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H. P. Lovecraft

Fellows Find: H. P. Lovecraft letter sheds light on pivotal moment in his career

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James Machin is a PhD student at Birkbeck, University of London, working on a thesis on early weird fiction, circa 1880 to 1914. He is also the editor of Faunus, the journal of the Friends of Arthur Machen. His research at the Ransom Center was funded by a dissertation fellowship supported by the Creekmore and Adele Fath Charitable Foundation and The University of Texas at Austin Office of Graduate Studies.

 

One of the joys of archival research in the Ransom Center is wandering off-track to follow hunches or simply indulge one’s curiosity. The subject of my thesis is early weird fiction, and while the bulk of my time at the Center was spent investigating material from the 1890s relating to Arthur Machen, M. P. Shiel, and John Buchan, I couldn’t resist looking up H. P. Lovecraft in the old card catalogue. I found a single item listed on one index card: a letter from Lovecraft to J. C. Henneberger. The name was a familiar one: Henneberger was the publisher who established Weird Tales magazine in the 1920s, the pulp title that is remembered today for publishing several of H. P. Lovecraft’s most influential stories.

 

The letter was several pages of closely packed typescript sent from 598 Angell Street, Providence, Rhode Island—the house the family had moved to in 1904 after the death of Lovecraft’s grandfather—and dated February 2, 1924. The year was to be a significant one for Lovecraft: he was about to uproot himself from his home of 20 years to join his soon-to-be wife Sonia Haft Greene in Brooklyn. Lovecraft struggled to find work, the marriage failed, and some have identified this episode as being the point from which many of his subsequent troubles and frustrations ensued. A common lament is that it all could have been so different: soon after the letter was written, Henneberger offered Lovecraft the editorship of the Chicago-based Weird Tales. If Lovecraft had properly seized this opportunity with both hands, the story goes, he would have established himself as the man of letters he was born to be, and avoided languishing in obscurity and poverty for the rest of his life.

 

Lovecraft scholar and biographer S. T. Joshi has identified some reasons why Lovecraft made the decision that he did: Greene was already established in New York, Lovecraft knew that Weird Tales was already financially hamstrung by a debt of tens of thousands of dollars, and—perhaps most importantly—Lovecraft didn’t think there were enough writers producing weird fiction of a sufficiently high quality to populate the pages of the magazine. There is plenty in the letter of February 2 to further evidence Joshi’s account. It also reveals that Lovecraft’s concerns go considerably beyond his lack of confidence in the availability of suitable material, and beyond even his lack of faith in the tastes of the wider reading public. They even go beyond his negative opinion of the “whole atmosphere and temperament of the American fiction business.” For Lovecraft, the problem was contemporary culture itself:

We have millions who lack the intellectual independence, courage, and flexibility to get an artistic thrill out of a bizarre situation, and who enter sympathetically into a story only when it ignores the colour and vividness of actual human emotions and conventionally presents a simple plot based on artificial, ethically sugar-coated values and leading to a flat denouement which shall vindicate every current platitude and leave no mystery unexplained by the shallow comprehension of the most mediocre reader. That is the kind of public publishers confront, and only a fool or a rejection-venomed author could blame the publishers for a condition caused not by them but by the whole essence and historic tradition of our civilisation.

 

Lovecraft’s frustration with the bland timidity of the mainstream could hardly be expressed in more forthright, if perhaps histrionic, terms.

 

Elsewhere in the letter (which is over 5,000 words long—Lovecraft was one of the most prolific and prolix correspondents of his age), Lovecraft expands on his projected novels Azathoth and The House of the Worm, neither of which were ever to materialize. He ruminates at length about what makes good weird fiction, and is generous and enthusiastic in his recommendations of authors he considers would be an asset to Weird Tales. He also outlines what he regards as the only feasible plan by which Weird Tales could perhaps successfully operate: the engagement of a small pool of appropriately gifted ghost-writers that would enable an editor to accept submissions not of publishable quality but demonstrating the required spark of originality. It’s difficult not to speculate that had Lovecraft accepted the editorship, this pool of writers would have inevitably included members of that ‘Lovecraft Circle’ who are now considered some of the definitive genre writers of the period: Clark Ashton Smith, Robert E. Howard, and Robert Bloch. Alas, it was never to be.

