Posts Tagged ‘Robert W. Chambers’

Library Additions: Little Books By Robert W. Chambers and “Robert W. Chambers”

Tuesday, April 19th, 2022

Two recent “Little” books from Borderlands Press, one with a hilarious typo right on the cover.

  • Chambers, Robert W. (Lisa Morton, editor). A Little Yellow Book of Carcosa and Kings. Borderlands Press, 2022. First edition hardback, #462 of 500 copies signed by Morton, a Fine copy, sans dust, as issued. Four linked horror tales, all reprinted from The King in Yellow, all set in a then-future United States. Now sold out from the publisher. I have one copy of this still available through Lame Excuse Books.

  • “Chambers, Robert W.” (i.e., Arthur Machen)(Bentley Little, editor). A Little Brown Book of Unnatural Narratives. Borderlands Press, 2022. First edition hardback, #462 of 500 copies signed by Little, a Fine copy, sans dust, as issued. Three stories (“The Inmost Light,” “The Shining Pyramid” and “The Novel of the White Powder”) all reprinted from previous Machen collections. Hilariously, Borderlands accidentally kept the author embossing for Chambers from the above volume on the cover design when they printed this Machen collection, which is probably the funniest mistake since “Karl Edward Wanger” on the first state dust jacket of Gods in Darkness. With inserted slip apologizing for the typo laid in. I’ll have a few copies of this available in the next Lame Excuse Books catalog.

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    Library Additions: Hippocampus Press Trade Paperbacks

    Friday, August 13th, 2021

    Ordered a bunch of books from Hippocampus Press, some of which came out under the radar last year. All of these state “First Edition” but are essentially POD books, and all were bought at the usual discount.

  • Chambers, Robert W. (S. T. Joshi, editor). The Harbor-Master: Best Weird Stories of Robert W. Chambers. Hippocampus Press, 2021. First edition trade paperback original, a Fine copy. Includes some supernatural stories not in The King in Yellow.
  • (Howard, Robert E.) Charles Hoffman and Marc Cerasini. Robert E. Howard: A Closer Look. Hippocampus Press, 2020. First edition trade paperback original thus, a Fine copy. Critical companion on Howard’s work greatly expanded and revised from a 1987 Starmont Reader’s Guide edition.
  • Lovecraft, H.P. (S. T. Joshi and David E. Schultz, editors). Letters to Alfred Galpin and Others. Hippocampus Press, 2020. First edition trade paperback original thus, a Fine copy. “A new edition, augmented here with over 200 new pages of material.” Primarily letters Lovecraft wrote to his amateur press association correspondents.
  • Lovecraft, H.P. (S. T. Joshi and David E. Schultz, editors). Letters to E. Hoffman Price and Richard F. Searight. Hippocampus Press, 2020. First edition trade paperback original, a Fine copy. Hoffman was an acclaimed Weird Tales writer in his own right, and also friends with Robert E. Howard (who is a frequent topic in these letters). Searlight also had pieces appear in Weird Tales.
  • Lovecraft, H.P. (S. T. Joshi and David E. Schultz, editors). Letters to Family and Family Friends Volume 1 with Letters to Family and Family Friends Volume 2. Hippocampus Press, 2020. First edition trade paperback originals, both Fine copies. Over 1,000 pages of letters, with page numbers across both volumes, plus a Glossary, an Index, etc.
  • Lovecraft, H.P. (S. T. Joshi and David E. Schultz, editors). Letters to Rheinhart Kleiner and Others. Hippocampus Press, 2020. First edition trade paperback original thus, a Fine copy. “A new edition, augmented here with nearly 250 new pages of material.” Letters Lovecraft wrote to one of his oldest friends, having known Kleiner since 1915. Other correspondence includes letters to other amateur journalists and members of the New York City-based Kalem Club.
  • Shirley, John. A Sorcerer of Atlantis with A Prince in the Kingdom of Ghosts. Hippocampus Press, 2021. First edition trade paperback original, a Fine copy. Shirley doing weird adventure pulp! The first story features two adventurers in Atlantis battling bizarre monsters accompanied by a Princess of Mu. The second features a murdered Korean American who finds himself a prince in the afterlife. Looks like great fun.
  • Smith, Clark Ashton, and August Derleth. Eccentric, Impractical Devils: The Letters of August Derleth and Clark Ashton Smith. (David E. Schultz and S.T. Joshi, editors). Hippocampus Press, 2020. First edition trade paperback original, a Fine copy. Derleth, of course, published many of Smith’s collections at Arkham House, and both men where appearing in the pages of Weird Tales in the 1920s, but they didn’t correspond until Lovecraft introduced them to each other in 1930.
  • (Smith, Clark Ashton) S.T. Joshi, David E. Schultz and Scott Conners. Clark Ashton Smith: A Comprehensive Bibliography. Hippocampus Press, 2020. First edition trade paperback original, a Fine copy. Much-needed comprehensive bibliography for Smith’s works, especially since Donald Sidney-Fryer’s Emperor of Dreams is not only out of date, but so poorly organized as to be nearly useless.

    • Copies of all of these will be available in the forthcoming Lame Excuse Books catalog (currently in progress).

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    Book Acquisition: Robert W. Chambers’ The King in Yellow

    Wednesday, November 7th, 2012

    Nineteen times out of twenty, when you put in a lowball “what the hell” bid at an auction, you don’t win. You keep doing it because of that twentieth time.

    This was one of those twentieth times.

    Robert W. Chambers. The King In Yellow. F. Tennyson Neely (as part of their Neely’s Prismatic Library series), 1895. First edition, first printing of green cloth with brown lettering, with lizard design on cover and review of In the Quarter at rear. Rubbing and soiling to cloth with front hinge cracked, top front corner and bottom rear binding soft, and lacking front free endpaper. The auction description said fair, but save the front free endpaper, the book looks intact, so I would grade this Good only. Jones & Newman, Horror: 100 Best Books, item 19 (appreciation by H. P. Lovecraft). Beliler, The Guide to Supernatural Fiction, item 364. Bleiler, The Checklist of Science Fiction and Supernatural Fiction (1978), page 41. Locke, A Spectrum of Fantasy, page 49. Barron, Horror Literature, item 2-12.

    Short story collection, roughly half of which are weird tales, most of which reference the play The King in Yellow, which drives people mad. (If memory serves, those stories also count as science fiction, being set in a future dictatorship.) One of the most important supernatural works of the late 19th century, and a huge influence on H.P. Lovecraft, who incorporated elements from it into the Cthulhu Mythos.

    Bought for just over $60 (including buyer’s premium and shipping) at auction. Earlier than the period I usual collect for, but I couldn’t pass up the chance to pick up a keystone work (even a considerably less than perfect copy) at a bargain price.

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