I Am Providence: The Life and Times of H. P. Lovecraft (2 VOLUMES)
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44. For an exhaustive treatment of Dunsany’s writing, see my Lord Dunsany: Master of the Anglo-Irish Imagination (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1995). I did manage to prepare a selection of Dunsany’s stories for Penguin Classics (In the Land of Time and Other Fantasy Tales, 2004), and I have also prepared editions of The Complete Jorkens Stories (San Francisco: Night Shade Books, 2004–05; 3 vols.) and of Dunsany’s final, previously unpublished novel, The Pleasures of a Futuroscope (New York: Hippocampus Press, 2003), but it still does not seem feasible to say that a genuine Dunsany renaissance is under way.
Chapter 12: A Stranger in This Century
1. HPL to the Gallomo, 11 December 1919 (SL 1.94–97).
2. Turner related this theory to me as we were preparing the corrected edition of At the Mountains of Madness and Other Novels (Arkham House, 1985).
3. HPL to Elizabeth Toldridge, 10 June 1929 (SL 2.353).
4. Dreams and Fancies (Sauk City, WI: Arkham House, 1962), 46; see David E. Schultz, ed., Commonplace Book (West Warwick, RI: Necronomicon Press, 1987), 1.viii.
5. HPL to RK, 23 January 1920 (SL 1.106).
6. See S. T. Joshi and Darrell Schweitzer, Lord Dunsany: A Bibliography (Metuchen, NJ: Scarecrow Press, 1993), 10.
7. HPL to RK, 7 March 1920 (SL 1.110).
8. Poe, Collected Works, 2.204.
9. HPL to FBL, 26 January 1924 (SL 1.287).
10. HPL to Arthur Harris, 1 May 1921 (ms., JHL).
11. HPL to Edwin Baird, [c. October 1923]; Weird Tales (March 1924).
12. “The Vivisector,” Wolverine No. 11 (November 1921); rpt. in The Vivisector (West Warwick, RI: Necronomicon Press, 1990), 9.
13. Sam Moskowitz, Under the Moons of Mars, 339.
14. HPL to RHB, 28 July 1932; O Fortunate Floridian, 34.
15. Henry R. Chace, Owners and Occupants of the Lots, Houses and Shops in the Town of Providence, Rhode Island in 1798 (Providence: Privately printed, 1914), plate III. I am grateful to Kenneth W. Faig, Jr, for pointing out this datum.
16. See further my article, “The Sources for ‘From Beyond’” (CoC, Eastertide 1986), in Primal Sources, 167–71.
17. SL 1.160–62; the letter is misdated in SL as December 14, 1921.
18. George T. Wetzel’s discussion of this historical connexion (“The Cthulhu Mythos: A Study” [1972], in Joshi, Four Decades, 82–83) is wildly erroneous.
19. Will Murray, “Behind the Mask of Nyarlathotep,” LS No. 25 (Fall 1991): 25–29.
20. HPL to MWM, 18 September 1932 (SL 4.65).
21. Margaret Chaney, Tesla: Man out of Time (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1981); quoted in Murray (n. 19 above).
22. HPL to RHB, [1 December 1934]; O Fortunate Floridian, 191.
23. HPL to RK, 21 May 1920 (SL 1.116).
24. Alfred Galpin, “Department of Public Criticism,” United Amateur 21, No. 2 (November 1921): 21.
25. See Will Murray, “In Search of Arkham Country,” LS No. 13 (Fall 1986): 54–67; Robert D. Marten, “Arkham Country: In Rescue of the Lost Searchers,” LS No. 39 (Summer 1998): 1–20.
26. HPL to REH, 4 October 1930 (SL 3.175).
27. HPL to FBL, 11 December 1923 (SL 1.275).
28. Maurice Lévy, Lovecraft: A Study in the Fantastic, 15–16.
29. Colin Wilson, The Strength to Dream (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1962), 5.
30. HPL to E. Hoffmann Price, 24 March 1933 (SL 4.162).
31. See further my article, “Lovecraft and the Regnum Congo” (CoC, Yuletide 1983), in Primal Sources, 172–76.
32. HPL to Woodburn Harris, 25 February–1 March 1929 (SL 2.306).
33. See Jason C. Eckhardt, “The Cosmic Yankee,” in An Epicure in the Terrible, ed. Schultz and Joshi, 89–90.
34. HPL to MWM, 29 August 1916 (AHT).
35. RHB to AD, 14 June 1944 (ms., SHSW).
36. George T. Wetzel, “The Research of a Biblio,” in Howard Phillips Lovecraft: Memoirs, Critiques, and Bibliographies (North Tonawanda, NY: SSR Publications, 1955), 41.
