The Amazing John Martin Collection Of H.P. Lovecraft In Weird Tales

by Stephen J. Gertz

March 1938.
First Weird Tales appearance of Lovecraft's
Beyond the Wall of Sleep.
Cover art by Margaret Brundage.

John K, Martin is, perhaps, best known as the far-sighted founder and publisher of Black Sparrow Press who fostered Charles Bukowski's career as patron and publisher. For that alone he has entered literary history. Yet few are aware that Martin has also been one of the great book collectors of our time. Now 82 years old, John has put his superlative collection of H.P. Lovecraft in Weird Tales, the famed pulp magazine, up for sale.

A remarkable collection of eighty gorgeous issues amassed over decades, each - incredibly -  is in fine to very fine condition with yapp edges intact; these old pulps are usually  encountered in rubbed, sunned, toned, and torn shape.

We recently had an opportunity to talk to John Martin about the collection.

March 1937.
Contains Lovecraft's The Picture in the House.
Cover art by Margaret Brundage.

BT: When did you start collecting the pulps?

JKM: I began collecting books in general in 1950 when I was 20. At that time I was attracted to both Lovecraft and the pulps that published him. Over the years I collected and then disbursed many Lovecraft items, often in trades. About 15 years ago I decided to collect Lovecraft seriously once again, and to concentrate on the pulps, pamphlets, fanzines, leaflets, etc.

BT: Each copy in the collection is in Fine condition. Were you always aware of condition when you first began to collect them? (Not something young collectors generally pay attention to).

JKM: I learned very quickly that pulps and first editions in poor or average condition were not worth the time and money it took to collect them. That fine copies were essential. Also, I took more pleasure in holding and reading the individual items if they were in the same, or nearly the same, condition as when they were published. Somehow it turned back the clock for me to the time of first publication.

September 1937.
First Weird Tales appearance of Lovecraft's poem,
Psychopomos.
Cover art by Margaret Brundage.

BT: When you began was it your intent to seriously collect or did it sort of snowball from informal to committed?

JKM: I was a serious collector from day one but I didn't begin to put together this current Lovecraft collection until about 1995.

BT: Weird Tales exclusively or others as well?

JKM: As per above, I collected Weird Tales plus every Lovecraft periodical publication I could find published up until c. 1940 (of which there are hundreds). Some are so fragile (and rare) they almost disintegrate in your hands.

July 1942.
First Weird Tales appearance of Lovecraft's
Herbert West: Reanimator, Part 2. The Plague Demon.
Cover art by Margaret Brundage.

BT: Was H.P. Lovecraft your area of interest and  Weird Tales followed?

JKM: Then and now, my first interest was Lovecraft, followed by a desire to collect the first edition of everything he ever wrote.

BT: Where did you find the stuff?

JKM: In the early days, copies of Weird Tales could be found in used magazine stores and some bookstores for 25 cents apiece. Since I began this current collection in 1995, I was able to utilize the internet. Also I was able to go back to several dealers from whom I had purchased Lovecraft material in earlier times.

The prices for Lovecraft material (and most literary first editions) have ballooned beyond all reason. It's a prime example of hyper-inflation. A 1920s fine copy of Weird Tales with a Lovecraft contribution, can cost from $1500 to $5000, or more in a few cases.

May 1941.
First appearance of Part One of Lovecraft's
The Case of Charles Dexter Ward.
Adapted to film by Roger Corman in 1963
as The Haunted Palace.
Cover art by Hannes Bok.

BT: Why Lovecraft?

JKM: As an impressionable, unsophisticated 20 year old, I read a story called "The Doom That Came to Sarnath." I was hooked. (It took me more than 50 years to find a copy of the June 1920 issue of "The Scot" where this story first appeared.)

BT: Favorite Lovecraft in Weird Tales?

JKM: "The Doom That Came to Sarnath" remains my favorite Lovecraft story. (It was reprinted in the June 1938 issue of Weird Tales.

