H.P. Lovecraft and Robert E. Howard
Howard Phillips Lovecraft (1890-1937) and Robert E. Howard (1906-1936) are two pillars in the New World Gothic castle of fantastic fiction. They are especially interesting in their surprising aspects. They both died young, they both lived sheltered and geographically-constricted lives, they both absorbed influences from wide and deep sources which they then used to create wonderfully complex and vast universes that they have shared with writers long after their passing, and they both lived for sharing their creative energies with other writers through letters and encouraging words, including each other.
Lovecraft the New Englander drew from Poe, Machen, and Dunsany to fashion the crucible from which his Cthulhu Mythos emerged, the indifferent and destructive universe of what humans would call monsters from beyond space and time. He was a master at delineating the gulf between what terrible fate was suggested and why it could not be described in all its horror.
Robert E. Howard the Texan connected to semi-mythic history and the existential journey of one determined man through all the dangers of men and beasts. He is the father of an American sword and sorcery, a juxtaposition of power that seems illogical but also somehow inevitable, almost an allegory of the wars of the 20th Century -- what you cannot see may kill you from afar, and what you can see may kill you up close. The survivor must be ready and skilled and wary at all times.
The legacies of these two writers last and grow to this day in literature, art, and film, even language. We stock their writings and associated contemporary writers as well as some of the more interesting and provocative writers working with the generous heritage that Lovecraft and Howard bequeathed to an increasingly uneasy world.
The Complete Tales of Jules de Grandin vol. 4: A Rival from the Grave
The Complete Tales of Jules de Grandin vol. 4: A Rival from the Grave
The fourth of five volumes collecting the stories of Jules de Grandin, the supernatural detective made famous in the classic pulp magazine Weird Tales.
Today the names of H. P. Lovecraft, Robert E. Howard, August Derleth, and Clark Ashton Smith, all regular contributors to the pulp magazine Weird Tales during the first half of the twentieth century, are recognizable even to casual readers of the bizarre and fantastic. And yet despite being more popular than them all during the golden era of genre pulp fiction, there is another author whose name and work have fallen into obscurity: Seabury Quinn.
Quinn’s short stories were featured in well more than half of Weird Tales’s original publication run. His most famous character, the supernatural French detective Dr. Jules de Grandin, investigated cases involving monsters, devil worshippers, serial killers, and spirits from beyond the grave, often set in the small town of Harrisonville, New Jersey. In de Grandin there are familiar shades of both Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes and Agatha Christie’s Hercule Poirot, and alongside his assistant, Dr. Samuel Trowbridge, de Grandin’s knack for solving mysteries—and his outbursts of peculiar French-isms (grand Dieu!)—captivated readers for nearly three decades.
Collected for the first time in trade editions, The Complete Tales of Jules de Grandin, edited by George Vanderburgh, presents all ninety-three published works featuring the supernatural detective. Presented in chronological order over five volumes, this is the definitive collection of an iconic pulp hero.
The fourth volume, A Rival from the Grave, includes all the stories from “The Chosen of Vishnu” (1933) to “Incense of Abomination” (1938), as well as an introduction by George Vanderburgh and Robert Weinberg and a foreword by Mike Ashley.
Seabury Quinn was a pulp magazine author, whose popular stories of the occult detective Jules de Grandin were published in Weird Tales between 1925 and 1951. Quinn penned ninety-two short stories and one full-length novel featuring “the occult Hercule Poirot,” which were enormously popular with readers. Quinn lived in Washington, D.C., MD, United States, and died in 1969.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Introduction—George A. Vanderburgh and Robert E. Weinberg
Keeping the Golden Age Alive—Mike Ashley
1933
The Chosen of Vishnu (Weird Tales, August 1933*)
Malay Horror (Weird Tales, September 1933)
The Mansion of Unholy Magic (Weird Tales, October 1933)
Red Gauntlets of Czerni (Weird Tales, December 1933*)
1934
The Red Knife of Hassan (Weird Tales, January 1934*)
The Jest of Warburg Tantavul (Weird Tales, September 1934)
1935
Hands of the Dead (Weird Tales, January 1935)
The Black Orchid (Weird Tales, August 1935)
The Dead-Alive Mummy (Weird Tales, October 1935)
1936
A Rival from the Grave (Weird Tales, January 1936*)
Witch-House (Weird Tales, November 1936*)
1937
Children of the Bat (Weird Tales, January 1937*)
Satan’s Palimpsest (Weird Tales, September 1937*)
Pledged to the Dead (Weird Tales, October 1937)
Living Buddhess (Weird Tales, November 1937*)
1938
Frozen Beauty (Weird Tales, February 1938^)
Incense of Abomination (Weird Tales, March 1938*)
*Cover by Margaret Brundage
^Cover by Virgil Finlay