SLEEP NO MORE: TWENTY MASTERPIECES OF HORROR FOR THE CONNOISSEUR. New York, Toronto: Farrar & Rinehart, Inc., [1944]. Octavo, pp. [i-iv] v-x [1-2] 3-374, illustrations by Lee Brown Coye, original terra cotta cloth, front and spine panels stamped in black. First edition, first printing with "FR" monogram on copyright page. A presentation copy with signed inscription by M. P. Shiel on the front free endpaper: "Harvey Gocher / from M. P. Shiel / Nov 1. '44." The first appearance in America of "Shiel's "The House of Sounds," first collected in Shiel's THE PALE APE AND OTHER PULSES (1911). "The House of Sounds," a revised version of "Vaila," which H. P. Lovecraft termed "Shiel's undoubted masterpiece ... This story, in its final form, deserves a place among the foremost things of its kind." The first anthology edited by Derleth, published in September 1944, collecting twenty stories by M. P. Shiel, H. P. Lovecraft, Clark Ashton Smith, Robert E. Howard, Robert Bloch and others, with illustrations by Lee Brown Coye, and foreword and notes by Derleth. "August Derleth, novelist, poet, pulp-writer and publisher, knows supernatural fiction as well as Ellery Queen knows detective stories. He knows, too, that anthologies are read by anthology readers, and has wisely designed a postgraduate course of reading -- taking for granted that you know the established classics and introducing you instead to such forgotten masterpieces as M. P. Shiel's magnificent 'The House of Sounds' (never before published in this country), or Alfred Noyes' haunting 'Midnight Express,' plus a thorough representation of the great 'Weird Tales' school founded by H. P. Lovecraft." - Anthony Boucher, San Francisco Chronicle. "Readers to whom the name M. P. Shiel is a password to a delirious and astounding world will only need to be told that SLEEP NO MORE contains a fine Shiel of good vintage. 'The House of Sounds,' which Mr. Derleth has winnowed out of England, where it has lain for fifty years, is a wild and gorgeous a tale as 'Purple Cloud' devotees could hanker for. August Derleth, who tirelessly gathers horrors for readers who have by this time certainly become connoisseurs, has done a careful job with SLEEP NO MORE, and if you read the book straight through and end with 'The Rats in the Wall,' by old master H. P. Lovecraft, the potion may work and you may sure enough never sleep again." - Eudora Welty, New York Times Book Review. Bleiler, The Guide to Supernatural Fiction 525. Tymn (ed), Horror Literature 4-260. Cloth sunned at edges, a very good copy in the badly chipped remains of the dust jacket worn at edges, flaps mostly separated from front and spine panels along folds, and missing the spine panel. A book rarely found signed by Shiel. (#164357).
Price: $650.00
First printing has "FR" monogram on copyright page.