LOVECRAFT, Howard Phillips (1890–1937). The Shunned House. With a preface by Frank Belknap Long Jr. Athol, MA: The Recluse Press for W. Paul Cook, 1928.
12mo. Original black cloth, gilt–lettered spine, bound by Arkham House (few tiny spots of rubbing to gilt, else fine); with the cancel copyright notice pasted on the title–page verso with books and magazines set in bold typeface originally intended for the unbound copies (see Joshi). Provenance: Richard Manney (book label), one of the most famous book collectors of the 20th century who was known for the best examples on the market. A selection of his library was sold at Sotheby’s in 1991, amassing a total of over $3.9m which was the first multimillion–dollar library assembled in the 1980s to come up for auction.
FIRST EDITION OF LOVECRAFT’S RARE FIRST BOOK OF FICTION, one of only 300 copies, of which an approximately 100 sets of sheets were bound and distributed by Arkham House in 1961 [Currey’s priority C2a]. This work Has a complicated and disputed publishing history beginning with Cook initially wanting to publish this work in the first issue of The Recluse in 1928 but decided to publish it in small book form instead perhaps due to space limitations. The sets of sheets were thus printed but never bound. In 1934, roughly 225 sheets were given to R.H. Barlow for distribution, of which only a handful were specially bound and only about 50 were distributed in various states of binding (natural leather, boards, wrappers, or unbound. In 1959, the remaining 150 sets of sheets were given to Arkham house for distribution. Only 50 unbound sets were distributed that year, the remaining 100 sets being bound and distributed in 1961.
Bleiler, Supernatural Fiction 1037 (“the most valuable genre book described in this study”); Currey, p. 325; Joshi I.A.5 (“The legendary stillborn first ‘book’ by Lovecraft”).