by S. T. Joshi
33. HPL to RK, 2 February 1916 (SL 1.20).
34. SL 1.296 (note 12).
35. HPL to Richard F. Searight, 4 November 1935; Letters to Richard F. Searight (West Warwick, RI: Necronomicon Press, 1992), 68–69.
36. SL 1.6 (note 7).
37. Cited in Koki, 10.
38. Quoted in Faig, Parents, 11.
39. Koki, 11.
40. M. Eileen McNamara, M.D., “Winfield Scott Lovecraft’s Final Illness,” LS No. 24 (Fall 1991): 14.
41. Quoted by Faig, Parents, 11.
42. Koki, 12.
43. Faig, Parents, 11, quoting Everts, “The Lovecraft Family in America,” Xenophile 2, No. 6 (October 1975): 7.
44. Sonia H. Davis, “Memories of Lovecraft” (1969), in Lovecraft Remembered, ed. Peter Cannon (Sauk City, WI: Arkham House, 1998), 276. [“Gorham” has been erroneously rendered as “Gotham” here.]
45. Winfield Townley Scott, “His Own Most Fantastic Creation: Howard Phillips Lovecraft” (1944), in Lovecraft Remembered, 16. Sarah Susan Lovecraft’s medical records no longer survive, but Scott consulted them around 1944.
46. I am grateful to John H. Stanley of JHL for this information.
47. SL 1.6 (note 7).
48. SL 1.33 (note 10).
49. HPL to JVS, 29 May 1933 (SL 4.191).
50. John McInnis, “‘The Colour out of Space’ as the History of H. Lovecraft’s Immediate Family,” in H. P. Lovecraft Centennial Conference: Proceedings, ed. S. T. Joshi (West Warwick, RI: Necronomicon Press, 1991), 37.
51. HPL to Alfred Galpin, 27 October 1932; Letters to Alfred Galpin (New York: Hippocampus Press, 2003), 164. This volume is not listed in my edition of Lovecraft’s library, as it does not appear to have been present when his library was catalogued by Mary Spink shortly after Lovecraft’s death.
52. HPL to JVS, 4 February 1934 (SL 4.370).
53. HPL to MWM, 5 April 1931 (SL 3.362).
54. SL 3.363 (note 53).
55. SL 1.34 (note 10).
56. Scott, 11.
57. Myra H. Blosser to Winfield Townley Scott, n.d. (ms., JHL).
58. SL 4.355 (note 52). The same anecdote is found in HPL to RK, 16 November 1916; Letters to Rheinhart Kleiner, 66 (this portion not in SL).
59. SL 3.362 (note 53).
60. Providence Journal (21 July 1898).
61. Faig, Parents, 7.
62. SL 3.366–67 (note 53).
63. SL 1.33 (note 7).
64. Ibid.
65. HPL to Marion F. Bonner, 4 May 1936 (SL 5.244).
66. HPL to RK, 21 May 1920 (SL 1.115).
67. HPL to FBL, 27 February 1931 (SL 3.317).
68. HPL to JVS, 8 November 1933 (ms.).
69. SL 1.33 (note 10).
70. HPL to Helen Sully, 24 November 1933 (ms., JHL).
71. HPL to RK, 7 March 1920 (SL 1.110).
72. See note 68.
73. Ibid.
74. SL 4.357 (note 52).
75. SL 1.34 (note 10).
76. HPL to REH, 16 January 1932 (SL 4.8).
77. HPL to REH, 16 January 1932; A Means to Freedom: The Letters of H. P. Lovecraft and Robert E. Howard (New York: Hippocampus Press, 2009), 1.265 (this portion not in SL).
78. See note 68.
79. SL 1.31 (note 10).
80. SL 1.34–35 (note 10).
81. HPL to Virgil Finlay, 24 October 1936 (SL 5.335).
82. SL 5.244 (note 65).
83. HPL to FBL, 26 October 1926 (SL 2.84).
84. HPL to AD, 9 September 1931 (SL 3.409).
85. SL 3.407–8 (note 84).
86. HPL to FBL, 8 January 1924 (SL 1.282).
87. Per SL 2.107 (note 3); at SL 1.7 (note 7) HPL dates his discovery of classical antiquity to the age of seven, but it will soon be evident that this must be an error.
