ELEVEN TYPED LETTERS SIGNED (TLsS) to T. Everett Harre, mostly short and to the point, dealing with editorial matters involving one or the other or both men, written over a period from 1916 to 1941, mostly after 1935. Plus one TYPED LETTER SIGNED (TLS) to Harre from Jim Niles, a colleague of Merritt's. A revealing look at Merritt as he went about his day job as newspaper editor for a major national weekly. Merritt's newspaper career began when he was 18 as a cub reporter for the Philadelphia Inquirer. He wound up as assistant editor, then editor, of THE AMERICAN WEEKLY, a sensationalistic Sunday supplement for the Hearst newspapers. It had a circulation of about 7,500,000 copies while Merritt worked there, a hugely successful figure for that time (or this), which was touted on the paper's letterhead as the "Greatest Circulation in the World." His writing style in these brief business letters is breezy, slangy and hard as nails, the voice of the typical American newspaperman of this period, when the city newspaper was a glamorous thing, mythologized in countless Hollywood movies. (Among other heroes who worked for a newspaper in this period was Clark Kent.) In his spare time, Merritt managed to write and publish half a dozen novels that won him a reputation as "the greatest fantasy writer of modern times" (Bleiler, Supernatural Fiction Writers, p. 836). Since then, "in the fields of science fiction and fantasy there is probably no other great reputation of the past that has suffered as much as that of A. Merritt" (ibid.). Harre also worked as a journalist off and on, in between writing a handful of novels (including two that were listed in the first edition of the Bleiler Checklist, but omitted from the second; one of them is listed in Reginald). He is perhaps best known in genre studies as the editor of an anthology, BEWARE AFTER DARK! (1929), that included Lovecraft's "The Call of Cthulhu," only the second of his stories to be published in a hardcover book. Harre appears in these letters to be a bit obtuse about the kind of publication Merritt was editing, failing on at least two occasions to observe basic guidelines about length, style and deadline. For Merritt to be as patient with him as he appears in these letters (at the same time that he enforced strict rules about the content of the paper) says something complimentary about his basic humanity as well as his editorial finesse. The letters have usual fold creases and some light rumpling, but, except 24 May 1916 letter which has marginal loss at upper left corner, all are in very good to fine condition. A detailed calendar is available upon request. (#111986).
Price: $2,250.00
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