H. P. Lovecraft did not have a great many female correspondents, but among the most notable was Elizabeth Toldridge, a poet living in Washington, D.C., who began corresponding with Lovecraft in the late 1920s. Over their decade-long exchange of letters, Lovecraft discussed at length the aesthetic basis of poetry and the methods by which poetic expression could be made relevant in an age of science. He came to recognize that his earlier attempts at writing eighteenth-century-style verse were aesthetic failures, and he attempted to put his new poetic theories into practice with Fungi from Yuggoth (1929–30) and other poems. Lovecraft also extensively discussed the current political and economic situation, recognizing that the onset of the Great Depression necessitated a political shift—one that ultimately led him to moderate socialism.

Anne Tillery Renshaw was a colleague of long standing, having known Lovecraft during his amateur journalism period in the 1910s. Late in life she commissioned Lovecraft to work on her treatise on English usage, Well-Bred Speech (1936). This edition publishes for the first time several chapters that Lovecraft wrote for that book that were dropped before publication.

Exhaustively annotated by leading Lovecraft scholars David E. Schultz and S. T. Joshi, this volume illuminates one of the great literary personalities of his time—and in his own words. The letters are presented in unabridged form and with detailed notes and commentary.

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Lovecraft’s correspondents were scattered all over the country, and he found it engaging to be in touch with individuals from those areas of the United States where he had never been. Letters to two correspondents from the Pacific Northwest, Duane W. Rimel and F. Lee Baldwin, fill the bulk of this volume, and they reveal Lovecraft’s customary role of tutor and mentor to young devotees of weird fiction in the 1930s.

As a novice writer of weird fiction, Rimel came in touch with Lovecraft to seek assistance on improving his work and getting it published in pulp or fan magazines. In the course of their relationship, Lovecraft helped Rimel on as many as three stories—“The Sorcery of Alphar,” “The Tree on the Hill,” and “The Disinterment.” He gave Rimel valuable advice on the technique of writing weird fiction.

Baldwin was a fan of weird fiction who assisted in the establishment of the first fantasy fanzine, the Fantasy Fan. Later he wrote one of the earliest biographical articles on Lovecraft (with a linoleum cut of Lovecraft by Rimel). Lovecraft wrote extensively to Baldwin about his writing, his attempts at drawing, and other matters that illuminate many aspects of his life and work.

A third correspondent in this volume, Nils Frome, was a Canadian fan of weird and science fiction whom Lovecraft instructed on matters ranging from astronomy to occultism.

As in all previous volumes in the Collected Letters series, these letters have been meticulously edited by David E. Schultz and S. T. Joshi, two of the leading authorities on Lovecraft. Included as well are many rare and pertinent writings by the various correspondents, which shed light on their relationship to Lovecraft. An extensive bibliography and a comprehensive index conclude the volume.

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This volume presents H. P. Lovecraft’s letters to three individuals—J. Vernon Shea, Carl Ferdinand Strauch, and Lee McBride White—who were not exclusively interested in weird fiction nor were involved in the realms of amateur journalism or fantasy fandom. Although Shea did come into contact with Lovecraft through Weird Tales, his interests, even as a young man, were far wider—current politics, general literature, film, and socio-cultural trends. As such, Lovecraft’s letters to him broach broad topics relating to aesthetics, philosophy, politics, and general culture. In one letter Lovecraft expounds on his fascination with the film Berkeley Square, a time-travel drama that markedly inspired one of his later stories, “The Shadow out of Time.”

Carl F. Strauch was a librarian and an academic—he wrote a dissertation on Ralph Waldo Emerson and taught for many years at Lehigh University—and Lovecraft was intrigued by Strauch’s recital of witch legendry from the Pennsylvania Dutch region of Pennsylvania where he resided. The young Lee White was a student at Howard College in Alabama when he came into contact with Lovecraft, and the ten letters they exchanged over several years cover a wide range of literary topics. In one of his last letters Lovecraft makes extensive revisions on a poem about John Donne that White had written.

These letters reveal Lovecraft to have as wide a range of intellectual and aesthetic interests as his diverse and multifaceted correspondents.

As in all previous volumes in the Collected Letters series, these letters have been meticulously edited by S. T. Joshi and David E. Schultz, two of the leading authorities on Lovecraft. Also included are many rare and pertinent writings by the various correspondents, which shed light on their relationship to Lovecraft. An exhaustive bibliography and a comprehensive index conclude the volume.

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James Ferdinand Morton was one of H. P. Lovecraft’s most learned and accomplished correspondents: the recipient of a B.A. and M.A. from Harvard, Morton served as a leading figure in the Esperanto Association of North America, the Thomas Paine Natural History Association, and other organizations, and was a longtime curator of the Paterson (New Jersey) Museum. Lovecraft’s correspondence with Morton reveals the full range of his and Morton’s intellectual interests, ranging from freethought to socialism, from amateur journalism to crossword puzzles, from race relations to the rise of Mussolini and Hitler. Along the way, Lovecraft provides engaging accounts—many times written in piquant slang—of his travels across New England, his diet, and other details that bring the dreamer from Providence to life.

