August Derleth

My friend Lee and I recently had a brief email exchange about August Derleth. The name may not be familiar to you, but he is much present where we live because he was born and grew up in Sauk City, some thirty miles south of us. He was an author and anthropologist, certainly well-regarded in his own day. In 1938, as a result of his early work on the Sac Prairie Saga, Derleth was awarded the prestigious Guggenheim Fellowship. His sponsors were Helen C. White, Nobel Prize-winning novelist Sinclair Lewis and poet Edgar Lee Masters of Spoon River Anthology fame. Pretty impressive backers for a regional writer from small-town Wisconsin.

I have read a number of his works and even a couple of biographies. The thing I like best is this: He reportedly used the funding from his Guggenheim Fellowship to bind his comic book collection, rather than travel abroad as the award intended.

That collection was recently valued in the millions of dollars.

So who has the last laugh now?