Sailing the Seas of Fantasy on “The Ship of Ishtar”
Regular readers of the DMR blog should be well acquainted with A. Merritt, whose 137th birthday we celebrate today. In his heyday from the late teens of the twentieth century to the early 1950s, he was arguably the most popular fantasy author in America. His novel, The Ship of Ishtar was voted by the readers of Argosy as the most popular story to have appeared in the pages or Argosy or All Story, consigning Edgar Rice Burroughs’ Tarzan of the Apes to second place.
For today’s birthday tribute to Merritt, I thought that I’d focus on that classic novel, which was originally serialized in Argosy All-Story Weekly between November 8, 1924 and December 13, 1924, prior to being published in hardcover by G. P. Putnam’s Sons in 1926. Following that, it was reprinted many times, including in magazine form in Fantastic Novels (March 1948) and numerous paperback reprints from Avon. These reprints use the text from the Putnam’s edition, but that text was edited by Putnam’s and was not Merritt’s preferred text.
Instead, Merritt preferred his original text, as it appeared in Argosy All-Story Weekly, and which was published for the first time in hardcover in 1949 (six years after Merritt’s death) by Borden Publishing Company. The Borden edition features five great illustrations by Virgil Finlay which were done for this edition. Finlay was actually commissioned to do six illustrations for Borden, but perhaps due in part to the birth of his daughter Lail, he only did five, and as a result the dust jacket art is not by Finlay, but rather by Edgar Cirlin. My copy of this edition contains the following inscription by Finlay: “In Memory of A. Merritt, the Lord of Fantasy; Virgil Finlay”. This edition was later reprinted in 2009 by Paizo, which includes not only the five Finlay illustrations he did for Borden, but also contains those that he did for the novel’s appearance in Fantastic Novels.
When I acquired the rights to Merritt’s works a few years ago, two banker’s boxes worth of papers came with them, and I’ve had great fun poring through that material. I’ve also had the privilege of going through a lot of Merritt ephemera that had been collected by my good friend, Bob Weinberg, perhaps Merritt’s number one fan. Some of the rare material from both sources is reproduced here.
Originally, Merritt wrote “The Ship of Ishtar” as a 16,000 word novelette, which he sold to The Frank A. Munsey Company (at that time publisher of both Argosy and All-Story Weekly, which would soon be combined into Argosy All-Story Weekly). Merritt received a check for that novelette for $175, dated February 21, 1919. Munsey editor Robert Davis, however, told Merritt that he wanted Merritt to expand the story into a novel, and so the novelette version never appeared in print. Although it took Merritt a few years to do so, he finally did complete the requested expansion, and the novel version is the story we have today. Merritt’s original novelette has been lost.
Merritt finished the novel version of The Ship of Ishtar in late 1923 or early 1924, and received two checks for it from Munsey, each dated January 18, 1924 (one for $1,200 and one for $125). I’m assuming that the treasurer made an error with the amount on the initial check, and rather than tear it up and issue a corrected check, just issued a supplemental check.
In September 1924, Merritt realized that Munsey had made an error in the legends on the checks for The Ship of Ishtar, and that he had sold all rights to the novel. As this was not the agreement he had with Davis on the novel (and Merritt was looking for a book publisher for the novel who would publish it after its serialization), he wrote a letter to Davis dated September 11, 1924. The “R” scrawled across the middle of this letter is by Robert Davis; he often did this to indicate approval internally as he passed the letter along at Munsey. Davis then wrote back to Merritt, by letter dated September 12, 1924, confirming their arrangement.
As mentioned, while Putnam’s published the first hardcover edition of The Ship of Ishtar in 1926, Merritt’s preferred text would not see print in hardcover until the Borden Memorial Edition in 1949. Merritt’s widow, Eleanor, signed a contract with Borden on July 27, 1948 for that edition, which called for a $500 advance. To close out this birthday look at The Ship of Ishtar, I’ll run two letters to Mrs. Merritt regarding the Borden edition – one from the publisher and one from Brandt & Brandt, the firm which acted as Mrs. Merritt’s publishing agent for many years.