BT:  Have you collected Lovecraft beyond Weird Tales, i.e. Arkham House, etc.?

JKM: I collected the two books what were printed before Lovecraft's death, "The Shunned House" (1928) and "The Shadow Over Innsmouth" (1936).

October 1937.
First appearance in Weird Tales of Lovecraft's
The Shunned House.
Cover art by Margaret Brundage.

BT: You're known for your collection of D.H. Lawrence as well? What other collections have you put together? Is there an underlying theme that unites them in some way?

JKM: I have spent the past 62 years assembling author collection. I sold my D.H. Lawrence collection (that took me 40 years to build) a few years ago. I believe at the time it was by far the most extensive private holding of Lawrence's first editions, manuscripts, letters, artworks, photographs, and association items. Everything was in very fine condition.

Realizing that I am 82 years old and "can't take my books with me," I have also (along with Lovecraft) recently sold my author collections of Henry James, Theodore Dreiser, and Charles Bukowski. I still retain my collections of Ezra Pound, Henry Miller, A.E. Coppard, Saul Bellow and Bernard Malamud, along with several hundred miscellaneous first editions.

May 1938.
First appearance of Lovecraft's poem,
In a Sequestered Churchyard Where Once Poe Walked.
Also first appearance of Robert E. Howard's story, Pigeons From Hell,
which Stephen King called one of the best short stories of the 20th century.
Cover art by Margaret Brundage.

 BT: Any particular reason why you're still holding on to those authors?

JKM: I am not exactly "holding on." I just haven't gotten around to offering them for sale. Also, I MUST be surrounded by books or I'll curl up and die. Also, I LOVE reading these authors over and over. (I think I have read every book I ever bought.).

BT:  After collecting for 62 years do you have any regrets about a book that got away, something sought but never found and acquired, a Holy Grail?

JKM: I never was able to buy a first edition of "Leaves of Grass." Ditto Pound's first book, "A Lume Spento." Ditto, "Sons and Lovers" in a first state dust jacket. My only three big regrets.

July 1933.
First appearances of Lovecraft's
The Dreams of the Witch House and
The Horror in the Museum.
Cover by Margaret Brundage.

BT:  You began collecting when legwork ruled, before the Internet brought the marketplace into collectors' homes, Any thoughts on the difference in experience?

JKM: The difference between collecting books the old fashioned way vs. collecting books over the internet, is the difference between swimming from New York to London or taking a jet.

BT:  Finally, your thoughts on Weird Tales cover art, so many by the great Margaret Brundage?

JKM: You'd have to be blind not to love the Weird Tales covers. Especially the ones from the 1920s and 1930s.

June 1938.
First Weird Tales appearance of Lovecraft's The Doom That Came To Sarnath.
Cover art by Margaret Brundage.

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All images courtesy of Between the Covers, currently offering this collection, with our thanks.
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For Purple Monsters Majesty Above A Nutty Plain

by Stephen J. Gertz

New York: E.P. Dutton, 1949. First separate edition.

 "What mad universe was this that Keith Winton found himself in?
Where purple monsters from the moon roamed the streets with
no one paying any attention to them?"

While strolling in the park one day, in the merry, merry month of May, I was taken by surprise by a pair of purple eyes, purple limbs, purple torso, bad hair day.

Hi, I'm Keith Winton, editor of a pulp science fiction magazine based in a major market - and I ain't  talkin' Trader Joe's. One day (in May), with my trusty co-worker and glamorous girlfriend, Betty, at my side, I visited  my publisher's elegant Borscht Belt estate in the Catskills, just down the road from Grossinger's, up the street from The Concord, around the corner from The Pines, and next door to The Nevele, which is eleven spelled backwards but don't ask me why. We were in a mad universe of upstate New York Jewish resorts and spritzing, tummling comedians. Rim-shot! Laugh? I thought I'd die.

New York: Bantam Books #835, 1950. Cover by Herman Bischoff.
First edition in paperback.

