Though I was an avid reader of fantasy as a kid growing up in the 1970s, the selection of titles available to me was largely limited to whatever I could find at my local public library. In those days, J.R.R. Tolkien was very popular, thanks in no small part to the immense success of the Ballantine paperback edition of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings published in 1965. Robert E. Howard was likewise experiencing something of a renaissance during my youth, owing, no doubt, to both the series of Lancer paperbacks featuring Conan the Cimmerian released between 1968 and 1977 and Marvel’s Conan the Barbarian and Savage Sword of Conan comics, which began in 1970 and 1974 respectively. Tolkien and Howard – and their legions of imitators – thus formed the two poles defining the genre of “fantasy” as I first came to know it.

This started to change sometime in 1980, shortly after I was introduced to the roleplaying game, Dungeons & Dragons. Though I didn’t know it at the time, D&D would soon change my world forever – not simply in the way that I’d spend my free time, but also in my reading habits. The game’s co-creator, Gary Gygax, in the Advanced D&D Dungeon Masters Guide, includes an appendix of “inspirational and educational reading” that consists of those authors he considers to have been “of particular inspiration” to him. Gygax’s listing is not long, but it includes a great most of those authors whom any well-read fantasy aficionado of the time would likely have considered exemplars of the genre.

I took great interest in Gygax’s list, as it included many writers whose works I’d not yet read: John Bellairs, Philip José Farmer, Margaret St. Clair, and Manly Wade Wellman, to name just a few. Also included among the unfamiliar names was Abraham Merritt (or simply A. Merritt, as his name appeared in the appendix). More intriguingly, Gygax included Merritt in a smaller list of writers whose works he considered to have been “the most immediate influences” upon Dungeons & Dragons. This smaller list is a veritable who’s who of fantasy – L. Sprague de Camp, REH, Fritz Leiber, H.P. Lovecraft, Fletcher Pratt, Jack Vance. After such an endorsement, I soon made it my goal to find and read as many of these then-unknown authors as I could, including Merritt.

Finding the works of Merritt to read proved more difficult than I had hoped. By the early 1980s, many were out of print. Even Lin Carter’s justly famed Ballantine Adult Fantasy Series, which did so much to bring older fantasy writers like James Branch Cabell, E.R. Eddison, and David Lindsay to the attention of contemporary audiences, did not include a single volume featuring Merritt. This didn’t deter me in my quest, though it did limit my ability to familiarize myself with his writings. Aside from his two Dr. Lowell stories, Burn, Witch, Burn! and Creep, Shadow!, I don’t think I was able to read much of Merritt’s body of work until this century.

I found myself reflecting on all of this recently, since today marks the 140th anniversary of Merritt’s birth. During his lifetime, Merritt was well regarded as both a writer of fiction and as a journalist and editor. No less a luminary than H.P. Lovecraft, who met Merritt in person in early 1934, said that he was “a real genius in the weird” in a letter to Robert H. Barlow, as well as “the most poignant and distinctive fantaïsiste now contributing to the pulps.” Further, two of his novels, Seven Footprints to Satan and the aforementioned Burn, Witch, Burn!, were adapted into Hollywood films during his lifetime (the latter directed by none other than Tod Browning, best known for 1931’s Dracula, starring Bela Lugosi).

Yet, for all of that, almost no one, except literary historians of the early 20th century and those of us who still appreciate writers of older fantasy, seems to know Merritt’s name, let alone commemorate him on the day of his birth. The irony is that, while his stories are hardly household names nowadays, the ideas and themes he popularized through them live on, more than eighty years after his death in 1943.

Like many fans of fantasy and science fiction, I enjoy indulging in “what if?” thought experiments. Today, I wondered, “What might fantasy literature be like if Merritt had been better known in the decades after World War Two?” Obviously, there can be no definitive answer to this question, but I nevertheless want to offer a few brief thoughts on the matter as my tribute to Merritt and his lasting contributions to a literary genre that helped to found.

Merritt’s stories all take place – or at least begin – in the real world. They’re generally tales of ordinary, if brave and accomplished, men who leave behind mundane reality and venture into realms of the unknown. In this, Merritt is following in the footsteps of many of his own literary forebears, in particular H. Rider Haggard. Consequently, I think a fantasy genre in which Merritt’s influence had been stronger and more long lasting might have made greater space for more “grounded” stories rather than on those set in wholly imaginary worlds.

At the same time, Merritt’s conception of “the unknown” is capacious, encompassing everything from subterranean realms to hidden valleys to the recesses of the human mind itself. Though connected to our everyday existence by occult means, whether sorcery or advanced science, they typically operate according to their own laws and logic, effectively becoming worlds of their own. In this way, Merritt’s fantasies are simultaneously accessible to a wider range of readers while still allowing space for remarkable flights of imagination. I can’t help but wonder if a fantasy genre more strongly influenced by Merritt’s approach might have had broader appeal than the one history bequeathed us instead.

Beyond mere content, there is also Merritt’s presentation. His prose is ornate, even florid, marshaling a veritable army of adjectives, adverbs, and archaisms to describe scenes of remarkable potency. The cumulative effect is almost hypnotic, like a magical charm, something that Lovecraft himself noted when he discussed Merritt’s “peculiar power of working up an atmosphere and investing a region with an aura of unholy dread.” This approach to prose is frequently (though not wholly) missing from contemporary fantasy and I suspect any fantasy genre in which Merritt’s influence is greater would be similarly luxurious.

These speculations, however amusing, matter little when compared to Abraham Merritt’s actual achievements as a writer. He may not be as well known today as some of us might like, but he was, during his lifetime, both accomplished and lauded. More than that, he inspired numerous others who followed in his wake, from Lovecraft to Jack Williamson, Henry Kuttner, and even Richard Sharpe Shaver. Among many more. Of course, for me personally, Merritt’s greatest achievement was in opening my eyes to a wider conception of fantasy. My childhood quest to find his stories in my local library was the beginning of a lifelong love affair with the entire genre and for that I shall forever be grateful.

Happy birthday, Mr Merritt!

James Maliszewski was born in the Netherlands, grew up in Maryland, and now lives in Canada. Since the late 1990s, he's been a writer and designer in the field of roleplaying games. He also blogs at Grognardia (grognardia.blogspot.com), where he muses about both RPGs and the literature that inspired their creation.