In 1948, in addition to the publication of five titles, Arkham House brought out its only illustrated book, Seabury Quinn’s _Roads_, with pictures by Virgil Finlay, and inaugurated the publication of a literary quarterly, _The Arkham Sampler_, devoted to matters fantastic, publishing fiction, poetry, letters, articles, bibliographical data, _et alia_, to sell at $1.00 the copy. This venture, however, was ill-fated; it was begun in a falling market and at a time of greatly increased production costs, and, while the subscription to the first four issues readily met costs, that for the second year, 1949, failed to do so, and the magazine--which was taking an inexcusably large amount of the editor-publisher’s time--was reluctantly discontinued, since Arkham House could not publish it at a loss of both time and money. The close of the first decade of publishing saw a substantial number of Arkham House titles out of print--_The Outsider and Others_, _Someone in the Dark_, _Out of Space and Time_, _Beyond the Wall of Sleep_, _The Eye and the Finger_, _Jumbee and Other Uncanny Tales_, _Lost Worlds_, _Marginalia_, _Something Near_, _The Opener of the Way_, _Slan_, _Green Tea and Other Ghost Stories_--and selling for fantastic prices in the out-of-print shops. Recent titles had doubled in value, and the rare first Arkham House book had been reported as sold at $100.00 for a pristine copy. In addition, adjunctive books prepared by the editor for release under the Rinehart imprint out of New York--anthologies like _Sleep No More_, _Who Knocks?_ and _The Night Side_--were likewise out of print, and others, prepared for Pellegrini & Cudahy, were being reprinted--_The Sleeping and the Dead_, _Strange Ports of Call_, _The Other Side of the Moon_. Most significant of all, by 1950 almost a dozen other small houses had mushroomed into existence to follow the lead of Arkham House, and several major publishing houses were bringing out science-fiction. Nevertheless, it was evident that the crest of the wave of interest in fantasy had been reached, and that the recession was certain to follow. Arkham House therefore prepared, after but two books in 1949, to hedge the ambitious program announced in that year. A cautious, if predominantly optimistic conservatism prevailed; had it been otherwise, Arkham House would certainly have shared the fate of most of its imitators, which, lacking any real editorial guidance from people widely-read in the field, spewed forth many books of no merit whatsoever, cluttered the market, and succeeded in turning away potential buyers from the field in general.