given the name, as well some of the authors works in that group. Arkham House released N copies for each of their books, no special editions. Golden Gryphon did the same. Most other small current presses will have two or three states: trade hardcover, limited, and/or ultra-limited. Trade books in these states don’t list how many are printed. Limited will list the number of copies in this state, while the ultra-limited usually are lettered books limited to 26 copies.
I’m by no means a Lovecraft fan, but recently saw a bidding war online for the first two collections of his letters rise from $0.99 to nearly $150. That’s a pittance if you interested in early Clark Ashton Smith, or Ray Bradbury’s Dark Carnival (I’ve seen these listed upwards of $6,500), or even William Hope Hodgson’s House on the Borderlands book (close to $1,000). Basically, all the early books fetch prices only the serious collector would pay.
