This week, I bring you some delicious covers for pulp books that inspired the folks making RPGs.

Let’s start with The Lurking Fear, by HP Lovecraft, published in 1947 by Avon Books. It’s from the early days of paperback publishing. Prior to 1939, with the launch of Pocket Books, mass market paperbacks simply didn’t exist in the US (the UK had paperbacks since ‘35, thanks to Penguin). This is a typical early paperback – reprints from other publications, a lurid cover in the style of the declining pulp magazines and cheap paper. Seriously, this book is so brittle from acid I worry about it crumbling to dust one day.

In terms of Lovecraft’s pop culture legacy, this is the eighth collection of his work published, third in paperback, and probably the most widely distributed at the time. He wouldn’t see a resurgence in popularity until the late 60s, and his memory was alive and well in the minds of hardcore pulpsters, but I suspect Lurking Fear and a handful of other titles provided a much needed bulwark against obscurity in the wider world. If that’s the case, you have this paperback to thank at least partially for Lovecraft’s influence in RPGs.

Ownership of Lovecraft’s copyright is a mess and his work is currently considered to be in the public domain. Back in ’47, Arkham House claimed to own the rights, but it isn’t clear that that was true. Many of the stories in The Lurking Fear were licensed directly from Weird Tales. I suspect the publication of Lurking Fear spurred August Derleth, the owner of Arkham House, to purchase all the rights to Lovecraft’s stories from Weird Tales, which also happened in 1947. Thing is, at the time of publication, Lovecraft retained reprint rights for his stories, so they weren’t Weird Tales’ to sell. Whatever the truth of it, Derleth’s claim became de facto truth (for a while, anyway) and future editions of The Lurking Fear, published under the name Cry Horror, contain the note, “Published by arrangement with Arkham House.”