First edition, first printing, of Wandrei's first novel, inscribed on the front free endpaper, "For Herman C. Koenig - with appreciation and pleasant remembrance - Donald Wandrei, New York, N.Y., Aug. 26, 1948". Herman Charles Koenig (1893-1959) was a friend of H. P. Lovecraft, a member of his literary circle, and a member of the Kalem Club (where the membership requirements were to have a surname beginning with K, L, or M). He was a lifelong fantasy fiction fan and contributed articles to early fanzines in the field, and published his own magazine The Reader and Collector, printing 20 issues 1938-46. He collaborated with August Derleth, founder of Arkham House, to print Lovecraft's work after his death. Koenig was indeed one of the few people to print some of Lovecraft's writings during his lifetime - a privately printed mimeograph of an essay entitled Charleston based on a long letter Lovecraft had written him in 1936. Koenig was also a supporter in the United States of the British author William Hope Hodgson (1877-1918) - when Arkham House reprinted four of Hodgson's novels (The House on the Borderland and Other Novels) in 1946, Derleth got Koenig to write the introduction. This is Wandrei's first novel, which Lovecraft himself had read in manuscript and described as "a masterpiece of underground horror". A wonderful Lovecraft-Arkham association copy one of 3,068 copies of the first printing.
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