The Old Tongue ad

[Extollager]

I suddenly remembered that, back around 40 years ago, when Ballantine's Beagle Books imprint released a bunch of Lovecraft, they had an ad -- could've been in Galaxy, If, or -- that quoted some familiar Lovecraftian gibberish; and as I recall a footnote explained that this was a specimen of the Old Tongue. "Not much is known of the Old Tongue except that it was heavily coated."

Anyone able to run a scan of that and post it for old times' sake? Or does anyone at least remember it?

 

[Extollager]

The non-response to my query has me wondering if the ad appeared only briefly. I am sure that I saw it in one or other of the digest-sized magazines of the time (Worlds of Fantasy?). Perhaps it appeared only once.

 

[dask]

Just saw this. My sf mags are in the garage fairly easy to get to. Will check when my wife doesn't have me running around like a headless chicken...

 

[Extollager]

Dask, the ad would have appeared around 1970-71.

 

[dask]

Found it I think:

My first impulse was to apologize for the deplorable condition of the mag but you take what you get in the secondary market and keep your grumble down to a mumble. Then again, if it wasn't so beat up I wouldn't have been able to press it flat to get a good scan, so bad is good once in awhile.

 

[Extollager]

Dask, that is the ad, and that's got to be the mag in which I saw the ad, since I know I used to have a copy. (What happened to it?) I wonder if this was the only time and place that Beagle (Ballantine) ran this ad?

Can everyone read what's at the bottom of the ad in small print? After all these years, I seem to have remembered it pretty well but not verbatim. It did appear on the inside of the front cover, right?

Thank you for sharing this bizarre and obscure bit of Lovecraftiana with us. (You have to love the "headline"!) I hope you had fun rooting it out!

I think there were only about three issues of Worlds of Fantasy (with that remarkably crude hand-lettered-looking title!). Maybe they'd have lasted longer if the mag had looked classier. I don't remember the content of the mag other than that complete-in-the-issue Earthsea novel and the Lovecraft ad. One might think it would have sold reasonably well...

Edit: I found this list of the mag's contents:

Contents include: What Do You Mean - Fantasy? by Theodore Sturgeon / In the Cards by Robert Bloch / Among the Grimoires by Lester del Rey / The Tombs of Atuan by Ursula K. LeGuin / If A Flower Could Eclipse by Michael Bishop / Me-To by Sonya Dorman / Death of a Peculiar Boar by Naomi Mitchinson / Santa Titicaca by Connie Willis (Constance Elaine Trimmer Willis) / A Ship Will Come by Robert F. Young / The Man Doors Said Hello To by James Tiptree, Jr. / Funny Place by Naomi J. Kahn.

That must be quite an early Connie Willis story. I'm not an expert on sf and fantasy -- not compared to some people here, anyway -- but I recognize all those names except Dorman's and Kahn's. It would seem, then, that this magazine had a pretty fair array of talent, to take this issue as representative, but it doesn't seem to have lasted long. Maybe it didn't have good distribution.

 

[dask]

Can everyone read what's at the bottom of the ad in small print? After all these years, I seem to have remembered it pretty well but not verbatim. It did appear on the inside of the front cover, right?

Yes, and the small print is hard to read. It says: Nothing is known of the Old Tongue except that it was heavily coated.

Cool! And here's the TOC in anyone's interested: