Carcosa was a specialty publishing firm formed by David Drake, Karl Edward Wagner, and Jim Groce who were concerned that Arkham House would cease publication after the death of its founder, August Derleth. Carcosa was founded in North Carolina in 1973 and put out four collections of pulp horror stories, all edited by Wagner. A fifth collection was planned, Death Stalks the Night, by Hugh B. Cave; Lee Brown Coye was working on illustrating it when he suffered a crippling stroke in 1977 and eventually died, causing Carcosa to abandon the project. The book was eventually published by Fedogan & Bremer. Carcosa also had plans to issue volumes by Leigh Brackett, H. Warner Munn and Jack Williamson; however, none of the projected volumes appeared. The Carcosa colophon depicts the silhouette of a towered city in front of three moons.
(From Wikipedia's entry for Carcosa, fictional city of the Ambrose Bierce story "An Inhabitant of Carcosa" (1891))
The Carcosa Press records are organized in three series:
The Carcosa Press records are arranged in three series.
Series 1. Correspondence, contains two subseries: Wagner and General. The Wagner subseries comprises approximately 2750 items directed to Wagner as author, collector, family member, fan, friend, and editor. General correspondence is an alphabetically arranged collection of letters to Karl Wagner from authors, artists, printers and other correspondents related to Carcosa Press.
Series 2. Financial, is one folder of Carcosa Press tax returns from 1973-1988.
Series 3. Production Materials, comprises proofs and related publication material for the four books produced by Carcosa: Manly Wade Wellman's Lonely Vigils (1981), and Worse Things Waiting (1973); E. Hoffmann Price's Far Lands Other Days (1975); Hugh B. Cave's Murgunstrumm and Others (1977).
There are no restrictions on access, except that the collection can only be seen by prior appointment. Some materials may be stored off-site and cannot be produced on the same day on which they are requested.
Although Brown University has physical ownership of the collection and the materials contained therein, it does not claim literary rights. Researchers should note that compliance with copyright law is their responsibility. Researchers must determine the owners of the literary rights and obtain any necessary permissions from them.
Carcosa Press records, Ms.2003.001, Brown University Library.
These materials were purchased by Brown University in the early 1990s.