August William Derleth (February 24, 1909 – July 4, 1971) 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 genre of
horror, 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.