37. HPL to FBL, 26 January 1921 (SL 1.122).
38. Ibid.
39. William Fulwiler, “Reflections on ‘The Outsider,’” LS No. 2 (Spring 1980): 3–4.
40. Donald R. Burleson, “On Lovecraft’s Themes: Touching the Glass,” in An Epicure in the Terrible, ed. Schultz and Joshi, 135.
41. Colin Wilson, The Strength to Dream, 8.
42. Oscar Wilde, Works (London: Spring Books, 1963), 515, 526.
43. See note 18.
44. Three Gothic Novels (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1968), 379. This passage was brought to my attention by Forrest Jackson.
45. Ibid., 371.
46. HPL to JVS, 19 June 1931 (SL 3.379).
47. RHB, On Lovecraft and Life, 16.
48. W. Paul Cook, “A Plea for Lovecraft,” Ghost No. 3 (May 1945): 56.
49. HPL to LDC, 2 October 1925 (ms., JHL). In his memoir (In Memoriam [1993 ed.], 31) Cook claims that he had set “The Outsider” in type for the Vagrant but that he was not sure whether it had ever actually been published there; this seems, however, a lapse of memory.
Chapter 13: The High Tide of My Life
1. Winfield Townley Scott, “His Own Most Fantastic Creation,” in Lovecraft Remembered, 17.
2. HPL to Anne Tillery Renshaw, 1 June 1921 (SL 1.133).
3. HPL to FBL, 4 June 1921 (SL 1.135).
4. SL 1.134 (note 2).
5. Faig, Parents, 40.
6. HPL to MWM, 5 April 1931 (SL 3.370).
7. HPL to RK, 12 June 1921 (SL 1.140).
8. HPL to AEPG, 27 August 1921 (ms., JHL).
9. HPL to AEPG, 19 August 1921 (SL 1.146–47).
10. Ibid. (ms., JHL; this portion not in SL).
11. HPL to RK, 21 August 1919 (SL 1.86).
12. HPL to MWM, 15 June 1925 (ms., JHL).
13. Quoted in [Horace L. Lawson], “Editorial,” Wolverine No. 13 (December 1922): 13.
14. Anthony F. Moitoret, “Anent the United Amateur,” United Official Quarterly (October 1922): 8.
15. HPL to John T. Dunn, 28 June 1916; Books at Brown, 184.
16. HPL to RK, 16 July 1919; Letters to Rheinhart Kleiner, 161,
17. See note 13 (14).
18. Paul J. Campbell, “The Official Organ as a Political Issue,” Liberal, Special Issue (June 1922): 1–2.
19. “I suppose you received the card announcing United election results, with its astonishing and inexplicable mention of Mrs. Greene (who apparently knows nothing about it) as president.” HPL to FBL, 18 September 1923 (AHT).
20. Sonia H. Lovecraft, “President’s Message,” United Amateur 23, No. 1 (May 1924): 11–14.
21. Found in AHT; also published in Interesting Items No. 540 (January 1924): [1–3].
22. All letters by Lawson to HPL are in JHL and NYPL.
23. R. Alain Everts (“Mrs. Howard Phillips Lovecraft,” Nyctalops 2, No. 1 [April 1973]: 45), having interviewed Sonia in her old age, claims that she first met Lovecraft at a Hub Club meeting; but this seems to be an error. Everts writes: “Sonia stopped in Boston, and at one of the Hub Club meetings, Ed Cole, Edith Miniter and Michael White jokingly sat her down next to the reticent and shy Howard Lovecraft, never knowing that Sonia would set her sights on him as her next husband.” But Lovecraft makes no mention of Sonia in any of his accounts of the Hub Club gatherings in early 1921, and he does not appear to have met Michael White until 1923. Sonia’s remark—“I first met him at the Boston Convention when the amateur journalists gathered there for this conclave, in 1921” (Private Life, 15)—suggests the national convention rather than local or regional ones.