 

Or rather, perhaps not “alas”: Despite its shaky financial beginnings and ongoing precariousness, Weird Tales has survived on and off to this day. Who’s to say that Lovecraft’s determinedly purist and non-commercial editorial policy wouldn’t have sunk the title in double-quick time? Maybe his desk-duties would have hampered his creative productivity even further than his belief that a “real artist never works fast, and never turns out large quantities”:

He can’t contract to deliver so many words in such and such a time, but must work slowly, gradually, and by mood; utilising favourable states of mind and refraining from putting down the stuff his brain turns out when it is tired or disinclined to such work.

 

Counterfactual speculation is both difficult not to indulge in and largely unrewarding. Perhaps those of us who celebrate early twentieth-century pulp writing and its influence on ensuing popular culture should simply be grateful to Henneberger for starting Weird Tales in the first place, for championing Lovecraft’s work (Henneberger lobbied editor Edwin Baird to accept Lovercaft’s submissions), and for providing a platform for weird fiction despite commercial and critical indifference. If it wasn’t for Henneberger’s enthusiasm and efforts, perhaps many of Lovecraft’s stories would never have seen the light of day and long since rotted away in some forgotten drawer.

 

The question of the provenance of the letter still baffled me after my return to the UK. It was a single item in a folder of theatrical ephemera and seemed strikingly anomalous in that context. Rick Watson at the Center kindly investigated further and told me that the letter was likely part of the Albert Davis or Messmore Kendall collections, originally acquired by the University of Texas in 1956–1958, both consisting of performing arts materials. When I learned that the collection of Messmore Kendall (1872–195), a lawyer and theatre entrepreneur, included material collected by Harry Houdini, the mystery seemed to solve itself. At the time Lovecraft wrote the letter, Henneberger had engaged him to ghost-write a story for Houdini called “Imprisoned With the Pharoahs,” published later that year in Weird Tales. It seems a reasonable supposition that Henneberger passed the letter on to Houdini soon after receiving it to evidence Lovecraft’s suitability for the endeavour and the unrivalled perspicacity of his views on weird fiction. Thanks to the Ransom Center, we’re still able to enjoy that insight nearly a century later.

 

With grateful thanks to Bridget Gayle Ground, Rick Watson, and all the Ransom Center staff for their hospitality, time, and expertise.

 

Related content

Collection of materials by Robert E. Howard, creator of Conan the Barbarian, is donated to Ransom Center

Six Degrees of Separation: “True Detective” and the Ransom Center

Letters in Knopf archive show challenges Ray Bradbury faced early in his career

Bloodcurdling Tales of Horror and the Macabre: The Best of H.P. Lovecraft

 

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Six Degrees of Separation: “True Detective” and the Ransom Center

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I am already missing Rust Cohle, Marty Hart, and sinister references to the “Yellow King.” If you are not sure what I am talking about, it’s the first season of the HBO crime series True Detective. A ritualistic murder investigation set against a backdrop of oil refineries in the swamps of the Louisiana bayou, True Detective is full of philosophical musings and obscure literary references including spiral symbols, black stars, yellow kings, and a fictional place named Carcosa. What does any of this have to do with the Ransom Center?

As I watched Rust and Marty enter into a wicked, sunken maze of brick tunnels, I thought “I bet the Ransom Center has a link to this show.” With the Center’s many collections in literature, film, photography, art, performing arts, and rare books, I am quite sure it is possible to connect almost any news story or popular culture reference to one of the Ransom Center’s collections in fewer than six degrees. Can I link Matthew McConaughey to the Ransom Center?

