These papers were created and collected by Howard J. Duerr.

Howard J. Duerr was born in Buffalo, New York on August 22, 1911. Duerr completed both his bachelors' and masters' degrees in philosophy from the University of Buffalo in 1940. Duerr enlisted in the United States Army Pyschological Division during the Second World War, and went on to complete his doctorate in philosophy after the completion of the war at the University of North Carolina in 1953. His wife, Edith, was awarded a doctorate in bacteriology at the same ceremony. Duerr's primary philosophic research interests were ontology and metaphysics, which carried over from his academic life into his social and leisure time. Duerr was an extensive collector of literary works and paraphernalia concerning the Cthulhu Mythos propagated by H.P. Lovecraft, August Derleth and Clark Ashton Smith during the first half of the twentieth century. Until his death in Maitland, Florida in 1978, Duerr was actively involved in various horror fantasy fanzines and collected monographs of well-known horror, fantasy and science fiction authors and illustrators.