24. Sonia H. Davis, [“Autobiography”] (ms., JHL).
25. RK, “A Memoir of Lovecraft,” in Lovecraft Remembered, 197.
26. HPL to RK, 11 August 1921 (SL 1.143).
27. See Faig, Some of the Descendants, 176–77, citing research conducted by R. Alain Everts.
28. Alfred Galpin, “Memories of a Friendship,” in Lovecraft Remembered, 170–71.<
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29. Davis, Private Life, 10.
30. Sonia H. Davis, [“Autobiography”] (ms., JHL).
31. HPL to RK, 30 July 1921 (SL 1.142).
32. HPL to Winifred Virginia Jackson, 7 June 1921 (SL 1.137–38).
33. Faig, Parents, 22.
34. HPL to RK, 21 September 1921 (SL 1.152).
35. Ibid., 153.
36. HPL to RK, 21 September 1921; Letters to Rheinhart Kleiner, 216.
37. HPL to the Gallomo, 21 August 1921; Letters to Alfred Galpin, 104.
38. Davis, Private Life, 24.
39. Kleiner, “A Memoir of Lovecraft,” in Lovecraft Remembered, 200.
40. HPL to Alfred Galpin, 29 August 1918; Letters to Alfred Galpin, 38.
41. The flyer is in JHL.
42. HPL to FBL and Alfred Galpin, 1 May 1923 (SL 1.225).
43. HPL to the Gallomo, [April 1920] (SL 1.103).
44. HPL to Anne Tillery Renshaw, 14 June 1922 (SL 1.185–86).
45. Davis, Private Life, 15.
46. David V. Bush, Poems of Mastery and Love Verse (St Louis: Lincoln Press, 1922), 41.
47. HPL to JFM, 17 May 1923 (AHT).
48. HPL’s annotations to David Van Bush to The Symphony Literary Service, 28 February 1917 (ms., JHL).
49. David Van Bush to HPL, 24 July 1920 (ms., JHL).
50. HPL to LDC, 29 September 1922 (SL 1.199).
51. HPL to the Gallomo, [April 1920]; Letters to Alfred Galpin, 67.
52. HPL to RK, 23 January 1920 (SL 1.106).
53. HPL to Anne Tillery Renshaw, 3 October 1921 (SL 1.154).
54. HPL to RK, 7 October 1921 (SL 1.157).
55. HPL to FBL, 8 October 1921 (SL 1.158).
56. See note 53.
57. HPL to RK, 12 March 1922 (SL 1.167).
58. HPL to RK, 17 June 1922 (SL 1.188).
59. HPL to RK, 10 February 1920 (SL 1.108).
60. See note 58.
61. HPL to Samuel Loveman, 17 November [1922]; Letters to Samuel Loveman and Vincent Starrett (West Warwick, RI: Necronomicon Press, 1994), 9.
62. HPL to FBL, 8 February 1922 (SL 1.166).
63. HPL to Wilfred Blanch Talman, 10 November 1936 (SL 5.348).
64. Robert M. Price, “Erich Zann and the Rue d’Auseil,” LS Nos. 22/23 (Fall 1990): 13–14.
65. HPL to Elizabeth Toldridge, 31 October 1931 (ms., JHL).
66. Jacques Bergier, “Lovecraft, ce grand génie venu d’ailleurs,” Planète No. 1 (October–November 1961): 43–46.
67. See note 57.
68. Cf. HPL to MWM, 18 May 1922 (SL 1.176), noting that HPL read “Hypnos” to friends in New York in early April.
69. Steven J. Mariconda, “‘Hypnos’: Art, Philosophy, and Insanity,” in On the Emergence of “Cthulhu” and Other Observations (West Warwick, RI: Necronomicon Press, 1995), 49–52.
