Are you a passionate reader and completist of H.P. Lovecraft? So am I, it’s perfectly normal. Lovecraft is a cornerstone of materialistic horror. This unique blend of horror and science fiction gave rise to one of the most captivating pantheons of creatures in 20th-century pop culture.
Although Lovecraft never achieved success during his lifetime, his impact is profound. His work has influenced modern literature, role-playing games, and even eerie music.
But what if I told you that even if you’ve read all of Lovecraft’s published works, you’ve only explored a small fraction of what he actually wrote? The American writer struggled deeply with social interactions. His outdated ideals, fragile health, shyness, and refusal to engage with anyone who didn’t share his literary vision led him to live much of his life as a recluse. He spent years locked away at home, devoted to reading, endlessly rewriting his works, and writing letters–thousands of letters.
It’s estimated that Lovecraft wrote about 75,000 letters in his lifetime. This immense volume of correspondence compares only to that of another historical correspondence enthusiast, the French Enlightenment writer Voltaire. Unfortunately, only a fifth of the letters have survived.
In his correspondence, Lovecraft discussed everything from his daily life to the chronicles of his travels across the U.S. He also wrote about his ideas on what weird fiction should encompass. Overall, the letters offer a perspective on Lovecraft that’s sometimes even more enlightening than his fictional works.
The Highest Peaks of Misery
Examining Lovecraft’s correspondence provides a unique perspective for anyone interested in the American writer and the intricate creative process of any author. One important aspect is that Lovecraft didn’t compose these letters with the intention of them being read by the public. Instead, they served as informal and unfiltered conversations with his correspondents.
This offers a rare privilege. We can glimpse Lovecraft’s innermost thoughts in a more authentic way than a biographer might convey and even more revealing than what he would share in a novel. For instance, his foundational essay on genre literature, Supernatural Horror in Literature, becomes much richer when read alongside his letters. In his correspondence, Lovecraft is unconcerned with making academic arguments for an audience.
The letters also reveal Lovecraft’s untamed thoughts. He freely expresses his interests and passions at length. In fact, some of his letters could’ve reached up to 80 pages if compiled in book form.
Lovecraft’s gravestone in Swan Point Cemetery, with the famous inscription “I am Providence.”
Lovecraft dedicated his life to writing, partly out of choice and partly due to his strict self-imposed standards. However, his unique blend of dreamlike excess, materialistic terror, and grand science fiction didn’t align with the most respected literary forms of his time. As a result, he had to publish in pulp magazines for meager pay. His income was supplemented by the generosity of close friends and family. He also took on proofreading jobs, but they paid little. He often revised other people’s texts so thoroughly that they became almost collaborative works.
These themes emerge clearly in his letters, reflecting a distinctive blend of humor and bitterness. Lovecraft was simultaneously proud of living outside the literary trends and depressed by the constant rejections of his ahead-of-its-time work. He yearned for the respect and admiration of his contemporaries, yet he held disdain for the magazines–often amateur publications–that published his stories.
Additionally, Lovecraft’s letters reveal traits of his character that many today find uncomfortable or even intolerable. Enclosed in his microcosm of books, chastity, and existential panic, his personality remained unaffected by the progressive ideas of the early 20th century. He was misogynistic, racist, classist, and homophobic. While these traits are evident in his stories, they become even more pronounced in his letters. In the end, he didn’t feel the need to conform to social conventions in his private writings. In Lovecraft’s case, separating the work from the author requires a precise and careful approach.
Above all, his letters offer a glimpse into the literary intimacy of a legendary author–one that’s more genuine and less curated than an autobiography. In his correspondence, you can see a Lovecraft who was particularly aware of his vision and what he sought to convey. He discussed literary techniques, recurring themes, and methods of expression with many of his correspondents, who were also writers. They included Robert Bloch, August Derleth, Robert E. Howard, Fritz Leiber, Frank Belknap Long, E. Hoffman Price, Clark Ashton Smith, and Weird Tales editor Farnsworth Wright, among others.
Lovecraft’s letters provide a wealth of insight for his fans. They explore the fundamentals of weird fiction, from his initial admiration for writers Lord Dunsany and Edgar Allan Poe to his discovery of authors like Arthur Machen. The letters also reveal his increasingly strained relationship with the magazines that published his edited and altered texts. Additionally, they expose Lovecraft’s strict authorial philosophy that mandated extreme realism within the framework of fantasy literature. In them, his intense objectivism, rooted in atheism, is present, too.
Lovecraft is undoubtedly one of the most irksome, particular, and abhorrent figures in 20th-century literature. Yet, he was also a groundbreaking genius who forever changed the landscape of horror and science fiction. This contradiction is clearly reflected in his many letters.
Image | Aaron Burden
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