88. Nathaniel Hawthorne, “Preface” to A Wonder-Book, A Wonder-Book, Tanglewood Tales, and Grandfather’s Chair (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1883), 13.
89. Thomas Bulfinch, Bulfinch’s Mythology (New York: Modern Library, n.d.), 15.
90. SL 1.7 (note 7).
91. HPL to Richard F. Searight, 26 January 1935; Letters to Richard F. Searight, 44.
92. SL 1.33 (note 10).
93. HPL to CAS, 13 December 1933 (SL 4.335).
94. HPL to REH, 30 January 1931 (SL 3.283).
95. SL 1.7 (note 7).
96. Coleridge, Poems, ed. Ernest Hartley Coleridge (London: Oxford University Press, 1912), 189.
97. SL 2.108 (note 3).
98. HPL to Richard F. Searight, 26 January 1935; Letters to Richard F. Searight, 44.
99. HPL to LDC, 4 October 1925 (ms., JHL).
100. SL 1.300 (note 12).
101. Bulfinch’s Mythology, 7.
102. HPL to RK, 7 March 1920 (SL 1.110–11).
103. HPL to REH, 30 October 1931 (SL 3.431–32).
104. HPL to FBL, 27 February 1931 (SL 3.313). An earlier letter, however, dates this pseudonym to Lovecraft’s fourteenth year (HPL to FBL, 26 January 1921 [AHT]).
105. SL 1.36 (note 10).
106. HPL to JVS, 25 September 1933 (ms.).
107. SL 1.37 (note 10).
108. HPL to JFM, March [?] 1937 (SL 5.432).
109. SL 2.109 (note 3).
Chapter 3: Black Woods & Unfathomed Caves
1. Frederick S. Frank, “The Gothic Romance: 1762–1820,” in Horror Literature, ed. Marshall Tymn (New York: Bowker, 1981), 3–175.
2. William Hazlitt, “American Literature—Dr Channing,” Edinburgh Review No. 99 (October 1829): 127–28.
3. G. R. Thompson, Poe’s Fiction: Romantic Irony in the Gothic Tales (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1973),.
4. “Preface” to Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque (1840), in Collected Works of Edgar Allan Poe, ed. Thomas Ollive Mabbott (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1978), 2.473.
5. Collected Works of Edgar Allan Poe, 3.853.
6. Maurice Lévy, Lovecraft: A Study in the Fantastic, tr. S. T. Joshi (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1988), 14.
7. HPL to Elizabeth Toldridge, 28 August 1933 (SL 4.239).
8. HPL to CAS, 24 June 1927 (SL 2.148).
9. The Weird Tale (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1990), 1f.
10. See note 4.
11. HPL to RHB, 25 June 1931; O Fortunate Floridian, 3.
12. HPL to JVS, 19–31 July 1931 (ms., JHL).
13. HPL to JVS, 4 February 1934 (SL 4.354).
14. Henry James, “Baudelaire” (1876), French Poets and Novelists (New York: Macmillan, 1878), 76.
15. HPL to Bernard Austin Dwyer, 3 March 1927 (SL 2.109).
16. HPL to RK, 16 November 1916 (SL 1.36).
17. Edmund Pearson, Dime Novels (Boston: Little, Brown, 1929), 4f.
18. See Pearson, passim; Quentin Reynolds, The Fiction Factory (New York: Random House, 1955), passim.
19. HPL to RHB, 25 March 1935; O Fortunate Floridian, 230.
20. In The Dime Novel Detective, ed. Gary Hoppenstand (Bowling Green, OH: Bowling Green University Popular Press, 1982), 7–34, is reprinted an entire Old King Brady novel, The Haunted Churchyard; or, Old King Brady the Detective and the Mystery of the Iron Vault (1890).
