Selected Letters II

Selected Letters II (1925-1929). Edited by August Derleth and Donald Wandrei.

The second volume of Lovecraft’s letters covers his last year of married life and residence in New York, his separation from his wife and return to his native Providence, and the beginnings of his antiquarian explorations. It includes as well detailed accounts of the origins and development of his long critique, Supernatural Horror in Literature, his fantastic novel, The Dream Quest of Unknown Kadath, his macabre tales, The Horror at Red Hook, In the Vault, The Call of Cthulhu, and others.

Among literary matters of special interest are his ghost-writing for Houdinin, his solution of the puzzle concerning the Voss-de-Castro-Bierce authorship of The Monk and The Hangman’s Daughter, and his correspondence with such other noted fantasistes as Frank Belknap Long, Clark Ashton Smith, Vincent Starrett, Donald Wandrei, and August Derleth.

Not only are his daily life and events recorded, his views of post-war America of the 1920s, but the full range of his mind and imagination are illustrated in his concept of the cosmos, while his vivid narratives of horror-dreams rank among the most remarkable in the literature of nightmares.

Many gems are imbedded in these pages – essays in full or in miniature, serious or leavened with satiric humor, on such diverse topics as Salem, cats, liquor, smoking, superstition, sex, heraldry, genealogy, machine civilization, modern art, intellectuals, the beauty of New England, and countless more.

A mechanistic materialist in his philosophy, a rationalist, a skeptic, a humanist and, above all, a truth-seeker always, Lovecraft proved himself an original thinker and a bold philosopher. Few letter-writers have rivalled him in depth, variety, insight, and the inquiring challenge that combine accurate scholarship with unlimited imagination, in prose that often scales the heights of poetic and prophetic vision.