A Dreamer & A Visionary; H.P. Lovecraft in His Time

I have made reference to the Conservative. This was, of course, Lovecraft’s own amateur journal, and the first periodical he edited since the demise of The Rhode Island Journal of Astronomy in February 1909. Although he was on the editorial board of several other amateur journals, the Conservative was the only one of which he was the sole editor. Thirteen issues appeared from 1915 to 1923, broken down as follows:

Volume I: April 1915, July 1915, October 1915, January 1916 Volume II: April 1916, July 1916, October 1916, January 1917 Volume III: July 1917

Volume IV: July 1918

Volume V: July 1919

No. 12: March 1923

No. 13: July 1923

The issues range from four to twenty-eight pages. The first three issues were written almost entirely by Lovecraft, but thereafter his contributions decline considerably except for occasional poems and—beginning with the October 1916 issue—a regular column of opinion entitled ‘In the Editor’s Study’.

It is clear that Lovecraft welcomed the prospect of editing his own paper rather than merely contributing random pieces to other amateur journals or appearing in the official organ. What this allowed him to do—aside from promoting his own vision of amateurdom as a haven for literary excellence and a tool for humanist education—was to express his own opinions fearlessly. He did just that. The ‘Editorial’ in the July 1915 issue contains his statement of editorial policy:

That the arts of literature and literary criticism will receive prime attention from The Conservative seems very probable. The increasing use among us of slovenly prose and lame metre, supported and sustained by the light reviewers of the amateur press, demands an active opponent, even though a lone one, and the profound reverence of The Conservative for the polished writers of a more correct age, fits him for a task to which his mediocre talent might not otherwise recommend him.

…

Outside the domain of pure literature, The Conservative will ever be found an enthusiastic champion of total abstinence and prohibition; of moderate, healthy militarism as contrasted with dangerous and unpatriotic peace-preaching; of Pan-Saxonism, or the domination by the English and kindred races over the lesser divisions of mankind; and of constitutional representative government, as opposed to the pernicious and contemptible false schemes of anarchy and socialism.

A mighty tall agenda. I have already touched on some of the controversies over literature in which Lovecraft engaged; his political debates—both in published works and in private correspondence—were no less vigorous, and I shall treat them later. We will find that some of Lovecraft’s early opinions are quite repugnant, and many of them are uttered in a cocksure, dogmatic manner greatly in contrast with his later views. Nevertheless, it was evident to all amateurs that the editor of the Conservative was an intellectual force to be dealt with.

Lovecraft’s official career in amateur journalism was augmented by his election in July 1915 as First Vice-President of the UAPA. Part of his responsibility was to be the head of the Recruiting Committee, for which he wrote the pamphlet United Amateur Press Association: Exponent of Amateur Journalism. This, the second separate publication by Lovecraft (for the first, The Crime of Crimes (1915), see below), was issued in late 1915.

For the next term (1916–17) Lovecraft had no official function except Chairman of the Department of Public Criticism. He was, however, elected President at the UAPA convention in late July 1917. For the next five years he and his associates essentially controlled the UAPA, and the result really was a very significant raising of the literary tone. For a time it looked as if Lovecraft’s goals for amateurdom would be grandly fulfilled.

During this whole period Lovecraft had recommenced the writing of monthly astronomy articles, this time for the Providence Evening News. The first one appears in the issue for 1 January 1914, and hence actually predates his entry into amateur journalism. I have no doubt that Lovecraft was paid for each of the fifty-three articles he published.