21. HPL to JVS, 19–30 July 1931 (ms., JHL).
22. L. Sprague de Camp, Lovecraft: A Biography (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1975), 33.
23. This version has now been published in H. P. Lovecraft: The Fiction (New York: Barnes & Noble, 2008).
24. HPL to Richard F. Searight, 13 October 1934; Letters to Richard F. Searight, 34.
25. HPL to Alfred Galpin, 29 August 1918 (SL 1.74).
26. SL 2.109 (note 15).
27. SL 1.37 (note 16).
28. Ibid.
29. W. Paul Cook, In Memoriam: Howard Phillips Lovecraft (1941); rpt. in Lovecraft Remembered, 112.
30. SL 4.355–56 (note 13).
31. HPL to MWM, 1 January 1915 (SL 1.8).
32. HPL to REH, 25–29 March 1933 (SL 4.172).
33. Transcript of
HPL’s transcript at Hope Street English and Classical High School, Providence, RI.
34. See Lovecraft’s Library (1980 ed.), 39.
35. The manuscripts here are very confused, and some scholars now follow Lejay in reading illa (sc. coepta), but Lovecraft’s text almost certainly read illas (sc. formas).
36. John Dryden, ed. Keith Walker (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987), 382.
37 HPL to RK, 23 January 1920 (SL 1.106).
38. HPL to AD, 4 March 1932 (SL 4.26).
39. HPL to MWM, 5 April 1931 (SL 3.368).
40. Faig, Parents, 23.
41. SL 1.32 (note 16).
42. HPL to Richard F. Searight, 5 March 1935; Letters to Richard F. Searight, 51.
43. JVS, “Did Lovecraft Suffer from Chorea?” Outré No. 5 (May 1977): 30–31.
44. SL 1.36 (note 16).
45 Winfield Townley Scott, “His Own Most Fantastic Creation: Howard Phillips Lovecraft” (1944), in Lovecraft Remembered, 12.
46. Myra H. Blosser to Winfield Townley Scott, n.d. (ms., JHL).
47. SL 3.367 (note 39).
48. HPL to the Gallomo, [April 1920] (SL 2.104).
49. Sonia H. Davis, The Private Life of H. P. Lovecraft, 8.
50. See frontispiece to SL 2.
51. SL 1.32 (note 16).
52. Frontispiece to Something about Cats and Other Pieces (1949).
53. RHB, On Lovecraft and Life, ed. S. T. Joshi (West Warwick, RI: Necronomicon Press, 1992), 18.
54. Ms., JHL.
55. SL 1.35 (note 16). HPL declared that the line is from “Cicero’s oration [sic] against Catiline” (there are in fact four orations against Catiline), but it is actually from Pro Mureno 13.
56. SL 1.29–30 (note 16).
57. HPL to RHB, 10 April 1934; O Fortunate Floridian, 125.
58. See further my essay, “Further Notes on Lovecraft and Music,” Romantist Nos. 4/5 (1980–81): 47–49.
59. HPL to Elizabeth Toldridge, 29 May 1929 (SL 2.348).
60. Faig, Parents, 26.
61. HPL to LDC, [18 May 1929] (postcard) (ms., JHL).
62. SL 1.7 (note 31).
63. SL 1.35 (note 16).
64. Interview of Ethel Phillips Morrish by Paul R. Michaud, August 1977.
65. HPL to JVS, 8 November 1933 (ms.).
66. HPL to MWM, 27–29 July 1929 (AHT).
67. HPL to JVS, 10 February 1935 (SL 5.104).
68. SL 1.36 (note 16).
69. Ibid.
70. SL 1.7 (note 31).
71. HPL to LDC, 11 November 1924 (ms., JHL).
72. HPL to JVS, 18 September 1931 (AHT).
73. HPL to JVS, 4 February 1934 (ms., JHL).
74. SL 1.37 (note 16); HPL to Richard F. Searight, 5 March 1935; Letters to Richard F. Searight, 47.
75. HPL to RK, 20 January 1916 (SL 1.19); SL 2.109 (note 15).
76. For this and other information on Antarctic exploration, see Walker Chapman, The Loneliest Continent: The Story of Antarctic Discovery (Greenwich, CT: New York Graphic Society, 1964).
77. See HPL to MWM, 18 September 1932 (SL 4.67) for titles; HPL to Marion F. Bonner, 26 April 1936 (SL 5.237) for dates. In this latter letter the title of the second treatise is given as “Ross’s Explorations.”