Unfortunately, on that same day an experimental rocket was launched to the Moon. Simultaneously, Betty was launched back to New York. I was alone, then, in my publisher's' garden, lost in thought, when, suddenly, the Moon rocket (whose launch was a friggin' failure) crashed and exploded on the estate (aka Inanity Acres), careening me into a strange but deceptively similar parallel universe. 

Wild-eyed, as you might imagine (if not, imagine it now), I was astonished to discover that credits had replaced dollars; amazed when I encountered scantily-clad pin-up girls who, it turned out, were distaff astronauts with va-va-voom and oh-la-la lunar dreams; and was stupefied when I encountered a Moon race of seven-foot tall purple beings who insouciantly walked down Broadway in New York City as if they were cast members from a parallel universe production of Rogers and Hammerstein's 1949 sock-o South Pacific and belonged there, enjoying one enchanted evening on The Great White Way. Even a cockeyed optimist would look askance at this parade of purple protoplasm engaged in happy talk. How would Earth wash these purple people right out of its hair?

New York: Bantom Books #1253, 1954. Cover by Charles Binger. Reprint.

What mad 1949 universe was I in where Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower makes a cameo appearance? Last I heard he was president of Columbia University and the staff and faculty resented his galavanting around the nation to promote a personal agenda that would one day lead to his nomination and election as President of the United States. Now he's in command of the Venus Sector in defense against the Arcturians with whom we are at war? I like Ike but what mad universe indeed!

Startling Stories - September 1948 - Vol. 18, No. 1
First appearance in print.

And a comic one, yet. Y'know, when a character like yours truly winds up in a science-fiction novel you figure cosmic funereal not interplanetary farce; dying is easy, comedy is hard. But that's exactly what What Mad Universe is, a social and literary satire of modern American life at mid-century and science-fiction genre conventions.

Call me Pirandello minus five but I feel like one character in search of an author, specifically Fredric Brown (1906-1972), who wrote me into  What Mad Universe. I suppose I should consider myself lucky: Brown was a master of the short-short story, often writing fully-developed tales of only one to three pages in length; my story - my life! - could have been dramatically condensed. In 1955, he published Martians Go Home (They Came, They Saw, They Left!), another screwball sci-fi comedy.

London: Grafton, 1987. Artist unknown.

Brown was also a fine mystery writer, his first full-length novel, The Fabulous Clipjoint (1947), winning an Edgar Award. For years prior he wrote hundreds of stories for the pulp magazines of his era.

What Mad Universe has become a classic, one of the most popular speculative fiction novels ever written. It has been reprinted many times.

Paris: Le Rayon Fantastique #21 (Hachette/Gallimard), 1953.
First ppk. edition in French. Cover by Rene Caillé.

It was very popular in France, winning immediate critical acclaim upon its release. Many French critics consider it to be one of the major sci-fi novels of all time. But they are equally ga-ga about Jerry Lewis movies, UFOs in the U.S.A. but laff-fests in France. Vive L'Univers en Folie.

What Mad Universe?

Goodbye, I'm Keith Winton, not to be confused with my cousin, Alfred E. Newman, above.

Below, allow me to serenade you with a little bagatelle I recorded in 1959 under an assumed name when the purple people eaters returned to digest and excrete me.

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BROWN, Fredric. What Mad Universe. New York: E.P. Dutton, 1949. First separate edition. Octavo. 255, [1] pp. Cloth. Dust jacket.

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Tennessee Williams' Sweet Sacred Ibis Of Youth

By Stephen J. Gertz

Cover by C.C. Senf.

"Hushed were the streets of many peopled Thebes. Those few who passed through them moved with the shadowy fleetness of bats near dawn, and bent their faces from the sky as if fearful of seeing what in their fancies might be hovering there..."

An emotionally iffy ancient Egyptian princess, sister to the Pharaoh, seeks revenge on those who conspired to execute her beloved brother, ascends the throne, builds a temple as an elaborate death-trap, drowns them all with sadistic glee, and then kills herself.