 

Start

1. Journalist and short-story writer Ambrose Bierce wrote the horror story “An Inhabitant of Carcosa” in 1886. The story explores death, light, and darkness and is about a man who awakens from a sickness-induced sleep to find himself lost in an unfamiliar wilderness. Sound familiar?

The Ransom Center has three photos of Ambrose Bierce in the Literary File Collection (box: PH:LF:Small Alphabet).

 

2. Writer Robert W. Chambers borrows the name of Ambrose’s ancient city, Carcosa, and builds it into a mysterious and cursed city in his collection of short stories The King in Yellow. The stories in the book are linked by a fictional play of the same name, which induces despair and insanity in those who read it or see it performed. Considered “weird fiction” under the subgenre of speculative fiction, Chamber’s The King in Yellow has inspired many writers, including H. P. Lovecraft.

The Ransom Center owns an 1895 edition of The King in Yellow. It is just one of the 35,000 volumes in the L.W. Currey science fiction and fantasy collection (call number: PS 1284 K563 1895a).

Despite being out of copyright and freely available on the internet, the book has created literary buzz and climbed into a best-selling spot on Amazon. According to the Wall Street Journal, after episode five of True Detective, sales increased 71percent, elevating The King in Yellow into spot No. 7 on Amazon.com.

The Ransom Center also has some letters by Chambers and the handwritten draft of his short story “The Maker of Moons,” which was the title story of his 1896 short story collection (collection: Robert W. Chambers in Little Alphabet and Uncataloged Little Alphabet).

 

3. The HBO series True Detective is full of direct quotes and visual references to Chamber’s The King in Yellow.

 

4. Matthew McConaughey stars as detective Rust Cohle in True Detective.

Alright, alright, alright. Your turn!

 

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Collection of Materials by Robert E. Howard, Creator of Conan the Barbarian, is Donated to Ransom Center

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Robert E. Howard's map of the Hyborian world. © Conan Properties International LLC.
Robert E. Howard's map of the Hyborian world. © Conan Properties International LLC.

The Ransom Center has received a gift of materials related to writer Robert E. Howard (1906–1936), a prominent and prolific writer in the fantasy genre. Though Howard is perhaps best known for creating the character Conan the Barbarian, he wrote more than 100 stories for pulp magazines of his day, though his career spanned only 12 years before he committed suicide at the age of 30.

The collection, which includes more than 15,000 pages of manuscripts, sketches and ephemera, was donated by the estate of Glenn Lord (1931–2011), a Texas literary agent, editor and publisher of Howard’s prose and poetry. Lord is considered the first and most important researcher of Howard’s life and writings.

Howard was born in Peaster, Texas, and he sold his first story at the age of 18 when the magazine Weird Tales published “Spear and Fang” in 1924. Weird Tales would go on to publish many of Howard’s stories during the remainder of his life, including two stories in 1932 that introduced Conan the Barbarian, a character who roams the primitive lands of Earth’s mythical Hyborian Age fighting evil. Howard created other enduring characters such as Puritan duelist Solomon Kane, boxing sailor Steve Costigan, enigmatic Atlantean fugitive King Kull, and great warrior king Bran Mak Morn.

“The Ransom Center has one of the largest collections of classic science fiction novels, as well as the papers of several important science fiction and fantasy writers,” said Richard Oram, associate director and Hobby Foundation Librarian at the Ransom Center. “The Glenn Lord collection of Robert E. Howard will add an additional dimension to these materials.  Everyone is familiar with the Conan the Barbarian books or films, and the franchise originated in Howard’s Underwood No. 5 typewriter. Today, original typescripts of this Texas writer are sought after by collectors around the world, and we are grateful that Mr. Lord decided to place them here.”

