In addition to his classics of horror fiction, it is estimated that Lovecraft wrote 100,000 letters — or roughly 15 every day of his adult life — ranging from one-page diaries to seventy-page diatribes. Perhaps 20,000 of those letters have survived, in the hands of private collectors and at the John Hay Library in Providence.
In each episode of this podcast, we'll read one of these letters (or part of it) and then discuss it. In his letters HPL reveals an amazing breadth of knowledge of philosophy, science, history, literature, art and many other subjects, and forcefully asserts some highly considered opinions (some of which can be upsetting).
And of course his letters offer a fascinating window into his personal life and times. Although we've been working with Lovecraftian material for over 30 years, we still find interesting new things in his letters, and while we don't claim to be experts we look forward to sharing them with a wider audience.
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- Posted August 2, 2020
I Wish I Were a Housecat
In this rare letter of March 1923 to the poet Samuel Loveman, HPL talks with great sensitivity about their mutual friend Alfred Galpin, and rather less sensitivity about his own wife, Sonia Greene. Loveman later burned all his letters from Lovecraft, and this is one of the few that survive.
Music by Troy Sterling Nies. Our thanks to Hippocampus Press for their book Letters to Maurice W. Moe and Others.
