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Not Long for This World
Abridged from the hardbound
- GenresHorrorShort Stories
Hardcover
First published January 1, 1948
1 person is currently reading
53 people want to read
About the author
August Derleth
883 books294 followersAugust William Derleth was an American writer and anthologist. Though best remembered as the first book publisher of the writings of H. P. Lovecraft, and for his own contributions to the Cthulhu Mythos and the Cosmic Horror genre, as well as his founding of the publisher Arkham House (which did much to bring supernatural fiction into print in hardcover in the US that had only been readily available in the UK), Derleth was a leading American regional writer of his day, as well as prolific in several other genres, including historical fiction, poetry, detective fiction, science fiction, and biography
A 1938 Guggenheim Fellow, Derleth considered his most serious work to be the ambitious Sac Prairie Saga, a series of fiction, historical fiction, poetry, and non-fiction naturalist works designed to memorialize life in the Wisconsin he knew. Derleth can also be considered a pioneering naturalist and conservationist in his writing
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Augus...]
A 1938 Guggenheim Fellow, Derleth considered his most serious work to be the ambitious Sac Prairie Saga, a series of fiction, historical fiction, poetry, and non-fiction naturalist works designed to memorialize life in the Wisconsin he knew. Derleth can also be considered a pioneering naturalist and conservationist in his writing
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Augus...]
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Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews
April 25, 2021
Horror-Stories in an almost classical mode:
Geister-, Horror- und Vampirgeschichten, veröffentlicht zwischen 1930 und 1948 in den Pulps. Wenig Überraschung, dafür verlässlich, und vor allem: Bei einer durchschnittlichen Länge von ca. 6 Seiten sind die Stories als Appetithäppchen für Zwischendurch ideal.
Geister-, Horror- und Vampirgeschichten, veröffentlicht zwischen 1930 und 1948 in den Pulps. Wenig Überraschung, dafür verlässlich, und vor allem: Bei einer durchschnittlichen Länge von ca. 6 Seiten sind die Stories als Appetithäppchen für Zwischendurch ideal.
August 10, 2017
Excellent short story collection by August Derleth. Filled with stories that first appeared in Weird Tales magazine, it includes two classic stories....The Drifting Snow and Logoda's Head and many others. Two stories....Those Who Seek and the Gold Box have nice hints of Lovecraft, the dead walk in Nellie Foster and Mrs Lannisfree, and in many the supernatural has stronger grip on the countryside, then City....the Return of Sarah Purcell and A Collector of Stones. Fun reading.
November 3, 2012
Mostly the kind of creepy stories you tell around a campfire. Where his writing really excels is when Derleth gets into the occultish stories him and Lovecraft are famous for. Very imaginative, brilliant twists and precise imagery make these strange tales comprehendable and mindblowing at the same time.
June 11, 2012
August Derleth will be better know for his championing of H. P. Lovecraft and the many great writers he introduced us to through his Arkham House Publishing Company. As a writer, he was second rate. Not Long for This World is perhaps his best collection.
October 13, 2024
“The Shadow on the Sky”
Ancestral doom for Sir Hilary James is foretold by a mysterious shadow on the sky.
“Birkett's Twelfth Corpse”
Badger Prairie, Wisconsin, near the Wisconsin River.
Plot: Two old rivermen, Fred Birkett and Hank Room, have a long-standing rivalry over who can find the most bodies of people who have drowned in the river. As the story opens, they are tied with a score of 11-11.
“The White Moth”
Paul Blake is haunted by a white moth after the death of his wife.
“Nellie Foster”
Mrs. Kraft is concerned about a series of mysterious deaths in her town.
“Wild Grapes”
Luke Adam has failed to heed the central lesson of murder lore: do not gold the lily. Or, in his case, the vine.
“Feigman's Beard”
A US-set witch woman story about the consequences of retribution. “The Withered Arm” by Thomas Hardy it's snot.
“The Drifting Snow”
Probably the strongest short story in the collection, “The Drifting Snow” hits all the key US rural horror notes: isolated house, tainted family inheritance, ancestral crime, retribution visited on subsequent generations.
X
“The Return of Sarah Purcell”
Emma is convinced her sister Sarah has come back to haunt her.
“Lagoda's Heads”
African witch doctors and their tiny head collections are unpopular today as a theme in horror fiction. Happily, “Lagoda's Heads” is around to demonstrate why that is.
“The Second Print”
Amazing the number of plotting errors M. R. James did not make in stories like “The Mezzotint.”
“Mrs. Elting Does Her Part”
Richard Alder hires medium Mrs. Elting to help him get revenge on a man named Sanders Hawk.
“Mrs. Bentley's Daughter”
Sac Prairie, Wisconsin. A host of hoary authorial moves and choices deliver the reader to the stinging final line cliche.
“Those Who Seek”
US bachelors: never visit an old abbey in England.
