Doing some email with noted book and pulp collector Kevin Cook, the topic of Ed Price’s collection of pulp era memoirs came up — in particular the bibliography of Price’s own pulp fictioneering that appears in the book.
Since I just plugged a biblio John D. Haefele recently compiled on August Derleth, how about another post on the world of bibliography? Trust me, it ain’t easy.
Here’s Kevin with his memoir of the moment:
I have something of a special affinity for Book of the Dead because it printed the E. Hoffmann Price bibliography that I compiled, together with Virgil Utter and Glenn Lord.
Actually, the story behind it shows just how much Glenn was respected in pulp fandom.
Virgil put together a series of bibliographies for Galactic Central Publications. I asked him about a Price bibliography and he honestly told me that he lacked the information — especially from the Spicy pulps — to even attempt it.
I told him I would help and we put out notice of the book and the pulp information we needed. We got little feedback.
At the same time, I contacted Glenn Lord who as a member of the pulp amateur press association PEAPS had been running indexes of the Spicy pulps. Glenn was going through the magazines trying to identify all the reprints published under various house pseudonyms.
I asked him if he had separate records by author. Instead of just answering me, Glenn said that Price deserved a published bibliography and that he would like to join Virgil and myself in compiling one.
Obviously we immediately welcomed his help. Word soon got around that Glenn Lord wanted bibliographical information regarding E. Hoffmann Price.
The next year at Pulpcon people were coming up to us right and left with all sorts of books and magazines with Price stories in them. Glenn’s name worked magic. I had a notebook where I was writing down every new bit of data we were given, and was amazed at the people crawling out of the woodwork with offers to help. Glenn would say to them, “Ask Kevin if we need that information,” and when we did I wrote it down. Even today I remember some of the specific items that were shown to us.
Don’t discredit Virgil, though, as he searched through tons of reference books to track down information, and then asked individuals who had the magazines to check and insure that the printed information was accurate.
A more innocent time period in many ways, to put the bibliography together the way we did, in total collaboration.
The completed bibliography was published in PEAPS. The editor of Arkham House at the time, Peter Ruber (who I never really got along with well) from there just took it and used it in Book of the Dead without giving Glenn or me any credit for compiling it. At least Ruber put Virgil’s name on it.
I guess that must have felt par for the course for Glenn, who was screwed over by so many others regarding Robert E. Howard and Conan.
But I was certainly pissed off.
Obviously, I suppose, the important thing is that the information got out there for whomever may be interested.
