This volume presents H. P. Lovecraft's letters to three individuals-J. Vernon Shea, Carl Ferdinand Strauch, and Lee McBride White-who were not exclusively interested in weird fiction nor were involved in the realms of amateur journalism or fantasy fandom. Although Shea did come into contact with Lovecraft through Weird Tales, his interests, even as a young man, were far wider-current politics, general literature, film, and socio-cultural trends. As such, Lovecraft's letters to him broach broad topics relating to aesthetics, philosophy, politics, and general culture. In one letter Lovecraft...

H. P. Lovecraft did not have a great many female correspondents, but among the most notable was Elizabeth Toldridge, a poet living in Washington, D.C., who began corresponding with Lovecraft in the late 1920s. Over their decade-long exchange of letters, Lovecraft discussed at length the aesthetic basis of poetry and the methods by which poetic expression could be made relevant in an age of science. He came to recognize that his earlier attempts at writing eighteenth-century-style verse were aesthetic failures, and he attempted to put his new poetic theories into practice with Fungi from...

From modest beginnings, Hippocampus Press has grown to become one of the most vital imprints in the field of weird fiction, steadily increasing the scope of its projects into weird poetry, literary criticism, new works of supernatural horror, and even periodicals, audio CDs, and digital media. Along the way, it has garnered its share of awards and accolades; yet the press has stayed true to its roots in the work of H. P. Lovecraft and his circle. This annotated bibliography provides a useful and concise overview of the press's activities in the first fifteen years since its founding, and will...

The binding thread throughout this edited collection of Ambrose Bierce's letters is the argument that Bierce has been too often vilified as a cynical misanthrope. Joshi and Schultz believe that Bierce's human side has been ignored by scholars, and they work here to rectify this oversight. The importance of this collection is underscored by the fact that no collection of Bierce's letters has been published since 1922. This selection represents a sampling of nearly one-half million words of Bierce's correspondence, which Joshi and Schultz are the first to gather and transcribe. The letters...

Lovecraft's correspondents were scattered all over the country, and he found it engaging to be in touch with individuals from those areas of the United States where he had never been. Letters to two correspondents from the Pacific Northwest, Duane W. Rimel and F. Lee Baldwin, fill the bulk of this volume, and they reveal Lovecraft's customary role of tutor and mentor to young devotees of weird fiction in the 1930s.
As a novice writer of weird fiction, Rimel came in touch with Lovecraft to seek assistance on improving his work and getting it published in pulp or fan magazines. In the...