August Derleth

I was born 24 February 1909, in Sauk City, a small, largely German village, pleasantly situated on the west bank of the Wisconsin River in south central Wisconsin, one of two children of William Julius and Rose Louise (Volk) Derleth, who were, respectively, of French-Bavarian and Prussian-Pennsylvania Dutch ancestry. My writing career had been decided upon before I left St. Aloysius parochial school at Sauk City, and, indeed, at thirteen I wrote my first stories, certain that I could do as well -- or as badly -- as the authors of the short "filler" stories which followed the feature accounts of Old and Young King Brady: Detective, in Secret Service, which supplemented my reading of The Young Catholic Messenger, the novels of Father Finn, the nature lore of Thornton Burgess, and the mysteries of A. Conan Doyle and Sax Rohmer. Three years later I sold my first story to Weird Tales.

My writing is in several distinct veins -- apart from occasional history (The Wisconsin, The Milwaukee Road); biography (Still Small Voice, H.P.L.: A Memoir); journals (Village Year, Village Daybook); etc. -- historical novels of (a) the Sac Prairie Saga (Wind Over Wisconsin, Restless Is the River, Shadow of Night -- which was accorded the accolade of being one of the best Catholic books of 1943 by the Cardinal Hayes Literature Committee) and (b) a secondary Wisconsin Saga (Bright Journey, The House on the Mound, The Hills Stand Watch); short stories of the Sac Prairie Saga (Country Growth, Sac Prairie People, Wisconsin in Their Bones); poetry (fifteen volumes, for the Selected Poems, among which, Edgar Lee Masters wrote one of his rare introductions); modern novels (Sweet Genevieve, Evening in Spring, The Shield of the Valiant); juveniles (The Moon Tenders, The Mill Creek Irregulars, The Pinkertons Ride Again, Country of the Hawk, The Captive Island, etc.); three Vision Books -- Father Marquette and the Great River, St. Ignatius and the Company of Jesus, Columbus and the New World -- part of a series for which the publishers and authors received the Apostolic Blessing of His Holiness, Pope John XXIII; supernatural fiction (The Lurker at the Threshold, Someone in the Dark, The Mask of Cthulhu, etc.); pastiches ("In Re: Sherlock Holmes", The Memoirs of Solar Pons, The Return of Solar Pons); and mystery novels (No Future for Luana, Mischief in the Lane, etc.)

An Autobiography.

Soon after Lovecraft’s death, Derleth received a letter from Wandrei with news of the death of Lovecraft on March 15, 1937. In the afternoon of receipt of the letter, Derleth wrote Wandrei “that something should be done to keep Lovecraft’s work in print”. The two young writers later agreed that collecting the stories was not enough; they needed to be published. They did so and passed along the manuscript to Derleth’s then publisher, Charles Scribner’s Sons, which rejected the idea. Thus, Arkham House was born.

www.arkhamhouse.com

The "Cthulhu Mythos" is largely the invention of, not H.P. Lovecraft, but August Derleth.

The Derleth Mythos.

Es innegable que existe en la concepción de Lovecraft una similitud fundamental con los mitos cristianos, especialmente con el de la expulsión de Satanás del Paraíso y el poder del mal (...) Tal como Lovecraft concibió las deidades o fuerzas de sus Mitos, estaban, inicialmente, los Dioses Arquetípicos, ninguno de los cuales, salvo Nodens, Señor del Gran Abismo, es designado con su nombre; estos Dioses Arquetípicos eran deidades benévolas, representan las fuerzas del bien y vivían en o cerca de Betelgeuse, en la constelación de Orión, decidiéndose muy raramente a intervenir en la incesante lucha entre los poderes del mal y las razas de la Tierra. Estos poderes del mal eran conocidos como los Primigenios o Primordiales...

Los Mitos de Cthulhu.

De todos modos, aquella mitología no constituía ninguna novedad. Todas las creencias religiosas, todos los mitos, cualquiera que sea la cultura a que pertenecen, poseen una cierta analogía en sus fundamentos. Siempre giran en torno a la lucha entre las fuerzas del Bien y las fuerzas del Mal (...) Los Primigenios y los Dioses Arquetípicos que representaban el Bien original. Los Primordiales representaban el Mal. Como sucede en muchas religiones, apenas se nombraba a los dioses benefactores, en este caso, a los Dioses Arquetípicos. En cambio, se citaba continuamente a los Primordiales, que aún eran adorados y servidos por multitud de seguidores esparcidos por toda la Tierra y los espacios interplanetarios. Los Primordiales no sólo combatían a los Dioses Arquetípicos, sino que luchaban también entre sí, en un empeño supremo por la dominación final. Eran, en suma, representaciones de las fuerzas elementales, y cada uno correspondía a un elemento: Cthulhu, al agua; Cthugha, al fuego; Itaqua, al aire; Hastur, a los espacios siderales. Otros, representaban las grandes fuerzas primitivas: Shub-Niggurath, Mensajera de los Dioses, la fertilidad; Yog-Sothoth, el contínuo tempo-espacial; Azathoth, en cierto modo, el principio del mal.

El Sello de R'lyeh.