August W. Derleth House | |
Location | S10431a Lueders Rd., Sauk City, Wisconsin |
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Coordinates | 43°15′59″N89°44′26″W / 43.26639°N 89.74056°W |
Area | 10 acres (4.0 ha) |
Built | 1939 |
Architect | Leo Julius Weissenborn |
NRHP reference No. | 91000468 [1] |
Added to NRHP | April 30, 1991 |
The August W. Derleth House, also known as the Place of Hawks, is located at S10431a Lueders Road in Sauk City, Wisconsin. It was the former home of author August Derleth. Built in 1939, the house reflects Derleth's early success as a writer, having earned recognition as a Guggenheim Fellow in 1938.
The house was designed by Sauk City architect Leo Julius Weissenborn and is a one-and-a-half-story stone structure modeled after the nineteenth-century vernacular farmhouses typical of the area. Derleth wrote the majority of his 150 books while living here. He was known for his horror and fantasy stories as well as his Wisconsin-based regionalist works.
In addition to his writing, Derleth founded Arkham House, a publishing company originally based in the attic of the house and later in a separate building on the property. Arkham House was notable for being the first to publish H.P. Lovecraft's works in book form. Derleth lived in the house until his death in 1971. [2]
The house was added to the National Register of Historic Places on April 30, 1991. [1]
August William Derleth was an American writer and anthologist. He was the first book publisher of the writings of H. P. Lovecraft. He made contributions to the Cthulhu Mythos and the cosmic horror genre and helped found the publisher Arkham House. Derleth was also a leading American regional writer of his day, as well as prolific in several other genres, including historical fiction, poetry, detective fiction, science fiction, and biography. Notably, he created the fictional detective Solar Pons, a pastiche of Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes.
The Cthulhu Mythos is a mythopoeia and a shared fictional universe, originating in the works of Anglo-American horror writer H. P. Lovecraft. The term was coined by August Derleth, a contemporary correspondent and protégé of Lovecraft, to identify the settings, tropes, and lore that were employed by Lovecraft and his literary successors. The name "Cthulhu" derives from the central creature in Lovecraft's seminal short story "The Call of Cthulhu", first published in the pulp magazine Weird Tales in 1928.
Cthulhu is a fictional cosmic entity created by writer H. P. Lovecraft. It was introduced in his short story "The Call of Cthulhu", published by the American pulp magazine Weird Tales in 1928. Considered a Great Old One within the pantheon of Lovecraftian cosmic entities, this creature has since been featured in numerous pop culture references. Lovecraft depicts it as a gigantic entity worshipped by cultists, in the shape of a green octopus, dragon, and a caricature of human form. It is the namesake of the Lovecraft-inspired Cthulhu Mythos.
Arkham is a fictional city situated in Massachusetts, United States. An integral part of the Lovecraft Country setting created by H. P. Lovecraft, Arkham is featured in many of his stories and those of other Cthulhu Mythos writers.
Arkham House was an American publishing house specializing in weird fiction. It was founded in Sauk City, Wisconsin, in 1939 by August Derleth and Donald Wandrei to publish hardcover collections of H. P. Lovecraft's best works, which had previously been published only in pulp magazines. The company's name is derived from Lovecraft's fictional New England city, Arkham, Massachusetts. Arkham House editions are noted for the quality of their printing and binding. The printer's mark for Arkham House was designed by Frank Utpatel.
Lovecraft Country is a term coined for the New England setting used by H. P. Lovecraft in many of his weird fiction stories, which combines real and fictitious locations. This setting has been elaborated on by other writers working in the Cthulhu Mythos. The phrase was not in use during Lovecraft's own lifetime; it was coined by Keith Herber for the Lovecraftian role-playing game Call of Cthulhu.
Joseph Payne Brennan was an American writer of fantasy and horror fiction, and also a poet. Of Irish ancestry, he was born in Bridgeport, Connecticut and he lived most of his life in New Haven, Connecticut, and worked as an Acquisitions Assistant at the Sterling Memorial Library of Yale University for over 40 years. Brennan published several hundred short stories, two novellas and reputedly thousands of poems. His stories appeared in over 200 anthologies and have been translated into German, French, Dutch, Italian and Spanish. He was an early bibliographer of the work of H. P. Lovecraft.