70. HPL to Woodburn Harris, 25 February–1 March 1929 (SL 2.298–301).
71. SL 1.176 (note 68).
72. Davis, Private Life, 16.
73. SL 1.180 (note 68).
74. Davis, Private Life, 17.
75. SL 1.181 (note 68).
76. HPL to Anne Tillery Renshaw, 3 May 1922 (SL 1.174).
77. HPL to LDC, 25 May 1922 (postcard) (ms., JHL).
78. HPL to FBL, 9 June 1922 (SL 1.184).
79. HPL to Anne Tillery Renshaw, 14 June 1922 (SL 1.187).
80. HPL to FBL, 21 June 1922 (SL 1.189).
81. HPL to LDC, 29 June 1922 (postcard) (ms., JHL).
82. Davis, Private Life, 19.
83. Sonia H. Davis to Winfield Townley Scott, 11 December 1948 (ms., JHL).
84. See Everts, “Mrs. Howard Phillips Lovecraft,” 45.
85. Davis, Private Life, 19.
86. HPL to LDC, 16 July 1922 (postcard) (ms., JHL).
87. HPL to LDC, 4 August 1922 (SL 1.191).
88. HPL to LDC, 9 August 1922 (ms., JHL).
89. Ibid.
90. HPL to FBL, 8 January 1924 (SL 1.281–82).
91. HPL to JFM, 8 January 1924 (SL 1.280).
92. HPL to CAS, 12 August 1922 (SL 1.193).
93. The publication of a three-volume edition of Smith’s Complete Poems and Translations (Hippocampus Press, 2007–08) was the culmination of decades of work by my coeditor, David E. Schultz.
94. See The Shadow of the Unattained: The Letters of George Sterling and Clark Ashton Smith (New York: Hippocampus Press, 2005).
95. George Sterling’s Complete Poetry is scheduled for publication in 2011 by Hippocampus Press.
96. HPL to CAS, 25 March 1923 (SL 1.213–14).
97. See Paul Livingston Keil, “I Met Lovecraft,” Phoenix 3, No. 6 (July 1944): 149.
98. HPL to LDC, 29 September 1922 (ms., JHL).
99. Ibid.
100. The story is listed in Lovecraft’s chronologies as written in 1922, prior to “The Lurking Fear,” which was clearly written in November.
101. Steven J. Mariconda, “‘The Hound’—A Dead Dog?” (CoC, Eastertide 1986), in On the Emergence of “Cthulhu,” 45–49.
102. HPL to FBL, February 1924 (SL 1.292–93).
103. HPL to MWM, [c. August 1922] (AHT).
104. HPL to Harry O. Fischer, [late February 1937] (SL 5.418).
105. HPL to RK, 30 July 1921; Letters to Rheinhart Kleiner, 209.
106. HPL to FBL, 9 June 1922 (SL 1.185).
107. HPL to Winifred V. Jackson, 7 October 1921 (ms., JHL).
108. HPL to FBL, 9 June 1922 (AHT).
109. In a letter to Samuel Loveman (17 November [1922]; Letters to Samuel Loveman and Vincent Starrett, 9) HPL announced not having started the story; by early December he had sent it to CAS (HPL to CAS, 2 December 1922 [SL 1.201]).
110. See “Observations on Several Parts of America” (1928).
111. HPL to JFM, 19 October 1929 (SL 3.31).
112. HPL to Samuel Loveman, 29 April [1923]; Letters to Samuel Loveman and Vincent Starrett, 16.
113. HPL to CAS, 14 May 1926 (SL 2.50).
114. HPL to F. Lee Baldwin, 16 May 1934 (ms., JHL).
115. HPL to REH, 25–29 March 1933 (SL 4.170).
116. In a letter to Kleiner (11 January 1923 [SL 1.203] he dates the trip to “Monday”; in a later letter (HPL to JFM, 12 March 1930 [SL 3.126]) he states it was December 17, which is a Sunday. In “Mrs. Miniter—Estimates and Recollections” he oddly states that Miniter and Cole accompanied him to Marblehead; but perhaps this refers to a later visit.
117. HPL to RK, 11 January 1923 (SL 1.204).
118. Ibid.
119. HPL to JFM, 12 March 1930 (SL 3.126–27).
Chapter 14: For My Own Amusement
1. Truman J. Spencer, The History of Amateur Journalism (New York: The Fossils, 1957), 70.
2. HPL to LDC, 27 July 1925; Letters from New York, 153.
3. RK, “Howard Phillips Lovecraft,” Californian 5, No. 1 (Summer 1937): 6.
4. HPL to Ralph Babcock, [1930s]; published as “The Voice from the Grave,” Scarlet Cockerel No. 15 (January 1941): 15–19.