“Mr. Berbeck Had a Dream”
Peter Berbeck and his wife learn crime does not pay.
“The Lilac Bush”
It's haunted.
“A Matter of Sight”
A man on a train is joined by a mysterious stranger. The stranger tells the man about a number of historical events that he has witnessed.
“Mrs. Lannisfree”
Jack is hired as a companion for a man named Mr. Lannisfree. Mr. Lannisfree is a nervous man who is waiting for his wife to join him at their cottage in the lake country.
“After You, Mr. Henderson”
New York Stock Exchange horror. Three Henderson cousins vie for control of their brokerage firm, but only one opposes a stock-dumping scheme.
“The Lost Day”
Jasper Camberveigh wakes up one morning to find that he has lost a day of his life. Turns out it was an eventful day.
“A Collector of Stones”
Elisha Merrihew is a collector of stones. He is not careful about their provenance. Derleth starts out strong here, but his trademark muddling soon swamps a promising story.
“The Gold-Box”
Philip Caravel steals a gold box from a museum. Not as empty as it seems, alas.
“Saunder's Little Friend”
Mr. Saunder inherits his aunt's house and her collection of strange objects. In her final weeks, she apparently hobbied with modeling clay.
Ancestral doom for Sir Hilary James is foretold by a mysterious shadow on the sky.
“Birkett's Twelfth Corpse”
Badger Prairie, Wisconsin, near the Wisconsin River.
Plot: Two old rivermen, Fred Birkett and Hank Room, have a long-standing rivalry over who can find the most bodies of people who have drowned in the river. As the story opens, they are tied with a score of 11-11.
“The White Moth”
Paul Blake is haunted by a white moth after the death of his wife.
“Nellie Foster”
Mrs. Kraft is concerned about a series of mysterious deaths in her town.
“Wild Grapes”
Luke Adam has failed to heed the central lesson of murder lore: do not gold the lily. Or, in his case, the vine.
“Feigman's Beard”
A US-set witch woman story about the consequences of retribution. “The Withered Arm” by Thomas Hardy it's snot.
“The Drifting Snow”
Probably the strongest short story in the collection, “The Drifting Snow” hits all the key US rural horror notes: isolated house, tainted family inheritance, ancestral crime, retribution visited on subsequent generations.
X
“The Return of Sarah Purcell”
Emma is convinced her sister Sarah has come back to haunt her.
“Lagoda's Heads”
African witch doctors and their tiny head collections are unpopular today as a theme in horror fiction. Happily, “Lagoda's Heads” is around to demonstrate why that is.
“The Second Print”
Amazing the number of plotting errors M. R. James did not make in stories like “The Mezzotint.”
“Mrs. Elting Does Her Part”
Richard Alder hires medium Mrs. Elting to help him get revenge on a man named Sanders Hawk.
“Mrs. Bentley's Daughter”
Sac Prairie, Wisconsin. A host of hoary authorial moves and choices deliver the reader to the stinging final line cliche.
“Those Who Seek”
US bachelors: never visit an old abbey in England.
“Mr. Berbeck Had a Dream”
Peter Berbeck and his wife learn crime does not pay.
“The Lilac Bush”
It's haunted.
“A Matter of Sight”
A man on a train is joined by a mysterious stranger. The stranger tells the man about a number of historical events that he has witnessed.
“Mrs. Lannisfree”
Jack is hired as a companion for a man named Mr. Lannisfree. Mr. Lannisfree is a nervous man who is waiting for his wife to join him at their cottage in the lake country.
“After You, Mr. Henderson”
New York Stock Exchange horror. Three Henderson cousins vie for control of their brokerage firm, but only one opposes a stock-dumping scheme.
“The Lost Day”
Jasper Camberveigh wakes up one morning to find that he has lost a day of his life. Turns out it was an eventful day.
“A Collector of Stones”
Elisha Merrihew is a collector of stones. He is not careful about their provenance. Derleth starts out strong here, but his trademark muddling soon swamps a promising story.
“The Gold-Box”
Philip Caravel steals a gold box from a museum. Not as empty as it seems, alas.
“Saunder's Little Friend”
Mr. Saunder inherits his aunt's house and her collection of strange objects. In her final weeks, she apparently hobbied with modeling clay.
September 16, 2017
It is hardly going to inspire any reader with confidence when, in his introduction, Derleth (not an author known for startling literary quality at the best of times), dismisses the tales in this collection as 'mediocre'. He is right that these are fillers, very minor tales, but it is actually a pretty enjoyable collection, brimming with a suitably creepy atmosphere.
January 12, 2023
A stack of O. Henry-inspired, supernatural short-short tales.
April 23, 2011
Actually the only short story that I read from this was Bat's Belfry but it was worth it. The 7 pages brought me fond memories of my first Lovecraft reads and reminded me why I like weird tales so much.
Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews