| Starting bid | £50 |
| Estimate | £100 - £150 |
| Absentee deadline | Dec 3, 2025, 5:00:00 PM |
DERLETH, August (1909-71). The Trail of Cthulhu. Sauk City, Wisconsin: Arkham House, 1962. 8vo (187 x 135mm). Half title, woodcut printer's device on the title. Original black cloth, the spine lettered in gilt, the dust-jacket by Richard Taylor with the price of $4.00 unclipped and with a photographed portrait of the author by Bruce Montgomery on the lower wrapper (some staining to the internal edges of the jacket, lower wrapper lightly browned, some minor rubbing at the corners). Provenance: former owner's signatures on the front free endpaper and the half title rubbed out with some corresponding thinning to the paper. FIRST EDITION. A printed note at the end states: "Two thousand five hundred copies of this book have been printed by The Collegiate Press, George Banta Company, Inc., Menasha, Wisconsin, from Linotype Garamond on Winnebago Eggshell. The binding cloth is Holliston Black Novelex." "To the Cthulhu Mythos, that curious myth-pattern developed by the late H. P. Lovecraft, August Derleth has added many stories, but none as comprehensive in its allusions as this novel in five related episodes ... No one but August Derleth could have captured so skillfully the mood and design of H. P. Lovecraft's Cthulhu Mythos and yet done so in a manner all his own" (from the front turn-in). The "five related episodes" originally appeared as separate stories in "Weird Tales" between 1944 and 1953. Please note that the original dust-jacket has been photographed in its modern protective archival Mylar wrapper, thereby avoiding any risk of damage through its temporary removal. Bleiler The Guide to Supernatural Fiction (1983) 522; Jaffery The Arkham House Companion (1992) 70.