A sampling of Morton’s own writings complements the letters, and includes his substantial essay “Fragments of a Mental Autobiography.” The volume concludes with many fascinating memoirs of Morton by friends and colleagues, including E. Hoffmann Price, W. Paul Cook, and Morton’s wife Pearl K. Merritt.

Extensively annotated by leading Lovecraft scholars David E. Schultz and S. T. Joshi, this volume illuminates one of the great literary personalities of his time – and in his own words. The letters are presented in unabridged form and with detailed notes and commentary.

500p

H. P. Lovecraft’s generous tutelage of younger literary colleagues earned him their lifelong devotion and admiration. Few profited more by his assistance than Robert Bloch, who went on to become the celebrated author of Psycho and other classic works of horror and suspense. Establishing a correspondence with Lovecraft when he was sixteen, Bloch learned so much about the craft of writing—and about other matters—that he later stated: “Lovecraft was my university.”

This volume brings together Lovecraft’s complete extant correspondence with Bloch as well as with such other young writers, editors, and fans of the 1930s as Kenneth Sterling (who collaborated with Lovecraft on “In the Walls of Eryx”), Donald A. Wollheim (editor of the Phantagraph and a leading figure in science fiction in the decades that followed), Willis Conover (whose Lovecraft at Last is one of the most poignant books ever written about the Providence writer), and others.

As in all previous volumes in the Collected Letters series, these letters have been meticulously edited by David E. Schultz and S. T. Joshi, two of the leading authorities on Lovecraft. Also included are many rare and pertinent writings by the various correspondents, which shed light on their relationship to Lovecraft. An exhaustive bibliography and a comprehensive index conclude the volume.

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Wilfred B. Talman was a late member of the Kalem Club, the group of literati who gathered around H. P. Lovecraft during his years in New York (1924–26). In the 1920s Talman attempted to write weird fiction, and Lovecraft’s letters to him feature extensive advice on the story he revised for Talman, “Two Black Bottles”; Lovecraft also wrote a 6000-word synopsis for a story, “The Pool,” that Talman never wrote; the synopsis is here presented in an appendix. But Talman soon moved to other interests, and in his correspondence Lovecraft discusses such diverse subjects as Dutch settlement of the American colonies, the Greek calendar, and his wide-ranging travels.

Helen V. Sully is one of Lovecraft’s few women correspondents. A friend of Clark Ashton Smith, she made the long trip from California to Rhode Island to see Lovecraft, and he treated her with his customary old-world courtesy. In their subsequent correspondence, Lovecraft attempted to act as consoler to Sully (who had apparently lapsed into depression), and his sage words on ethics, values, and contemporary civilization are still of value. Lovecraft also exchanged a few letters with Helen’s mother, Genevieve Sully.

As with other volumes in the Letters of H. P. Lovecraft series, this volume prints all surviving letters unabridged and with extensive annotations by David E. Schultz and S. T. Joshi, along with numerous writings—prose, essays, and poetry—by Lovecraft’s correspondents.

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A new edition of all the correspondence between Lovecraft and future Arkham-House co-founder Donald Wandrei, augmented here with 120 new pages of Lovecraft's letters to Howard Wandrei and Emil Petaja. Large portions of this volume were previously published as Mysteries of Time and Spirit: The Letters of H. P. Lovecraft and Donald Wandrei, out of print now for many years.

It is safe to say that Donald Wandrei (1908–1987) was one of Lovecraft’s leading correspondents. In 1924 Wandrei came in touch with his literary idol, Clark Ashton Smith, and two years later Smith referred him to Lovecraft. There began a rich, expansive communication in which both sides of the correspondence are preserved largely intact, allowing for an unprecedented glimpse into the life and beliefs of the two authors. Wandrei began as a fiery, cosmic poet in the tradition of Smith, but later took to writing weird fiction. He persuaded Farnsworth Wright of Weird Tales to accept Lovecraft’s seminal tale “The Call of Cthulhu,” just as Lovecraft urged Wright to take Wandrei’s “The Red Brain.” Lovecraft introduced Wandrei to his fellow Midwesterner August Derleth, and after Lovecraft’s death they founded Arkham House to publish the work of Lovecraft and other writers of weird fiction.

Lovecraft came to believe that Donald Wandrei’s brother Howard was a weird artist of the first order, and this volume features the letters and postcards they exchanged in the 1930s. Another late colleague, Emil Petaja, was of Finnish ancestry, and Lovecraft’s letters to him are full of discussions into the fantasy fandom of that era along with his later beliefs on politics, society, and religion.

As with other volumes of the Letters of H. P. Lovecraft series, this book prints all surviving letters unabridged and with exhaustive annotations by S. T. Joshi and David E. Schultz. In addition, a rare interview of Donald Wandrei is included, along with poems, essays, and stories by Petaja.

552p