Howard maintained a regular correspondence for six years with fantasy writer H.P. Lovecraft, and the two debated the merits of civilization vs. barbarianism, cities and society vs. the frontier, the mental vs. the physical, and other subjects. Some of this correspondence is preserved in the collection.

Lord became a collector of Howard’s work in the 1950s and amassed the world’s largest collection of Howard’s stories, poems and letters. Lord served as the literary agent for Howard’s heirs for almost 30 years, and his collection was used as the source text for almost every published Howard work appearing in books and magazines between 1965 and 1997.

The materials will be accessible once processed and cataloged. Two cases of Howard materials will be on display in the Ransom Center’s lobby through September 3.

Sherlock Holmes’s Infinite Case-Book

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Many of the items discussed here are featured in the display “The Intertextual Sherlock Holmes,” which can be seen outside the Reading and Viewing Room on the second floor of the Ransom Center until April 21.

While fanfiction may seem like an Internet-dependent phenomenon, its origins stretch far back into the past, beyond even the age of print. Adapting others’ literary creations for new purposes is at least as old as the Aeneid, in which Virgil adopts a minor character from Homer’s Iliad, Aeneas, as the hero of his story. The scholar Henry Jenkins has argued for fanfiction as modern myth-making, “a way of the culture repairing the damage done in a system where contemporary myths are owned by corporations instead of owned by the folk.” Just as ancient Greek storytellers could draw upon shared cultural knowledge to spin a tale featuring Theseus or Ariadne, their present-day counterparts seeking a similar resonance might instead turn to Harry Potter, Captain James T. Kirk—or Sherlock Holmes.

Holmes captured the imagination of other writers almost from his inception. In 1891, an anonymous author published “My Evening with Sherlock Holmes” in The Speaker, less than four years after the detective’s 1887 debut in A Study in Scarlet. One might argue that it was not long before other writers were more enamored of Holmes than Sir Arthur Conan Doyle was himself, for Doyle attempted to kill off his obstreperous creation in 1893 in a thwarted effort to refocus attention on his historical fiction. Even Holmes’s apparent death at Reichenbach Falls did little to stem the rising tide of Sherlockian pastiches, parodies, and fanfictions, of which the Ransom Center holds a diverse selection.

Published in Punch in January 1894, the eighth and last part of “The Adventures of Picklock Holes” by “Cunnin Toil” features the derivative detective tussling on the brink of a waterfall with his archenemy—Sherlock Holmes himself.
Published in Punch in January 1894, the eighth and last part of “The Adventures of Picklock Holes” by “Cunnin Toil” features the derivative detective tussling on the brink of a waterfall with his archenemy—Sherlock Holmes himself.

Many of the early extra-canonical Holmes sightings crop up as brief, humorous episodes in newspapers or periodicals, often with absurd variations on the detective’s distinctive name. In 1892, The Idler featured the adventures of Sherlaw Kombs, while Punch followed in 1893 with tales of Picklock Holes. Even P. G. Wodehouse joined the fun, publishing “Dudley Jones, Bore-Hunter” in Punch in 1903. Andrew Lang, best known for editing the Blue Fairy Book and its sequels, took a more serious approach in his pastiche “At the Sign of the Ship” (Longman’s Magazine, 1905), in which Holmes applies his deductive powers to the unsolved mystery of Edwin Drood. Across the Atlantic, Arthur Chapman took time off from writing cowboy poetry to pen “The Unmasking of Sherlock Holmes” for The Critic (1905), in which Auguste Dupin derides Holmes as an attenuated derivative of himself. (The story ends with Holmes shamefacedly conceding his debt to Dupin.)

While Chapman leaves Holmes at home in London, other authors took Holmes on some distinctly American adventures. In A Double Barrelled Detective Story (1902), Mark Twain transplants the detective to a California mining camp, much to the chagrin of his murderous nephew, Fetlock Jones. In “The Sleuths” (1911), Austin’s own O. Henry re-imagines Holmes as New York private eye Shamrock Jolnes, whose “thin, intellectual face, piercing eyes, and rate per word are too well known to need description.” The Center holds unusual copies of both books: Twain’s is a signed first edition from the author’s own library, while Henry’s is a tiny volume originally distributed as a free prize in cigarette packets.

