I get that he introduced "good" and "evil" groupings for the Lovecraftian entities, developed those groups using some obvious Christian allegories, tried to assign them all to the four Aristotelian elements for some reason, and was in general not the best writer who ever picked up a pen.
And yet he seems to be the most demonized personage in the history of the fandom. Am I missing something here? Literary-philosophical misrepresentation is pretty low on the list of offenses one can commit. Was he a crooked businessman? Did he deliberately stymie the efforts of scholars to study Lovecraft's personal papers? Was he a raving anti-semite? Was he just a garden-variety asshole? Some elaboration would be nice before I decide whether to be angry at some who's been dead for half a century.
https://strippersguide.blogspot.com/search?q=derleth
I thought this was intriguing- a 1938 article by writer August Derleth on his hobby of collecting newspaper comic strips.
In his lifetime, Derleth was best known as a writer of mainstream novels set in his native Wisconsin. Since his death, he has become more famous for editing and publishing the horror fiction of his friend H. P. Lovecraft. During his life, he occasionally wrote articles about subjects that interested him.
Here he wrote a piece for the New England magazine "The Book Collector's Packet" about his hobby of scrapbooking comic strips. Derleth has some interesting views on the form from about half-way through its existence. He expresses admiration for some of the comics that posters on this sub like, such as Krazy Kat and Everett True.
August Derleth started his life as a normal member of society, a simple worker for a merchant guild. Until the fateful day that an Illithid raid attacked the city of Rashemen. He was taken, and implanted with a mindflayer tadpole. This event would shape all that comes after. The tadpole attempted to do what is was born to do, but some combination of luck and will made this task impossible.
The ceremorposis never completed, the tadpole subjugated after a battle of wills that found August the victor. Naturally, this would have resulted in the Illithids killing him, but fate twisted the knife yet again. Conflict between a band of Fomoran raiders and the Illithid colony resulted in August being accidentally shunted into the feydark- not a freindly place to visit- but it was an escape from immediate death.
August barely managed to escape his latest certain death sentence by making a pact with a feydark entity (Hexblade patron) and eventually following a raiding party back out into the Prime Material Plane, and now finds himself alone, barely alive, and just a bit touched in the head....
Str 8 Dex14 Con 14 Int 10 Wis 12 Cha 17
Human Male Eyes: Blue Height 6'0" Hair Bald Skin Fair Age 40 Weight 160lb.
Left eye is markedly bloodshot, and that eye bleeds whenever he casts a spell
tattoos on his head/ face
Haunted One background
Wears a chain shirt, armed with a shortsword, a couple of daggers, and a wand.
https://www.pythonline.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/valkyrie-tattoo-o-144.jpg
the round "signpost" part on top of the head,
maybe have the wings surrounding the eyes with the points running down the face to the sides of the mouth
I am thinking similarities to these, but definitely NOT red color scheme; Maybe just a little Pyat Pree (Game of Thrones) vibe..
httpsinfernalmachines.obsidianportal.comcharactersevior
https://i.pinimg.com/474x/ef/c0/0d/efc00df7fa5118dc3b5a14b8a4be8568.jpg
I notice that even the most earnest fans of Lovecraft have sometimes claimed he was collaborating with Clark Ashton Smith and Robert E. Howard, or sharing intricate world-building notes with them, to make some kind of definite shared universe (often without actually quoting letters, and sometimes only quoting letters out of context).
In response to this, I have read an interesting exchange of letters between August Derleth and Clark Ashton Smith, which can all be read here on the Eldritchdark (you have to scroll down close to the bottom):
http://eldritchdark.com/writings/correspondence/
The proper context for these letters: Their dear friend Lovecraft had recently passed away. Derleth was eager to publish Lovecraft's stories together, with the intent of keeping his friend's memory alive, and also of turning them into a standardized "Cthulhu Mythos." He was asking Smith about Lovecraft's world-building details, a subject Smith clearly never considered before.
It's true that Lovecraft and Smith liked to make playful references to their pantheon in their letters, and that Lovecraft spent two early letters explaining to Robert E. Howard the literary (but not in-universe) origin of Cthulhu and the Necronomicon. But the fact remains that the three of them never actually sat down and talked about making a shared universe together. Lovecraft never said to Howard "Hey bro, wassup, do me a solid and mention Azathoth in your next Conan yarn, m'kay? I'll bring Solomon Kane over to Cthulhu's crib next." In fact, it amazes me how little Lovecraft and Howard actually talked about each other's stories; I had to go through countless pages of discussions about history, politics, racism, and other people's stories before I could find just little snippets of references to their own stories.
This is best expressed in these letters between Clark Ashton Smith and August Derleth. In the following quote, Smith basically admits that he and Lovecraft never really fleshed out the Mythos together. And he directly states that his understanding of Lovecraft's fictional world is derived from reading Lovecraft's stories, not from collaborating privately:
"Re the mythology: my own ideas on the subject are taken almost wholly from the stories themselves, especially "The Call of Cthulhu". Oddly enough, I can't find and don't recall any letters in which HPL touched on the general system as he did to you and Dean Farnese."
[http://eldr
... keep reading on reddit ➡
TSIA, what're your thoughts on Derleth? I myself am mixed. I love that he really brought Lovecraft's mythos to more attention and his admiration for it. However, I don't like that he tried to explain the mythos and make the entities understandable. He missed the point. I much prefer it where we can't even begin to understand what they are, let alone their plans and other aspects.
I know the man is looked down upon many for his "additions" to the Mythos but I am sincerely curious to know if there are any tales that Derleth wrote which are good. His story Ithaqua AKA The Snow-Thing seemed interesting. What are your thoughts?
What is the general opinion on Derleth's involvement with the mythos? I personally hate most of the things with his name on it and want to know if I'm alone in this? I feel like he tries to give a reason and a method to madness when most of Lovecraft's work for me feel like people finding out dangerous stuff that for the most part it's pretty indifferent to them. Without a reason, without an actual agenda. Just madness and evil. I'm probably wrong, but that's how I feel.
I live in the general area of August Derleth's hometown. Nic pronounces the surname so strangely! It's just "Dur-leth." Nic sort of adds a third syllable in the middle - "Dair-ah-leth". It's super grating every time I hear it. At first I couldn't even understand what he was talking about until like the fourth or fifth time I heard him pronounce the name.
/end rant
I'm writing an essay on the literary mythos H.P. Lovecraft created and how it was used by other writers both during his lifetime and after his death. August Derleth seems to be the most divisive figure among readers since he apparently tried to introduce a more conventional black and white morality to the amoral mythos as well as coining the term "Cthulhu Mythos". I'm familiar with H.P. Lovecraft's original stories, but I haven't read much of the Mythos stories not written by him. What are some Mythos stories from Derleth that you'd recommend? Recommendations written by other Mythos writers are also welcomed!
So I noticed that August Derleth get a lot of hate from Lovecraft fans but why is that? I read that he may had save Lovecraft works from becoming irrevelant. Also did he add anything that was good to the Mythology?
