# Is "Marginalia" by H. P. Lovecraft (collected by August Derleth and Donald Wandrei) a First Edition?

> **Quick answer.** A first edition of Marginalia by H. P. Lovecraft (collected by August Derleth and Donald Wandrei) (Arkham House, Sauk City, Wisconsin, 1944) is identified by: There is no statement of printing on the copyright page; Arkham House printed a single run of 2,035 copies, so any copy of the 1944 book is the first printing. US only.

**Checklist — a true first has these:**
- There is no statement of printing on the copyright page
- Arkham House printed a single run of 2,035 copies, so any copy of the 1944 book is the first printing
- Collation is x, 377, [1] pp., bound in publisher's black cloth with gilt lettering to the spine
- The dust jacket reproduces Virgil Finlay's illustration for Lovecraft's 'The Shunned House' (Weird Tales, October 1937); a first-state jacket is unclipped with the price present at the flap
- Contents include eight essays, juvenilia, fragments, Lovecraft's revisions of Zealia Bishop and Hazel Heald, the Houdini ghost-written piece, reproductions of Lovecraft's drawings (including his plan of Arkham), and appreciations closing with Winfield Townley Scott's memoir
- Cited as Joshi 19 (Lovecraft), 8 (Arkham) — Derleth's own label calls it 'the 8th A.H. book.'
- Publisher imprint reads Arkham House, Sauk City, Wisconsin

| | |
|---|---|
| Author | H. P. Lovecraft (collected by August Derleth and Donald Wandrei) |
| Publisher | Arkham House, Sauk City, Wisconsin |
| Year | 1944 |
| True first | US edition |
| Format | Hardcover (trade) |
| Key point | There is no statement of printing on the copyright page |
| Book-club edition exists? | No |

## Points of issue
There is no statement of printing on the copyright page; Arkham House printed a single run of 2,035 copies, so any copy of the 1944 book is the first printing. Collation is x, 377, [1] pp., bound in publisher's black cloth with gilt lettering to the spine. The dust jacket reproduces Virgil Finlay's illustration for Lovecraft's 'The Shunned House' (Weird Tales, October 1937); a first-state jacket is unclipped with the price present at the flap. Contents include eight essays, juvenilia, fragments, Lovecraft's revisions of Zealia Bishop and Hazel Heald, the Houdini ghost-written piece, reproductions of Lovecraft's drawings (including his plan of Arkham), and appreciations closing with Winfield Townley Scott's memoir. Cited as Joshi 19 (Lovecraft), 8 (Arkham) — Derleth's own label calls it 'the 8th A.H. book.'

## Is this the true first?
US only. The Arkham House (Sauk City) 1944 printing is the sole first edition — no UK edition and no original-language issue elsewhere. It is the third of the core Arkham Lovecraft omnibus trio, following The Outsider and Others (Arkham House, 1939) and Beyond the Wall of Sleep (Arkham House, 1943). 'First thus' trap: much of the contents was later redistributed through Arkham's own Lovecraft volumes — notably The Curse of Yig (Arkham House, 1953), which reprints the Bishop revisions first collected here — and those are reprints, not states of this book.

## Telling it from reprints & book-club editions
No book-club issue and no Arkham reprint of Marginalia is recorded; the title was printed once, in 2,035 copies, and never re-set by Arkham. Because there is no printing statement to read, the tells that matter are the black cloth/gilt spine binding and the Finlay 'Shunned House' jacket — a later Lovecraft collection reprinting this material (e.g. The Curse of Yig, 1953) is a different book, not a later state of this one.

## Source
New Mexico Literacy Project — Is *Marginalia* by H. P. Lovecraft (collected by August Derleth and Donald Wandrei) a first edition? https://newmexicoliteracyproject.org/first-edition/marginalia
CC BY 4.0. Part of the Canonical First-Edition Points of Issue dataset (https://newmexicoliteracyproject.org/api/first-edition-titles.json). Last reviewed 2026-07-04.