Alongside the proliferating Holmesian fictions, a tradition of tongue-in-cheek nonfiction also arose that treated Holmes and Watson as real people, with Doyle demoted to mere editor when he was acknowledged at all. In 1911, future mystery writer and Monsignor Ronald Knox regaled an Oxford audience with “Studies in the Literature of Sherlock Holmes,” couched in the stentorian style of Biblical exegesis. Knox’s disquisition not only presumed the actuality of Holmes himself, but also fabricated a bevy of rival Holmesian scholars, whose interpretations of the canon Knox demolished with great relish. Taken up by other enthusiasts, this practice of fan-nonfiction became known as the Higher Criticism or the Great Game. The Center’s collections include key entries in the genre by Vincent Starrett, H. W. Bell, S. C. Roberts, and Dorothy L. Sayers, among many others.

Fascination with Holmes soon expanded beyond his English-speaking audience. A German newspaper wrote in 1908, “It is certain that contemporary Europe is suffering from a disease called Sherlockismus […] a literary disease similar to Werther-mania and romantic Byronism.” The Bookman concurred, diagnosing Paris with “what may be described as a bad case of Sherlockitis,” and citing some alarming symptoms: “In connection with two recent sensational murders the Paris newspapers have been giving their versions of how these crimes were committed in the form of imaginary interviews with Sherlock Holmes.” Versions of Holmes also thrived on the Spanish stage, with several plays produced and published between 1908 and 1916. While some of these drew directly on the canon, many were original works that borrowed only the character (and sometimes no more than the name) of Holmes.

As Doyle’s frustration with Holmes’s popularity became more and more apparent, and new adventures appeared less and less frequently, fans turned to supplementing the canon with their own creations. After the publication of the final Holmes tales in 1927, a Wisconsin teenager named August Derleth started writing stories that both imitated and explicitly referenced Holmes, introducing his detective Solar Pons as “the Sherlock Holmes of Praed Street.” Derleth again translated his fan enthusiasm into action when he founded Arkham House to ensure the publication of H. P. Lovecraft’s works in formats more durable than pulp magazines. Arkham later published the Pons stories under the imprint Mycroft & Moran, with each volume featuring an introduction by a noted Sherlockian. Derleth eventually wrote more stories about Pons than Doyle did about Holmes.

From the first issue of The Baker Street Journal, 1946.
From the first issue of The Baker Street Journal, 1946.

The rise of organized fan societies created new venues for fans to communicate with other fans. In 1934, Christopher Morley founded the Baker Street Irregulars, which began publishing The Baker Street Journal in 1946. After a brief stint in the 1930s, The Sherlock Holmes Society of London re-formed in 1951, bringing out the first Sherlock Holmes Journal the following year. Both periodicals featured stories by fans alongside Sherlockian news, reviews, essays, and criticism. In addition to issues of both journals, the Center also holds the papers of Christopher Morley, including many documents from the early days of the Baker Street Irregulars. A limited edition pamphlet of the sonnet in which Vincent Starrett famously declared “It is always 1895,” a recreation of the portrait of Irene Adler that caused so much trouble in “A Scandal in Bohemia,” and a self-published book of original songs about characters from the stories illustrate the wide range of creative engagement that flowed through these channels for fan-centered community.

The mythology of Sherlock Holmes continues to expand across media. Recently published fictions by Michael Chabon, Neil Gaiman, and Laurie S. King re-envision the classic Holmes in new contexts. On television, BBC’s Sherlock and CBS’s Elementary each mix and match elements of the original adventures and characterizations to produce two very different modern takes on Holmes and Watson. Fanworks inspired by the original Holmes or his many reincarnations proliferate both online and in print. The Ransom Center’s collections illustrate that the current boom in re-imagining Doyle’s detective is only the most recent chapter in a long history of Sherlockian creative enthusiasm. The case-book of Sherlock Holmes is nowhere near closed.

