Herman Charles Koenig (November 28, 1893July 6, 1959) was a

publisher Publishing is the activity of making information, literature, music, software and other content available to the public for sale or for free. Traditionally, the term refers to the creation and distribution of printed works, such as books, newsp ...

, writer, an avid collector of first editions and

fantasy literature Fantasy literature is literature set in an imaginary universe, often but not always without any locations, events, or people from the real world. Magic, the supernatural and magical creatures are common in many of these imaginary worlds. Fa ...

and a friend of the fantasy writer H. P. Lovecraft. Koenig was one of the last few members to join Lovecraft's informal literary circle, the Kalem Club (the last names of the earliest members started with the letters K, L or M). Koenig was born in

Hoboken, New Jersey Hoboken ( ; Unami: ') is a city in Hudson County in the U.S. state of New Jersey. As of the 2020 U.S. census, the city's population was 60,417. The Census Bureau's Population Estimates Program calculated that the city's population was 58,690 i ...

, the last child in the family of Herman Koenig (listed as “Henry König” in the 1870 United States Census) and Anna Poggenburg, German immigrants. He graduated '' magna cum laude'' from Cooper Union, and worked as the laboratory manager at Electrical Testing Laboratories in New York City. A lifelong fan of fantasy fiction, he contributed articles to early fanzines in this field, and published his own fanzine ''The Reader and Collector'', printing twenty issues from 1938 to 1946. He collaborated with the writer

August Derleth August William Derleth (February 24, 1909 – July 4, 1971) was an American writer and anthologist. Though best remembered as the first book publisher of the writings of H. P. Lovecraft, and for his own contributions to the Cthulhu Mythos and th ...

, one of Lovecraft's many correspondents, who founded the publishing company

Arkham House Arkham House is an American publishing house specializing in weird fiction. It was founded in Sauk City, Wisconsin, in 1939 by August Derleth and Donald Wandrei to publish hardcover collections of H. P. Lovecraft's best works, which had ...

to print Lovecraft's work after his death. Koenig was one of the few people who printed some of Lovecraft's writings during the latter's lifetime. Based on a long letter Lovecraft had written to Koenig in 1936, he privately printed in

mimeograph A mimeograph machine (often abbreviated to mimeo, sometimes called a stencil duplicator) is a low-cost duplicating machine that works by forcing ink through a stencil onto paper. The process is called mimeography, and a copy made by the proc ...

form the essay ''Charleston''. It included photo copies of Lovecraft's sketches of architectural highlights of that South Carolina city. Koenig is also acknowledged for his efforts in fostering in the United States the writings of British author

William Hope Hodgson William Hope Hodgson (15 November 1877 – 19 April 1918) was an English author. He produced a large body of work, consisting of essays, short fiction, and novels, spanning several overlapping genres including horror, fantastic fiction, and scie ...

, circulating copies of Hodgson's books to Lovecraft and others. When Arkham House reprinted four of Hodgson's novels (''The House on the Borderland and Other Novels'') in 1946, Derleth asked Koenig to write the introduction.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Koenig, Herman Charles 1893 births 1959 deaths Place of death missing Writers from Hoboken, New Jersey American book and manuscript collectors American fantasy writers American male novelists 20th-century American novelists 20th-century American male writers Novelists from New Jersey