Remembering August Derleth

August William Derleth was born in Sauk City, Wisconsin. He studied at the University of Wisconsin where he obtained a BA in 1930. At an early age, he started to write stories. In 1926, he sold his first story to Weird Tales. He created 'Solar Pons' , a detective based on Sherlock Holmes. After his death the series was continued by Basil Copper. Derleth also wrote under the pseudonym 'Tally Mason'

Sauk City's native son, August Derleth, continues to be Wisconsin's most prolific author more than 29 years after his death. With forty newly discovered manuscripts still to be published, added to Derleth's 150 books already in print, his place in American literature continues to evolve and grow.

We are commonly too remote from the stars and some of us are as isolated in the universe as any star in the limitless spaces outside our own universe; and we hear their very names -- Arcturus, Altair, Antares, Betelgeuse, Rigel, Canopus, Vega, Sirius -- as some unknown language, Greek or Russian or Chinese to one who can barely understand his native tongue. But we are as remote, too, from the forest of the grass and all the multitude s that inhabit it, as from the selvas and savannas in some distant land; and the insect that threads it way among the blades can no more be brought into our own narrow world than the stars can be brought down from overhead. We scarcely know our fellowmen, meeting them as wraiths that pass by dark, though they live in the same world and see the same stars and the same forests and never know the wildernesses inside and out.

For so many of us the stars shine without being seen, our heads are turned so much earthward, toward our feet, and unseeing there; Venus or Jupiter or any other evening or morning star, Arcturus bringing up the spring, Antares a glowing coal in the southern heavens of summer nights, the Hunter striding by aloft, the Great Dog's blue-white eye looking out of the winter sky -- all alike unseen, unknown, and the vast spaces stretching limitlessly away in all directions from the planet, as unrecognized, as unplumbed as the spaces within the confines of the mind.

We are motes inhabiting a slightly larger mote in the incomprehensible vastness, hurtling toward infinity, though we commonly think ourselves gods, blind with vanity, and carrying destruction along our path, unaware of leaf or blade, fur, feather, insect wing.

How can we know the stars when we are so commonly strange to the beauty and wonder of our own star? Men have lost themselves, separated from nature, as had they cut off both arms and both legs, and blinded themselves until an ant and a blade of grass are no less remote than the stars. They move unseeing through beauty and wonder, dead and with the fear of death in them; the stars speak and the blades, the leaves, their fellow inhabitants in the forest of the grass and the trees speak, and they hear nothing but the hollow sound of their own voices. They are as separated from the earth as from heaven, and engaged in concerns of no meaning in the cosmos, lost even to themselves as they were meant to be by nature, as remote from themselves as from the stars.

August Derleth was Wisconsin's most prolific author writing over 150 books in every genre. He wrote about the people, places and nature he saw around his beloved Sac Prairie. No one has written more about the Wisconsin River than Derleth. He was an enviromentalist before it was a popular subject. He was also an editor, publisher and teacher. While Derlth's home is privately owned and not open to the public, there are several other locations in the community with Derleth memorabilia. The lower level of the Sauk City Library is home to the Derleth Room; Leystra's Venture Restaurant on Phillip's Boulevard in Sauk City has Augie's Room; and Derleth Park offers a hiking trail and panoramic view of the Wisconsin River. The Chamber of Commerce has a brochure entitled "Walking Tour of Historic Sac Prairie" which points out many of the places he wrote about.