In 2011, the Baker Street Irregulars published “Bohemian Souls,” a facsimile of the original manuscript of “A Scandal in Bohemia,” accompanied by annotations and commentary.  This was followed by their 2012 edition of “The Golden Pince-Nez.”  Both manuscripts are owned by the Ransom Center.

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Arthur Machen, Welsh horror fiction author, turns 150 this week

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The Welsh horror fiction author Arthur Machen turns 150 this week. Machen, an influential figure in the budding supernatural fiction scene of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, is best known for his novella “The Great God Pan,” and for accidentally proliferating a legend about angels protecting the British army at the Battle of Mons in World War I.

The Ransom Center houses an extensive collection of items pertaining to the author, comprising 20 archival boxes of material. The Machen collection features handwritten drafts, page proofs with Machen’s notes, correspondence with family and friends including A. E. Waite and Oliver Stonor, and miscellaneous ephemera. Additionally, the Center’s Arthur Machen literary photography collection contains portraits of the author and his residences.

Machen’s accomplishments in fantasy and supernatural fiction inspired the admiration—and multiple pastiches—of a later generation of authors. “The Great God Pan” drew praise from such giants of the genre as H. P. Lovecraft and Stephen King. King credited it as the inspiration for his own novella N, proclaiming “Pan” to be “one of the best horror stories ever written, maybe the best in the English language.” Lovecraft, a contemporary of Machen’s, lauded “The Great God Pan” in his 1926 essay “Supernatural Horror in Literature,” saying: “No one could begin to describe the cumulative suspense and ultimate horror with which every paragraph abounds.”

The many who praised Machen often compared his writing to that of his American predecessor, Edgar Allan Poe. In a letter to a fan, which resides in the Ransom Center’s Poe collection, Machen addresses the sentiment with humility: “A good many people have compared my work with that of Poe… This was an immense compliment to me—but quite an undeserved one.” But Machen was also quick to differentiate his writing from Poe’s. He continues, “[Poe’s] terrors are as distinct as possible,” whereas Machen’s own are “vague, irrational, something like the broken recollections of a nightmare.”

Indeed, Machen’s style is of a uniquely Welsh variety. His works frequently cite those of his fellow countrymen, including George Herbert, who published a book of religious poems in 1633. The storied and ominously beautiful Welsh landscape is a frequent setting for Machen’s writing, particularly his childhood home in Monmouthshire, a county in southeastern Wales of significance to Celtic, Roman, and medieval history. In a letter housed at the Ransom Center, Machen describes his obsession with the eerie scenery behind the rectory where he lived: “From the windows one looked across a strangely beautiful country to the forest of Wentwood, above the valley of the Usk. Beneath this forest, on the slope of the hill there is a lonely house called Bertholly, and to my eyes and imagination this house was a symbol of awe and mystery and dread.”

Machen paints a similar picture—one “written to fit Bertholly”—in the opening scene of “The Great God Pan,” which describes the view from a rogue surgeon’s unsettling house-turned-laboratory: “A sweet breath came from the great wood on the hillside above, and with it, at intervals, the soft murmuring call of the wild doves. Below, in the long lovely valley, the river wound in and out between the lonely hills.”

150 years later, Machen’s influence lives on. Stephen King novels are widely read, having sold 350 million copies worldwide. Supernatural horror dramas permeate popular culture, with successful television series like American Horror Story capitalizing on themes prominent in Machen’s own works. Were he to witness many of horror fiction’s modern incarnations, Machen might detect a familiar scene, reminiscent of the lonely house called Bertholly situated in the misty hills of Monmouthshire.

 

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