78. Chapman, 92.
79. Chapman, 98.
80. Letters to Richard F. Searight, 47.
81. C. L. Moore to HPL, 6 October 1936 (ms., JHL): “Thank you for the privilege of reading that early publication of the Royal Atlas Company, ‘Wilks’ Exploration’ [sic] . . . I am returning ‘Wilks’ Exploration’ with a sigh . . .” The Royal Atlas Company must have been yet another of Lovecraft’s juvenile imprints.
82. SL 1.37 (note 16).
83. HPL to MWM, 27–29 July 1929 (AHT).
Chapter 4: What of Unknown Africa?
1. HPL to MWM, 1 January 1915 (SL 1.7).
2. HPL to LDC, 12 February 1926 (SL 2.39).
3. HPL to Richard F. Searight, 16 April 1936; Letters to Richard F. Searight, 55.
4. HPL to Alfred Galpin, 21 August 1918; Letters to Alfred Galpin, 27 (this portion not in SL).
5. HPL to RHB, 23 July 1936; O Fortunate Floridian, 356.
6. See, in general, Charles A. Whitney, The Discovery of Our Galaxy (New York: Knopf, 1971).
7. For an exhaustive discussion of Lovecraft’s interest in and knowledge of astronomy, see T. R. Livesey, “Dispatches from the Providence Observatory: Astronomical Motifs and Sources in the Writings of H. Lovecraft,” Lovecraft Annual 2 (2008): 3–87.
8. This, and all other juvenile publications cited in this chapter, are at JHL. A few of these items have been published in Collected Essays, but most remain unpublished.
9. I am grateful to Sam Moskowitz for information on the hectograph.
10. This essay was written in 1934.
11. HPL to RK, 16 November 1916 (SL 1.38).
12. HPL to LDC, 12 February 1926 (ms., JHL).
13. HPL to Duane W. Rimel, 29 March 1934 (SL 4.398).
14. SL 1.38 (note 11).
15. HPL to RK, 20 January 1916 (SL 1.19).
16. SL 1.39 (note 11).
17. HPL to MWM, 27–29 July 1929 (AHT).
18. HPL to JVS, 4 February 1934 (SL 4.353).
19. When HPL refers to the Munroes as his “next-door neighbours” (HPL to REH, 4 October 1930 [SL 3.184]), he is referring to the time after the spring of 1904, when he moved to 598 Angell Street and was in fact only a few houses away from the Munroes.
20. HPL to AD, 17 February 1931 (SL 3.290).
21. See Rhode Island Journal of Astronomy (7 May 1905).
22. HPL to AEPG, 19 August 1921 (SL 1.147).
23. HPL to the Gallomo, 31 August 1921 (SL 1.150). R. Alain Everts is responsible for the identification of Tanner’s last name.
24. HPL to AEPG, 5 August [1928] (ms., JHL).
25. SL 3.184 (note 19).
26. SL 1.147 (note 22).
27. HPL to Helen Sully, 4 December 1935 (ms., JHL).
28. SL 1.38 (note 11).
29. HPL to RK, 16 November 1916; Letters to Rheinhart Kleiner, 73.
30. HPL to Alfred Galpin, 27 May 1918; Letters to Alfred Galpin, 19.
31. HPL to AD, 17 February 1931 (SL 3.289–90).
32. HPL to AD, 26 March 1927; Essential Solitude: The Letters of H. P. Lovecraft and August Derleth (New York: Hippocampus Press, 2008), 1.77. HPL probably refers to two tales appearing in Collier’s, “The Singular Experience of Mr. John Scott Eccles” (a.k.a. “The Adventure of Wisteria Lodge”) (15 August 1908) and “The Adventure of the Bruce-Partington Plans” (12 December 1908).
