[Rarebooks] Offering: The First Cthulhu Mythos Tale

[Michael John Thompson]

We can offer:

LOVECRAFT, H.P. [Howard Phillips].

DAGON [in] THE VAGRANT, No. 11, November, 1919.

The First Appearance in Print of the First Cthulhu Mythos Tale.

N.P. [Athol, Massachusetts]: W. Paul Cook. 1919. 
First Edition. Small octavo, original tan 
wrappers printed in black. Text block slightly 
tanned, small split along spine between the top 
staple and the outer edge; a near fine copy. 
Housed in a handsome leather-spined tray-case 
designed by the noted book binder, Gray Parrot.

¶ Single issue of this amateur press magazine, 
published and edited by W. Paul Cook, the 
Massachusetts printer who later founded The 
Recluse Press. The first appearance in print of 
this major early Lovecraft story, the first of 
Lovecraft's tales to introduce a Cthulhu Mythos 
element - the sea deity Dagon. This issue also 
contains "Howard P. Lovecraft's Fiction" by W. 
Paul Cook, in which Cook states 'With "Dagon" in 
this issue of the Vagrant, Mr. Lovecraft steps 
into his own as a writer of fiction... we may 
confidently see him advance even beyond the high 
water mark he has set in "Dagon"... He is at this 
day the only amateur storywriter worthy of more 
than a polite passing notice." Cook also compares 
Lovecraft's story to the works of Poe, Maupassant and Bierce.

DAGON is considered to be the first of 
Lovecraft's stories to introduce a Cthulhu Mythos 
element — the sea deity Dagon itself. It is his 
first 'adult' or 'mature' tale, preceded only by 
his early juvenile writings. Paul W. Cook was the 
later printer of Lovecraft's 'stillborn' first 
book, THE SHUNNED HOUSE, printed by not bound and 
published by The Recluse Press in 1928.

$5,500.00 US / Offered at $4000 US net, postpaid.

Images are here:
https://tinyurl.com/dagon1st



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Michael John Thompson, Antiquarian Bookseller

THOMPSON RARE BOOKS
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