9.2 /10 1 Votes9.2
Country United States Publication date 1947 Pages xvi, 418 | 4.6/5 Goodreads Language English Media type Print (Hardback) Originally published 1947 OCLC 1298843 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Cover artist Smith-Wollin Studios and Frank Utpatel Genres Fantasy, Horror fiction, Poetry Similar August Derleth books, Horror fiction books | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Dark of the Moon: Poems of Fantasy and the Macabre is a poetry anthology edited by August Derleth and published in 1947 by Arkham House in an edition of 2,634 copies. It is a pioneering anthology of weird poetry from the Middle Ages to the present, arranged chronologically.
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A publishing curiosity is that this book had two different dustjackets – the only Arkham House book to have this feature. Both states of the jacket feature a background photograph of a mountain, although on the two jackets the image is reversed as compared with each other. The first-state jacket has lettering in green, whereas the second state jacket is lettered in orange and white. The jacket with the green lettering is the first state of the dustjacket (pictured right). Its lettering was rendered by Wisconsin artist Frank Utpatel; the price on this jacket list the book's price as $3.00. This state is the rarer of the two jackets, since a large number of the Utpatel jackets were destroyed by silverfish during storage. The second state dustjacket (orange and white lettering) was redesigned by Gary Gore, who from 1959 on, became increasingly more active in working with August Derleth on Arkham House covers.