It's Tennessee Williams' first published story, his second appearance in print, The Vengeance of Nitocris, issued under his given name, Thomas Lanier Williams, and published by Weird Tales,  the American fantasy and horror fiction pulp magazine, in 1928. It might just as well have been titled  A Chariot Named Desire, or The Orisris Menagerie. 
 

"I was sixteen when I wrote [the story], but already a confirmed writer, having entered upon this vocation at the age of fourteen, and, if you're well acquainted with my writings since then, I don't have to tell you that it set the keynote for most of the work that has followed" (Tennessee Williams, New York Times interview, as cited by Francesca M. Hitchcock, "Tennessee Williams' Vengeance of Nitocris: The Keynote to Future Works," The Mississippi Quarterly, Vol. 48, 1995).

A strong if emotionally fragile woman, a close brother-sister bond, a descent into madness, and  death - this is, indeed, Williams territory, with revenge and lurid blood and guts thrown in as a nod to the Bard, Titus Andronicus, according to Hitchcock, William's favorite play by Shakespeare. In this weird tale for Weird Tales, as in so much of Shakespeare - and pulp fiction - everybody dies miserably ever after. It's necropolis-noir.

Little Tommy Williams was in good company in this issue. Robert E. Howard, creator of Conan the Barbarian, contributed the featured story, Red Shadows, which introduced 17th century Puritan swashbuckler Solomon Kane and is considered to be the first published example of Sword and Sorcery fiction.

This issue also contains Crashing Suns, a story by science-fiction pioneer Edmund Hamilton. Hamilton, in 1946, married science fiction writer, and screenwriter, Leigh Brackett, perhaps best known for her collaborations with William Faulkner (The Big Sleep, 1946);  five Westerns for director Howard Hawks; Robert Altman (The Long Goodbye, 1973); and Lawrence Kasdan (Star Wars' The Empire Strikes Back, 1979). This copy, in fact, belonged to Hamilton and Brackett; their ownership stamp appears on its first page.

"What more horrible vengeance could Queen Nitocris have conceived than this banquet of death? Not Diablo himself could be capable of anything more fiendishly artistic. Here in the temple of Osiris those nobles and priests who had slain the pharaoh in expiation of his sacrilege against Osiris had now met their deaths. And it was in the waters of the Nile, material symbol of the god Osiris, that they had died. It was magnificent in its irony!...

"When in the evening the queen arrived in the city, pale, silent, and obviously nervous, threatening crowds blocked the path of her chariot, demanding roughly an explanation of the disappearance of her guests. Haughtily she ignored them and lashed forward the horses of her chariot, pushing aside the tight mass of people. Well she knew, how-ever, that her life would be doomed as soon as they confirmed their suspicions. She resolved to meet her inevitable death in a way that befitted one of her rank, not at the filthy hands of a mob.

"Therefore upon her entrance into the palace she ordered her slaves to fill instantly her boudoir with hot and smoking ashes. When this had been done, she went to the room, entered it, closed the door and locked it securely, and then flung herself down upon a couch in the center of the room. In a short time the scorching heat and the suffocating thick fumes of the smoke overpowered her. Only her beautiful dead body remained for the hands of the mob."

Sweet Sacred Ibis! The maturation from purple pulp to poetic prose may have been Williams' greatest achievement as a writer, though the recognizable, often delicately tough, real yet unnatural and not quite of this world turn of his language can be glimpsed this early.

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WILLIAMS, Thomas Lanier [Tennessee Wiliams]. The Vengeance of Nitocris. [In Weird Tales, p. 253]. Indianapolis, Indiana: Popular Fiction Publishing, 1928. Octavo. 288 pp. Illustrated wrappers.

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Images courtesy of Between the Covers, with our thanks.
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Of related interest: 

Unpublished Significant Early Tennessee Williams Poem Surfaces. 

Tennessee Williams Rocks the Rare Books Round Up at L.A. TImes Festival of Books.

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