Buyer Beware!

I received a salient reminder regarding the publishing industry recently, which intersects two of the tent-poles of my life – Yog Sothery and Bookselling. I have lost track of my copy of Lumley’s short story “Rising with Surtsey” and I wanted to look it up for various nefarious purposes. Unable to lay my hands upon it, I decided to see if there was a cheap copy somewhere close by that I could whistle up: The options were either a copy of Lumley’s Beneath the Moors, or Derleth’s collection Tales of the Cthulhu Mythos, into which this story was anthologised sometime after the first edition. Happily, there was a copy of the Grafton reprint of Tales sitting over in Perth, so I laid down my hard-earned and, in due course, it arrived in the mail.

Imagine my surprise: the book I’d just bought contains “The Sister City” and “Cement Surroundings” by Lumley, but not “Rising with Surtsey” which the online description of the work assured me was there. I briefly thought about invoking the returns policy on my purchase but thought better of it: I’d paid peanuts so it wasn’t worth getting litigious over. Also, the book contains some other Lovecraftian works that I didn’t already have - “The Shadow from the Steeple” by Robert Bloch – and printings of stories which I only own in valuable editions which I’m unwilling to use for research purposes – namely, Colin Wilson’s “The Return of the Lloigor”.

So, it wasn’t what I was after, but it was okay.

Later on, I was with a work colleague and we were visiting a client at their home with a view to purchasing their library. As it turned out, their books were highly academic and mostly in another language, which meant the bulk of their stuff was too rarefied for us to put on sale in our shop. We ended up nibbling around the edges of what they had to offer – coffee table books, general works on art or film, novels – until we had enough to make our trip worthwhile. It was then that I noticed an oddity: the Panther edition of Tales of the Cthulhu Mythos from 1975. I asked the client how he came to acquire this and – completely embarrassed – he said one of his kids must have left it there and offered it to me free of charge. Which, of course, I accepted.

Serendipity at work. Literally.

This copy of the book is an early re-print still proudly declaring itself to be “Volume 1”; the list of stories is identical to Derleth’s 1969 original line-up, without a sign of Robert Bloch, Ramsey Campbell, or Brian Lumley. It also fails to include HPL’s “Haunter of the Dark”, but given that tale’s squirrelly ending, I’m not fussed.

The problem identified therefore is this: when a bookseller lists a book online, especially a cheap paperback such as these two books, they will waste as little time as possible on it, in order to make the item worth their while. Getting a book ready for an online sale requires that it be cleaned (and, if necessary, repaired), catalogued, priced, photographed and then uploaded to the Internet. That’s maybe half-an-hour’s work all up if it’s done properly, and reducing this time spent makes the book even more cost-effective. And so, a dealer will re-use an old listing from a previous sale, or cut-and-paste book information from another online dealer’s listing for the same book. Of course, in this instance, it wasn’t the same book. The Grafton copy I saw online and which I’d purchased, contained a chapter listing for an earlier edition than this one; whoever catalogued this book just appropriated the information from another source.

This begs the question as to what edition of the book contains which stories? Each time this collection gets published, copyright is requested from the owners of the material and, obviously in the case of guys like Campbell and Lumley, they get to say ‘yes’, or they say ‘no’ and offer another tale which they think might need another run around the block. Try to remember how many anthologies you’ve seen with “Cold Print” or “The Fairground Horror” – these stories get around a lot. This means that if you’re after a particular story, you need to do your research.

In the interests of saving other investigators the trials I’ve been through, I’m including the chapter listings for these two collections below. Nowadays, it’s getting ever more difficult to find copies of the seminal Mythos tales, so unless you’ve got lots of cash to splash about, you need to be canny. If you’re thinking of buying an anthology of Lovecraftiana online, remember to contact the dealer first to confirm that the book is actually the one you’re after. Don’t feel bad about doing this – it’s our job after all!

DERLETH, August (ed.), “Tales of the Cthulhu Mythos”, Panther Books Ltd./Granada Publishing Ltd., Frogmore, St. Albans, Herts., UK, 1975.

Octavo; paperback; 239pp. Moderate wear; covers and spine well-rubbed, edgeworn and creased; text block and page edges toned, with a number written in ink to the bottom edge; an old price written in ink to the front cover; retailer’s ink stamp and previous owner’s ink inscription to the first page; some mild moisture damage to the lower half of the text block. Good.

Introduction: “The Cthulhu Mythos”, August Derleth

“The Call of Cthulhu”, HPL

“The Return of the Sorcerer”, Clark Ashton Smith

“Ubbo-Sathla”, Clark Ashton Smith

“The Black Stone”, Robert E. Howard

“The Hounds of Tindalos”, Frank Belknap Long

“The Space Eaters”, Frank Belknap Long

“The Dweller in Darkness”, August Derleth

“Beyond the Threshold”, August Derleth

“The Salem Horror”, Henry Kuttner

“The Haunter of the Graveyard”, J. Vernon Shea

DERLETH, August (ed.), “Tales of the Cthulhu Mythos”, Grafton Books/HarperCollinsPublishers, Hammersmith London, 1988 (fourth impression).

Octavo; paperback; 508pp. Moderate wear; slightly rolled; covers lightly edgeworn; spine creased; text block and page edges lightly toned; previous owner’s ink inscription to the title page. Good to very good.

Introduction: “The Cthulhu Mythos”, August Derleth

“The Call of Cthulhu”, HPL

“The Return of the Sorcerer”, Clark Ashton Smith

“Ubbo-Sathla”, Clark Ashton Smith

“The Black Stone”, Robert E. Howard

“The Hounds of Tindalos”, Frank Belknap Long

“The Space Eaters”, Frank Belknap Long

“The Dweller in Darkness”, August Derleth

“Beyond the Threshold”, August Derleth

“The Salem Horror”, Henry Kuttner

“The Haunter of the Graveyard”, J. Vernon Shea

“The Shambler from the Stars”, Robert Bloch

“The Haunter of the Dark”, HPL

“The Shadow from the Steeple”, Robert Bloch

“Notebook Found in a Deserted House”, Robert Bloch

“Cold Print”, Ramsey Campbell

“The Sister City”, Brian Lumley

“Cement Surroundings”, Brian Lumley

“The Deep Ones”, James Wade

“The Return of the Lloigor”, Colin Wilson

Biographical Notes

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