August Derleth's birthday rolled around a couple of weeks ago. I intended to do this post in honor of it, but the arrival of John D. Haefele's Lovecraft: The Great Tales disrupted my plans. Haefele's new book will surely disrupt much more than that, just as his A Look Behind the Derleth Mythos shook things up a few years back.

To quickly recap things... Back in May, 2020, I did a blog entry on In Lovecraft's Shadow, which was published in 1998. That book contained most of Derleth's Mythos-related short stories and poetry. It was beautifully illustrated by the legendary Stephen Fabian and those illos were the focus of my post. However, the book is so packed with great art from Fabian that I was only able to reach page three before having to call a halt.

This post, Part Two of what looks to be a four- or five-part series, picks up from where Part One left off, covering two more chapters from In Lovecraft's Shadow.

Let’s get eldritch, shall we?

Derleth’s ‘North Woods’ Mythos tales are rightly considered among his best. Growing up in northern Wisconsin, Augie had a real feel for the endless snow-covered forests that feature in these stories of the Wind-Walker and Ithaqua.

I love Stephen Fabian’s understated and foreboding section heading here. The man is an underrated genius.

This is the frontipiece for ‘The Thing That Walked on the Wind ’, with Fabian masterfully capturing the cosmic dread and majesty of Derleth’s creation. As always, his borders on this illo add that extra touch of class.

Some cases that the Royal Canadian Mounted Police have to handle are a bit more eldritch than others…

Lovecraft was quite impressed with ‘Ithaqua’. Later, Brian Lumley would write two novels featuring Ithaqua which can only be termed ‘eldritch sword and planet’. Of course, many other tales of Ithaqua have been written over the last five decades, many of the best being collected by Robert M. Price in The Ithaqua Cycle.

You can run but you can’t hide.

This is the frontispiece for ‘The Dweller in Darkness’, which I consider one of Derleth’s most effective tales. Set in Wisconsin’s northweoods region, it is imbued with isolation and brooding horror.

We’ve now reached page sixty-one, which heralds Part III. Fabian’s illustration depicts one of the abominable, hybrid Tcho-Tchos looking back at the forbidden city of Alaozar.

Robert E. Howard and H.P. Lovecraft were both fond of ‘Lair of the Star-Spawn’, which introduced the dreaded Tcho-Tcho People to the Mythos. Probably the most effective use of the Tcho-Tchos, in my opinion, would be T.E.D. Klein’s classic tale, ‘Black Man With a Horn’.

Few artists can match Fabian when it comes to depicting fantastical sailing ships.

‘Spawn of the Maelstrom is not one of Augie’s better Mythos tales, but it was only the second one he ever wrote. Fabian turns in a fine illo for it. You can also see the batrachian initial here that was used throughout the book.

Derleth’s collaborations with Schorer—all done at pulp speed when he was barely in his twenties—were not of the highest quality, but Fabian turned in an effectively macabre illo for this one.

‘The House in the Oaks’ was a ‘posthumous collaboration’, with Derleth completing an unfinished tale by REH. To me, Derleth did a good—but not great—job finishing a story that seemed to have excellent macabre possibilities. Apparently, this was one of the last stories Derleth ever worked on.

Once again, Fabian turns in a beautiful, evocative illustration. It is quite accurate to what Howard wrote, as well.

As can be found throughout In Lovecraft’s Shadow, certain parts of larger illustrations are used as spot illos in the stories. In this case, it is the Justin Geoffrey figure from the larger illo above. This illustration has outsized significance because it is one of the very few depictions of REH’s ‘mad poet’ to be found anywhere. As it turns out, it closely resembles the portrait I commissioned from Mr. Zarono for an appendix in the unpublished book about Friedrich von Junzt that Keith Taylor and I wrote a few years ago. The resemblance is not really surprising, since Howard provided a detailed description of Geoffrey in the text.

Well, let’s hope it doesn’t take nine months for me to get Part Three posted!

Scans courtesy of Bill Thom and the Stephen Fabian Fan Facebook Group.