Richard Taylor’s Lovecraftiana

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The Mask of Cthulhu (1958) by August Derleth.

To look at any of the cartoons drawn for the New Yorker by Richard Taylor (1902–1970) you wouldn’t suspect that the Canadian artist had spent a few years at the end of the 1950s creating a handful of book covers for Arkham House. I’ve never read much about the history of August Derleth’s publishing endeavours so I can’t say how Taylor came to be offered this work. An unlikely choice he may have been but he did a better job with his five covers than many of the artists in the 60s and 70 who attempted to illustrate the eldritch horrors of Lovecraft, Derleth and co. The hand-drawn titles and monochrome colours make the quintet an attractive series within the Arkham House catalogue as a whole.

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The Shuttered Room and Other Pieces (1959) edited by August Derleth.

A collection of Lovecraft’s fiction fragments, some of which have been expanded by Derleth. Also remembrances of the writer by Lovecraft’s friends, plus essays and other material.

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Dreams and Fancies (1962) by HP Lovecraft.

A cover I’ve known for years as a result of its being featured in that cult volume of mine, The Fantasy Book by Franz Rottensteiner. (Previously.) I used to wonder about the contents of this book, Dreams and Fancies being an unfamiliar title that was absent from the paperback reprints of Lovecraft’s fiction. The title piece is another Derleth fabulation, a collage of Lovecraft’s transcribed dreams as they were recounted in letters to various friends. This is followed by some of the short fiction and poetry that reworked these dreams. The collection ends with the aeon-spanning novella, The Shadow Out of Time, which Tayor has taken as his subject for the cover art.

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The Trail of Cthulhu (1962) by August Derleth.

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The Horror from the Hills (1963) by Frank Belknap Long.


Note: I’m a little sceptical that the Richard Taylor responsible for these covers is the same one who was drawing cartoons for the New Yorker. The only source for this is isfdb.org, a site whose artist attributions are sometimes erroneous. If anyone can confirm or deny the accuracy of this information then please leave a comment.

Elsewhere on { feuilleton }
The book covers archive
The Lovecraft archive

4 thoughts on “Richard Taylor’s Lovecraftiana”

  1. Those are GREAT! A friend of mine had a copy of HORROR OF THE HILLS at one time in his collection but sold it off in the 90’s. Hard to find but expensive when you do!!!

  2. Marc: Yes, all original Arkham House editions are collectible and therefore costly. I only own one of them, one of the less interesting titles (The Survivor and Others) but it’s still expensive if you want to buy a similar copy today.

    Maria: It’s the angles, probably. Although I think aliens should use non-repeating parquet deformations when tiling their non-Euclidean rooms.

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