The Outsider and Others is a collection of stories by American writer H. P. Lovecraft. It was released in 1939 and was the first book published by Arkham House. 1,268 copies were printed. It went out of print early in 1944 and has never been reprinted.
Someone in the Dark is a collection of fantasy and horror short stories by author August Derleth. It was released in 1941 and was the second book published by Arkham House. 1,115 copies were printed, priced at $2.00. In Thirty Years of Arkham House, Derleth implied that this title had sold out by the end of 1944.
Dark of the Moon: Poems of Fantasy and the Macabre is a poetry anthology edited by August Derleth and published in 1947 by Arkham House in an edition of 2,634 copies. It is a pioneering anthology of odd poetry from the Middle Ages to the present, arranged chronologically.
Zealia Brown-Reed Bishop (1897–1968) was an American writer of short stories. Her name is sometimes spelled "Zelia." Although she mostly wrote romantic fiction, she is remembered for three short horror stories she wrote in collaboration with H. P. Lovecraft.
Lonesome Places is a collection of fantasy and horror short stories by American author August Derleth. It was released in 1962 by Arkham House in an edition of 2,201 copies and was Derleth's fifth collection of weird tales. The collection contains the stories that Derleth believed to be his best of the preceding 15 years.
Colonel Markesan and Less Pleasant People is a collection of stories by American authors August Derleth and Mark Schorer writing in collaboration. It was released in 1966 by Arkham House in an edition of 2,405 copies. The stories were written while the two authors shared a cabin on the Wisconsin River in Sauk City during the summer of 1931. Most of the stories were published in the magazine Weird Tales. Two of the stories, "Colonel Markesan" and "The Return of Andrew Bentley", were adapted for the Thriller television series.
The Arkham Collector was an American fantasy, horror fiction and poetry magazine first published in Summer 1967. The magazine, edited by August Derleth, was the second of two magazines published by Arkham House, the other being the Arkham Sampler. Each issue of The Arkham Collector had an approximate print run of 2,500 copies. Its headquarters was in Sauk City, Wisconsin.
The Watchers Out of Time and Others is an omnibus collection of stories by American writer August Derleth, inspired in part by notes left by H. P. Lovecraft after his death and presented as a "posthumous collaboration" between the two writers. It was published in an edition of 5,070 copies. Several of the stories relate to the Cthulhu Mythos and had appeared previously in the earliest collections The Lurker at the Threshold, The Survivor and Others, The Shuttered Room and Other Pieces, The Dark Brotherhood and Other Pieces and other Arkham House publications.
Dwellers in Darkness is a collection of stories by American writer August Derleth. It was released in 1976 by Arkham House in an edition of 3,926 copies. It was the author's eighth collection of stories published by Arkham House. Two stories from Derleth's Judge Peck series are included in the collection. Also included is "Ghost Lake", the last story completed by Derleth before he died in 1971.
Peter Ruber was a United States author, editor and publisher. He had been an advertising executive, book publisher and, since the mid-1990s, a consultant and free-lance journalist for many leading business information technology magazines. He lived on Long Island, New York with his wife, three sons, three grandchildren and a mountain of books and literary papers.
Mycroft & Moran was an imprint of Arkham House publishers and was created in Sauk City, Wisconsin in 1945. The imprint was created to publish weird detective stories and the Solar Pons stories by August Derleth. Arkham retired the imprint in 1982, but has recently allowed it to be revived by another small press publisher.
Wisconsin Murders is a collection of true crime accounts written by author August Derleth. It was released in 1968 by Mycroft & Moran in an edition of 1,958 copies. The stories detail sixteen cases of sudden death in Wisconsin for 1842 to 1926. Three of the accounts had appeared previously in American Weekly and Saint Mystery Magazine.
This is a list of the National Register of Historic Places listings in Sauk County, Wisconsin. It is intended to provide a comprehensive listing of entries in the National Register of Historic Places that are located in Sauk County, Wisconsin. The locations of National Register properties for which the latitude and longitude coordinates are included below may be seen on a map.
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