A Man of Property (1955-66)

At thirty I became a man of property. I bought for a thousand dollars -- the sole capital I had managed to save from the scant earnings of my pen -- the ten acres of the old Lueders homestead... When the house was built and enclosed, I had little more means than Thoreau; but I had more varied ambitions, wider horizons, and many debts and obligations. ...I went about putting the foundations under the castles I had built in the air during my childhood...

          -- August Derleth, Return to Walden West

Arkham House wasn't only the name of Derleth and Wandrei's publishing company. Many people also knew Derleth's own home in Sauk City by that name -- hardly surprising, since all his business enterprises, the publishing, the writing, were carried on from the same place. Derleth didn't only live "above the shop" -- he lived in the middle of it.

Derleth had his own house built in 1939. He poured money into its construction. As this was at the same time as he was spending money on setting up Arkham House, Derleth was quite literally mortgaging himself to the hilt. He had to keep on writing, constantly producing and selling a huge quantity and variety of work, in order to keep a roof over his head. Unfortunately, of course, the continued quantity could not always be matched by constant quality!

The new house was named Place of Hawks. It was the subject of much admiration and criticism. Derleth reported that the world-famous architect Frank Lloyd Wright had travelled over from Taliesin and said that the place was a barn. A bull will be living in it, came the retort.

The large house, with its thick stone walls and panelled rooms, would be Derleth's home until his death. Members of his family still live there today.

Meanwhile, Derleth's output increased. His workload increased too, with Arkham House and his growing commitments to teaching and lecturing, and the literary editorship of the Madison newspaper Capital-Times.

Throughout the later 1950's and into the 1960's, with a few notable exceptions, Derleth's books were comparatively lightweight -- biographies and novels for teenage readers, more collections of his Lovecraft and Conan Doyle pastiches, and several collections of poetry.

Derleth's work was also no longer being published by major publishers. His early novels had appeared from Scribner's -- one of the most prestigious publishing houses in the United States. His editor there was Maxwell Perkins, who had helped shape the careers of such writers as F Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway, and Thomas Wolfe.

Unfortunately Derleth and his editor had not always had a smooth working relationship, and frequently disagreed about Derleth's direction as a novelist. Perkins correctly had reservations about The Shield of the Valiant, and his agreement to publication in 1945 was almost reluctant. It turned out to be the last "serious" novel that Derleth would publish for over a decade. Perkins' death in 1947 also effectively ensured that there was no going back. The ever-versatile Derleth had to move his writing into a multitude of other directions. He soon lived up to Sinclair Lewis' criticisms, and he remained on the financial treadmill for the rest of his life.