An H. P. Lovecraft Encyclopedia

Shortly after his death, HPL’s longtime friend Maurice W. Moe wrote: “If there is ever a survey to determine the greatest letter-writer in history, the claims of Lovecraft deserve close investigation” (“Howard Phillips Lovecraft: The Sage of Providence,” O-Wash-Ta-Nong,[1937]). While it is unlikely that HPL will soon attain celebrity solely or largely on the basis of his letters, it is now abundantly clear that his correspondence ranks among the pinnacles of his literary achievement. The number of letters written by HPL has been a matter of debate. L.Sprague de Camp ( Lovecraft: A Biography[1975]) casually estimated a figure of 100,000, but this is probably too high. HPL stated in 1936 that he wrote 5 to 10 letters per day ( SL5.369); if we assume that he maintained this ratio over his literary career (1914–36), we arrive at 42,000 to 84,000 letters. Given that HPL was probably not considering the vast numbers of postcards he wrote during his travels, the total figure is probably closer to the higher than the lower amount. But mere numbers do not tell the whole story. What makes HPL’s letters remarkable, beyond their sheer quantity and size, is their extraordinary candor; their abundance of wit, humor, satire, and persiflage; and their exhaustive and penetrating discussions of a wide range of topics including philosophy, literature and literary theory, history, art and architecture (especially of colonial America), and the contemporary political, economic, cultural, and social trends of the nation and the world. His letters are, in this regard, far more interesting and perspicacious than many of his essays on the same subjects.

HPL remarked that “Not until I was twenty years old did I write any letters worthy of the name.” He attributed his enthusiasm for letter-writing at this time to his cousin Phillips Gamwell, who, although only twelve, “blossomed out as a piquant letter-writer eager to discuss the various literary and scientific topics broached during our occasional personal conversations” ( SL3.370). HPL gained his initial celebrity (or, rather, notoriety) by the letters in prose and verse to the Argosyattacking the sentimental fiction of Fred Jackson, which aroused a storm of protest on the part of Jackson’s supporters. It was, however, when HPL joined the amateur journalism movement in 1914 that he first began writing letters

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regularly and voluminously. No doubt many of these letters concerned routine matters of amateur business and were correspondingly short; few of these have survived. The letters that do survive are those to his earliest colleagues in amateur journalism—Maurice W.Moe (1914f), Edward H.Cole (1914f), Rheinhart Kleiner (1915f), and Alfred Galpin (1918f). No letters to W.Paul Cook, who was instrumental in HPL’s resumption of fiction-writing in 1917, survive. HPL came in touch with Samuel Loveman in 1917, but very few letters to him are extant, most of them being of much later date. There is a small batch of letters to John T.Dunn (a member of the Providence Amateur Press Club) of 1915–17, mingling amateur affairs and controversial political topics (especially the Irish question); they have been published in Books at Brown(38–39 [1991–92]: 157–223). Some letters to Winifred Virginia Jackson of 1918–21 survive, but they do not settle the question of whether HPL and Jackson were romantically involved. Early letters to Anne Tillery Renshaw supply hints of HPL’s employment in the Symphony Literary Service. In 1920 HPL came into epistolary contact with Frank Belknap Long, who had just joined the amateur movement. Long was a lifelong friend of HPL, but HPL’s letters to him after the spring of 1931 have been lost. Only two letters to HPL’s mother (1920–21) survive; they were both written while she was confined in Butler Hospital. No letters to other members of HPL’s family, with the exception of a few letters to his aunt Annie Gamwell, survive prior to 1924, although a few letters by HPL’s grandfather Whipple Van Buren Phillips to HPL, dating to as early as 1894, survive at JHL and in private hands.