William August Derleth was born to William Julius and Rose Louise Derleth 24 February, 1909 in Sauk City, Wisconsin, and given the social security number 369-28-1839 WI.
At the age of 16, he sold his first story to Weird Tales. Derleth wrote all throughout his 4 years of university at U of Wisconsin and received a B.A. in 1930. During this time he served briefly as editor on Mystic Magazine.
In the mid-1930s he organised a Ranger's Club for young people, served as clerk and president of the local Board of Education, served as a parole officer, organised a local Men’s Club and a parent-teacher association. He also lectured in American Regional Literature at the University of Wisconsin.
When his friend H.P. Lovecraft died in 1937, Derleth and Donald Wandrei put together a collection of Lovecraft's stories, and tried to get them published. With existing publishers showing little interest, they founded Arkham House in 1939, dedicated to publishing the works of H.P. Lovecraft. The name comes from Lovecraft's fictional town of Arkham, Massachusetts.
In 1939 Arkham House published The Outsider and Others, a huge collection that contained most of Lovecraft's short stories then known to exist. Derleth and Wandrei soon decided to expand Arkham House and began a regular publishing schedule after its second book, Someone in the Dark in 1941, a collection of some of Derleth's own horror stories.
In 1941 he became literary editor of The Capital Times of Madison, a post he held until his resignation in 1960.
Derleth was married 6 April, 1953 to Sandra Evelyn Winters, and they were divorced 6 years later in 1959. He retained custody of their two children, April Rose and Walden William. In 1960, Derleth began editing and publishing a magazine called Hawk and Whippoorwill, dedicated to poems of man and nature.
He passed 4 July, 1971 in the city of his birth, and is buried in St. Aloysius Cemetery, Sauk City, Wisconsin.
Derleth wrote over 150 short stories and over 100 books during his lifetime. He also wrote under the pseudonyms Stephen Grendon, Kenyon Holmes and Tally Mason.
Collections
Not Long for This World (1948)
The Survivor and Other Stories (1957) with H.P. Lovecraft
The Mask of Cthulhu (1958)
The Trail of Cthulhu (1962)
Mr. George and Other Odd Persons (1963) as Stephen Grendon
The Watchers Out of Time and Others (1974) with H.P. Lovecraft
Harrigan's File (1975)