33. HPL to JVS, 25 September 1933 (ms., JHL).
34. HPL to RK, 2 February 1916 (SL 1.20).
35. HPL to the Gallomo, 1920 (SL 1.104–5).
36. Field, State of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations, 2.553.
37. Ibid., 2.556.
38. HPL to MWM, 18 September 1932 (SL 4.65).
39. SL 1.105 (note 35).
40. HPL to F. Lee Baldwin, 13 February 1934 (ms., JHL).
41. HPL to AD, 31 December 1930 (SL 3.246).
42. HPL to F. Lee Baldwin, 27 March 1934 (ms., JHL).
43. SL 1.29 (note 11).
44. SL 4.365 (note 18).
45. Stuart J. Coleman to Winfield Townley Scott, 30 December [1943] (ms., JHL).
46. Winfield Townley Scott, “His Own Most Fantastic Creation” (1944), in Lovecraft Remembered, 12.
47. Clara Hess in the Providence Sunday Journal (19 September 1948); quoted in Faig, Parents, 33.
48. SL 1.40 (note 11).
49. SL 4.357 (note 18).
50. HPL to Edwin Baird, 3 February 1924 (SL 1.298).
51. HPL to RK, 16 November 1916; Letters to Rheinhart Kleiner, (this portion not in SL).
52. HPL to LDC, 22–23 December 1925 (ms., JHL).
53. HPL to FBL, [November 1927] (SL 2.181).
54. HPL to MWM, 5 April 1931 (SL 3.367).
55. HPL to Harry O. Fischer,
10 January 1937; quoted in de Camp, 40.
56. Kenneth W. Faig, Jr, “Howard Phillips Lovecraft: The Early Years 1890–1914,” Nyctalops 2, No. 1 (April 1973): 14n16, citing probate records.
57. SL 4.358–59 (note 18).
58. SL 3.369 (note 54).
59. SL 1.39 (note 11).
60. HPL to REH, 25–29 March 1933 (SL 4.172).
61. SL 1.30 (note 11).
62. SL 1.9 (note 1).
63. HPL to RHB, 24 May 1935 (SL 5.165).
64. HPL to JVS, 8 November 1933 (ms.).
65. Rhode Island Journal of Astronomy (30 July 1905).
66. HPL to Alfred Galpin, 29 August 1918; Letters to Alfred Galpin, 40 (this portion not in SL).
67. Surviving in AHT, Vol. XXXIII.
68. SL 1.105–6 (note 35).
69. HPL to MWM, 15 May 1918 (SL 1.60).
70. See note 64.
71. SL 1.146 (note 22).
72. Various Internet sources reveal the existence of one James M. Kay (d. 8 April 1904), who served in the West Virginia cavalry during the Civil War. This may be the person in question, as it seems to me that HPL’s friend would have lived a bit longer than 1904.
73. SL 1.146 (note 22).
74. See note 64.
75. Harold W. Munro, “Lovecraft, My Childhood Friend” (1983), in Lovecraft Remembered, 70.
76. See Rhode Island Journal of Astronomy (April 1907); HPL to Samuel Loveman, [c. 5 January 1924]; Letters to Samuel Loveman and Vincent Starrett (West Warwick, RI: Necronomicon Press, 1994), 23.
77. HPL to LDC, 30 May 1931 (ms., JHL).
78. HPL to JVS, 14 August 1933 (ms.).
79. See Faig, Some of the Descendants, 135f. See also Faig’s Edward Francis Gamwell and His Family (Glenview, IL: Kenneth W. Faig, Jr, 1991).
80. SL 1.34 (note 11).
81. SL 1.39 (note 11).
82. Faig, Some of the Descendants, 131. The fact that Clark studied at Harvard Medical School was discovered by Faig after the publication of his volume, and I am grateful to him for passing on this information.
83. Ibid.
84. HPL to Richard F. Searight, 31 May 1935; Letters to Richard F. Searight, 59.
85. SL 1.38 (note 11).
86. William Benjamin Smith, The Color Line (1905; rpt. New York: Greenwood Press, 1969), 185.
87. Smith, 192.
88. HPL to RK, 16 November 1916; Letters to Rheinhart Kleiner, 74–75 (this portion not in SL).
89. Thomas F. Gossett, Race: The History of an Idea in America (New York: Schocken Books, 1965), passim.
90. HPL to AEPG, 5 August [1931] (ms., JHL).
