An H. P. Lovecraft Encyclopedia

American short story writer, novelist, and poet, and one of HPL’s closest friends. Long, a lifelong New Yorker, was not quite nineteen when he first came in touch with HPL in early 1920; he was about to enter New York University to study journalism but would later transfer to Columbia, leaving without a degree. His father was a prosperous dentist, and the family resided at 823 West End Avenue in Manhattan. Long developed an interest in the weird by reading the Oz books, Jules Verne, and H.G.Wells in youth, and he exercised his talents both in prose and in poetry. He discovered amateur journalism when he won a prize from The Boy’s Worldand received an invitation to join the UAPA; he seems to have done so around the end of 1919. His first published tale was “Dr. Whitlock’s Price” ( United Amateur,March 1920), a mediocre mad scientist story. It was followed by a powerful prosepoetic tale, “The Eye Above the Mantel” ( United Amateur,March 1921). HPL found Long a stimulating correspondent, especially in regard to his aesthetic tastes, focusing on the Italian Renaissance and French literature. HPL published some of Long’s work in his Conservative(e.g., “Felis: A Prose Poem” [July 1923], about Long’s pet cat) and paid tribute to Long in a flattering article, “The Work of Frank Belknap Long, Jun.,” published anonymously in the United Amateur(May 1924) but clearly by HPL. HPL also wrote a birthday poem to Long: “To Endymion” ( Tryout, September 1923). (HPL wrongly believed that Long was born in 1902; Long himself in later years gave his birth year as 1903, but Peter Cannon’s consultation of New York City birth records confirm that his year of birth was 1901.) They first met when HPL visited New York in April 1922. In the summer of 1923 Long did HPL the great favor of introducing him to the work of Arthur Machen, which profoundly influenced HPL’s later tales. He may have been a significant influence in HPL’s adoption of a “Decadent” aesthetic in the early 1920s, which represented a major shift in his previous classicist aesthetic. The two authors met with great frequency during HPL’s stay in Brooklyn (1924–26), at which time they were the chief members of the Kalem Club. Long contributed to stories to early issues of WT,notably “Death Waters” (December 1924) and “The Ocean Leech” (January 1925), both of which convey Long’s fascination with the sea.

Perceiving the depression and despair HPL was feeling in New York, Long apparently wrote to HPL’s aunts in Providence in early 1926, recommending that they invite HPL to return home. (Long has supplied varying accounts of this

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incident; in one version he states that he himself wrote the letter, in another he claims that his mother did so.) In 1926 W.Paul Cook published Long’s first book of poetry, A Man from Genoa. In 1927 Long wrote the story, “The Space-Eaters,” in which HPL is featured as a character (referred to only as “Howard”; the other major character is named “Frank”). The story contains, as an epigraph, a quotation from the Necronomiconas translated by Dr. John Dee (the epigraph was omitted in the story’s first appearance in WT,July 1928); it constitutes the first “addition” to HPL’s pseudomythology. A year later Long (whose family had moved to 230 West 97th Street) wrote “The Hounds of Tindalos” ( WT,March 1929), an explicit imitation of HPL and a brief preface to the stillborn edition of HPL’s The Shunned House(1928). HPL, in turn, ghostwrote for Long the preface to Mrs. William B.Symmes’s Old World Footprints(W.Paul Cook/The Recluse Press, 1928), a slim poetry collection by Long’s aunt.

In 1929 Long wrote the short novel, The Horror from the Hills( WT,January and February-March 1931; published in book form 1963), which incorporates verbatim a letter by HPL recounting his great “Roman dream” of Halloween 1927. At this time Long—who had teamed with HPL in a revision service (an advertisement for this service appeared in WT,August 1928)—was working with Zealia Bishop and also Adolphe de Castro, whose memoir Portrait of Ambrose Bierce(Century Co., 1929) Long revised after HPL refused to do so; it contains a preface, signed “Belknap Long.” Long’s parents frequently brought HPL on various motor trips: to various spots in upstate New York and Connecticut in April 1928; to Kingston, New York, in May 1929; to Cape Cod in August 1929, August 1930, and July 1933; and to Asbury Park, N.J., in July 1930. The Longs’ spacious apartment also served as HPL’s base of operations during his Christmas visits to New York in 1932–33, 1933–34, 1934–35, and 1935–36.