An H. P. Lovecraft Encyclopedia

By the early 1930s Long had turned to science fiction or science fantasy, writing voluminously for Astounding Storiesand other pulps. HPL began to feel that Long had sold himself out (see SL5.400). At this same time, paradoxically, Long was espousing Bolshevism, engendering vigorous debates in their letters. His most notable story, “Second Night Out” (originally published as “The Black, Dead Thing”), appeared in WT(October 1933). In 1935 HPL participated in the round-robin story “The Challenge from Beyond,” persuading Long to write the final segment after he had left the project. When visiting R.H.Barlow that summer in Florida, HPL helped set type for Long’s second poetry collection, The Goblin Tower(Dragonfly Press, 1935), correcting some of Long’s faulty meter in the process. HPL’s letters to Long are among the richest and most wide-ranging of all his correspondence; however, the letters after April 1931 have been lost, and even the letters up to that date exist primarily in transcriptions prepared by Arkham House.

Long learned of HPL’s death when he read the brief obituary in the New York Timeson March 16, 1937. He wrote only three times about HPL, aside from brief letters published in magazines: “Random Memories of H.P.L.” (in Marginalia;rpt. LR), “H.P.L. in Red Hook” (in The Occult Lovecraft, ed. Anthony Raven [1975]), and Howard Phillips Lovecraft: Dreamer on the Nightside(Arkham House, 1975). The book-length memoir was written in considerable haste as a direct result of Long’s reading of the manuscript of L.Sprague de Camp’s

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Lovecraft: A Biography(1975), which Long felt to be a biased portrait of HPL; it was exhaustively revised by Arkham House’s editor, James Turner. Long also wrote a brief preface to a collection of HPL’s tales, The Colour out of Space(Jove, 1978 [inadvertently omitted from the first printing]). His introduction to The Early Long(Doubleday, 1975), a collection of his best stories, provides illumination on his own life and work, as does his brief Autobiographical Memoir(Necronomicon Press, 1985). In his later years he lived in great poverty with his wife, Lyda, in an apartment in the Chelsea district of Manhattan.

Long wrote prolifically in the fields of horror and science fiction. His best tales are collected in two Arkham House volumes, The Hounds of Tindalos(1946) and The Rim of the Unknown(1972). Among his science fiction tales, the most notable are John Carstairs, Space Detective(1949) and Mars Is My Destination(1949). Odd Science Fiction(1964) contains The Horror from the Hillsand two other tales. The best of his poetry, as selected by himself, was gathered in In May an Splendor (Arkham House, 1977); his uncollected poetry has been assembled by Perry M.Grayson in The Darkling Tide(Tsathoggua Press, 1995).

See Tom Collins, “Frank Belknap Long on Literature, Lovecraft, and the Golden Age of ‘Weird Tales,’” Twilight Zone1, No. 10 (January 1982): 13–19; Ben P.Indick, “In Memoriam: Frank Belknap Long,” LSNo. 30 (Spring 1994): 3–4; Peter Cannon, Long Memories: Recollections of Frank Belknap Long (British Fantasy Society, 1997); S.T.Joshi, “Things from the Sea: The Early Weird Fiction of Frank Belknap Long,” Studies in Weird FictionNo. 25 (Summer 2001): 33–40.

“Looking Backward.”

Essay (7,680 words); probably written in late 1919 or early 1920. First published in the Tryout (February, March, April, May, and June 1920); rpt. as a booklet (Haverhill, Mass.: C.W.Smith, [1920]); rpt. Aonian(Autumn and Winter 1944); rpt. as a booklet (Necronomicon Press, 1980). This discursive essay on the “halcyon days” of amateur journalism (1885–95) was based on a sheaf of amateur journals given to HPL by C.W.Smith, editor of the Tryout. HPL remarks on the general naïveté and unsophistication of many of the contributions; notes that the amateurs of the period generally divide into three categories, “the literati, the plodders, and the politicians”; and discusses contributions by several amateurs, including Joseph Dana Miller, Brainerd Emery, Finlay Aaron Grant, Thomas G. Harrison, and Ernest A.Edkins (later a colleague of HPL).

“Lord Dunsany and His Work.”

Essay (3,910 words); delivered as lecture to an amateur journalists’ group in Boston, December 1922. First published in Marginalia;rpt. MW