5. HPL to LDC, 31 August 1922 (AHT).
6. See HPL to RK, 11 January 1923; Letters to Rheinhart Kleiner, 224.
7. HPL to Edward H. Cole, 23 and 24 February [1923] (mss., JHL).
8. HPL to Samuel Loveman, 24 March [1923]; Letters to Samuel Loveman and Vincent Starrett, 11–12.
9. HPL to Samuel Loveman, 29 April [1923]; Letters to Samuel Loveman and Vincent Starrett, 16.
10. Ibid.
11. HPL to RK, 29 April 192[3] (SL 1.131). The letter is misdated to 1921 in SL.
12. HPL to LDC, 14–19 November 1925 (ms., JHL).
13. “My card sent from Salem last month . . .”: HPL to CAS, 25 March 1923 (SL 1.213). Cf. also HPL to LDC, [9 Feb. 1923] (postcard) (ms., JHL).
14. See note 8.
15. HPL to FBL and Alfred Galpin, 1 May 1923 (SL 1.219–20).
16. See note 9.
17. Ibid.
18. HPL to FBL, 3 June 1923 (SL 1.233).
19. Davis, Private Life, 18.
20. Cole, “Ave atque Vale!”(Olympian, Autumn 1940), in Lovecraft Remembered, 101.
21. HPL to Robert E. Moe, 13 February 1935 (ms., JHL).
22. HPL to MWM, 31 July [1923] (ms., JHL).
23. HPL to FBL, 4 September 1923 (SL 1.248).
24. HPL to LDC, [15 September 1923] (postcard) (ms., JHL).
25. HPL to FBL, 21 September 1923 (SL 1.251).
26. HPL to JFM, 29 March 1923 (AHT).
27. HPL to JFM, 3 May 1923 (SL 1.226).
28. See Robert E. Weinberg, The Weird Tales Story (West Linn, OR: FAX Collector’s Editions, 1977), 3.
29. HPL to the Gallomo, [April 1920]; Letters to Alfred Galpin, 84.
30. See note 27.
31. HPL to JFM, 29 May 1923 (AHT).
32. HPL to MWM, 19 October 1924 (AHT).
33. HPL to Bernard Austin Dwyer, [1932] (SL 4.4).
34. HPL to FBL, 3 June 1923 (SL 1.233–34).
35. Ibid.
36. SL 1.250 (note 25).
37. Steven J. Mariconda, “Baring-Gould and the Ghouls: The Influence of Curious Myths of the Middle Ages on ‘The Rats in the Walls’” (CoC, St John’s Eve 1983), in On the Emergence of “Cthulhu,” 53–56.
38. HPL to JVS, 8–22 November 1933 (ms., JHL).
39. Irvin S. Cobb, “The Unbroken Chain,” in On an Island That Cost $24.00 (New York: George H. Doran Co., 1926), 66–67.
40. HPL to FBL, 8 November 1923 (SL 1.259).
41. See Sam Moskowitz, A. Merritt: Reflections in the Moon Pool (Philadelphia: Oswald Train, 1985), 50–52.
42. HPL to C. L. Moore, 2 July 1936 (SL 5.181).
43. See HPL to FBL, 7 October 123 (SL 1.255).
44. HPL to CAS, [3 October 1933] (ms., JHL).
45. HPL to REH, 2–5 November 1933 (SL 4.297).
46. HPL to REH, 4 October 1930 (SL 3.178, 182–83).
47. HPL to LDC, 30 March 1924; Letters from New York, 53.
48. New Statesman (9 September 1921): 611.
49. Muriel E. Eddy, “Howard Phillips Lovecraft,” in Rhode Island on Lovecraft, ed. Donald M. Grant and Thomas Hadley (Providence: Grant-Hadley, 1945), 14. Not included in Lovecraft Remembered.
50. Muriel E. Eddy, The Gentleman from Angell Street, in Lovecraft Remembered, 49–50.
51. SL 1.254 (note 45).
52. HPL to JFM, 28 October 1923 (SL 1.257).
53. Quoted in AD’s prefatory note to “Three Stories” by C. M. Eddy, Jr, in The Dark Brotherhood and Other Pieces (Sauk City, WI: Arkham House, 1966), 97.