An H. P. Lovecraft Encyclopedia

In September 1924 Loveman came to New York, following Hart Crane and settling at 78 Columbia Heights in Brooklyn Heights. For the next year and a half he and HPL were closely in touch as members of the Kalem Club. They met Hart Crane on several occasions in late 1924. By September 1925 Loveman had secured a job at Dauber & Pine bookshop (Fifth Avenue and 12th Street) and worked there for the next several years. In March 1926 he arranged for HPL to be paid to address envelopes for three weeks, one of the few remunerative positions HPL secured during his New York stay. Loveman later made the spectacular claim (unsupported by documentary evidence) that HPL was so depressed during the latter stages of his New York stay that he carried poison on his person so that he could commit suicide if he felt unduly depressed (see Joshi, H.P.Lovecraft: A Life,pp. 388– 89). In 1926 W.Paul Cook published Loveman’s long neo-Grecian poem, The Hermaphrodite,which HPL had read and admired years earlier. The July 1926 United Amateurincluded a poem by Loveman about HPL, “To Mr. Theobald.”

After HPL returned to Providence, he and Loveman communicated chiefly by correspondence; but Loveman did come to Providence in January 1929, after which the two of them visited Boston, Salem, and Marblehead for a few days. Loveman advised Adolphe de Castro and Zealia Bishop to approach HPL for revision work. On December 31, 1933, HPL attended a New Year’s Eve party at Loveman’s apartment in Brooklyn Heights, at which time he met Hart Crane’s mother. On this occasion Loveman alleges that his friend Patrick McGrath spiked HPL’s punch, so that HPL began speaking very volubly (see “Lovecraft as a Conversationalist”). HPL gives no indication of such a thing and probably would have detected alcohol in his drink. Loveman and HPL spent two days in

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Boston in October 1935. In 1936 the Caxton Press issued Loveman’s The Hermaphrodite and Other Poems,the only substantial volume of his poetry to be published.

After HPL’s death Loveman wrote two memoirs, “Howard Phillips Lovecraft” (in Cats) and “Lovecraft as a Conversationalist” ( Fresco,Spring 1958); both are in LR. Gradually—in part perhaps because of correspondence with Sonia H.Davis around 1947, when she revealed to him the depth of HPL’s antiSemitism—Loveman began turning against HPL. In a vicious article, “Of Gold and Sawdust” (in The Occult Lovecraft,ed. Anthony Raven [1975]), Loveman accuses HPL of being a racist and a hypocrite. It appears that Loveman destroyed his letters from HPL, as almost none survive (in “Lovecraft as a Conversationalist” he claims to possess 500 pages of HPL’s letters). The few that do survive were published in HPL’s Letters to Samuel Loveman and Vincent Starrett(Necronomicon Press, 1994). Loveman is now perhaps best known as a friend of Hart Crane. He wrote numerous articles about Crane and assisted in Brom Weber’s Hart Crane: A Biographical and Critical Study (1948); an interview with him about Crane was published as a pamphlet, Hart Crane: A Conversation with Samuel Loveman(New York: Interim Books, 1964). His play The Sphinx(which HPL read and admired) was published by W.Paul Cook in 1944.

Lowndes, Robert A[ugustine] W[ard] (1916–1998).

Author, editor, and late correspondent of HPL. HPL wrote Lowndes two letters, dated January 20 and February 20, 1937 (published in CryptNo. 62 [Candlemas 1989]: 39–47), encouraging Lowndes in his early literary ventures. Lowndes became very active in science fiction fandom in the 1940s, writing numerous science fiction tales as well as stories of many other types. He edited Future Fiction (1941–60), Science Fiction(1943, 1953–60), and other magazines but became best known as the editor of the magazines of the Health Knowledge chain: Magazine of Horror(1963–71), Startling Mystery Stories(1966–71), Weird Terror Tales(1969–70), Bizarre Fantasy Tales(1970–71), and others; they contained numerous reprints of HPL’s work.

“Lucubrations Lovecraftian.”

Essay (4,570 words); probably written in early 1921. First published in the United Co-operative(April 1921); rpt. MW