A. Merritt Collage

My book-cover collage tribute to Abraham Grace Merritt (1884-1943), a pulp author of the 20s and 30s whom I discovered this year quite by accident in my local paperback exchange
Primarily a journalist, and longtime editor of "The American Weekly", Merritt also found the time to influence and later collaborate with H.P. Lovecraft, write 8 novels, and a number of short stories. This collage contains elements from the covers to his novels "Seven Footprints to Satan", "The Face in the Abyss", "The Ship of Ishtar", "Dwellers in the Mirage", and "The Metal Monster". There's also some of my art thrown in for good measure

I'm currently reading Merritt's first novel "The Moon Pool" (1919) and it's some terrific stuff! Ancient ruins, lost civilizations, traveling adventurers, mysterious monsters, oh my!

My book cover collages: leothefox.deviantart.com/galle…

**U P D A T E !**
I read a 2nd A. Merritt book! It took me a while to get to it, but I read "Seven Footprints to Satan" (1927)

It's the story of an explorer who is kidnapped to a massive estate by a villain called Satan who controls powerful people by forcing them to gamble with him in a sort of a weird gameshow. Our hero tries to bide his time and pretend to go along with Satan's plan while becoming obsessed with a woman who aided in his kidnapping. 

 It's like the 60s “The Saint” movie “The Fiction Makers” crossed with “The Running Man” (film, not book), with heavy doses of Howard's “Skullface”, and Rohmer's “Fu Manchu”.  

 Anyhow, there's good stuff in here, a couple of fun Hitchcockian touches, the really weird and somewhat cheesy nature of the whole footprint staircase, a mansion made entirely of secret passages, and the expected romantic adventure stuff. For my money, Merritt pulled it off just fine