August William Derleth (February 24, 1909 – July 4, 1971) was an American writer and anthologist. Though best remembered as the first publisher of the writings of H. P. Lovecraft, and for his own contributions to the Cthulhu Mythos genre of horror, Derleth was a prolific writer in several genres, including regional writings, historical fiction, poetry, detective fiction,science fiction, and biography.
Derleth, a Guggenheim Fellow in 1938, conside...
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August William Derleth (February 24, 1909 – July 4, 1971) was an American writer and anthologist. Though best remembered as the first publisher of the writings of H. P. Lovecraft, and for his own contributions to the Cthulhu Mythos genre of horror, Derleth was a prolific writer in several genres, including regional writings, historical fiction, poetry, detective fiction,science fiction, and biography.
Derleth, a Guggenheim Fellow in 1938, considered his most serious work to be his ambitious Sac Prairie Saga, a series of fiction, historical fiction, poetry, and non-fiction naturalist works designed to memorialize life in the Wisconsin he knew. Derleth was a pioneering naturalist and conservationist in his writing.
The son of William Julius Derleth and his wife Rose Louise Volk, he grew up in Sauk City, Wisconsin. He was educated in local parochial and public high school. Derleth wrote his first fiction at age 13. Forty rejected stories and three years later, according to anthologist...
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