i A Dreamer and a Visionary ii
Liverpool Science Fiction Texts and Studies
General Editor DAVID SEED
Series Advisers
I. F. Clarke, Edward James, Patrick Parrinder and Brian Stableford
Robert Crossley Olaf Stapledon: Speaking for the Future
David Seed (ed.) Anticipations: Essays on Early Science Fiction and its Precursors Jane L. Donawerth and Carol A. Kolmerten (eds) Utopian and Science Fiction by Women: Worlds of Difference
Brian W. Aldiss The Detached Retina: Aspects of SF and Fantasy
Carol Farley Kessler Charlotte Perkins Gilman: Her Progress Toward Utopia, with Selected Writings
Patrick Parrinder Shadows of the Future: H. G. Wells, Science Fiction and Prophecy I. F. Clarke (ed.) The Tale of the Next Great War, 1871–1914: Fictions of Future Warfare and of Battles Still-to-come
Joseph Conrad and Ford Modox Ford (Foreword by George Hay, Introduction by David Seed) The Inheritors
Qingyun Wu Female Rule in Chinese and English Literary Utopias
John Clute Look at the Evidence: Essays and Reviews
Roger Luckhurst ‘The Angle Between Two Walls’: The Fiction of J. G. Ballard Franz Rottensteiner (ed.) View from Another Shore: European Science Fiction Val Gough and Jill Rudd (eds) A Very Different Story: Studies in the Fiction of Charlotte Perkins Gilman
Gary Westfahl The Mechanics of Wonder: the Creation of the Idea of Science Fiction Jeanne Cortiel Demand My Writing: Joanna Russ/Feminism/Science Fiction Mike Ashley The Time Machines: The Story of the Science-Fiction Pulp Magazines from the Beginning to 1950, The History of the Science-Fiction Magazine, Volume I Patrick Parrinder (ed.) Learning from Other Worlds: Estrangement, Cognition and the Politics of Science Fiction and Utopia
Warren Rochelle Communities of the Heart: The Rhetoric of Myth in the Fiction of Ursula K. Le Guin
S. T. Joshi A Dreamer and a Visionary: H. P. Lovecraft in his Time
iii A Dreamer and a Visionary H. P. Lovecraft in his Time S. T. JOSHI
LIVERPOOL UNIVERSITY PRESS
First published 2001 by Liverpool University Press 4 Cambridge Street
Liverpool
L69 7ZU Copyright © Liverpool University Press 2001
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or
transmitted, in any form, or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise without the prior written permission of the publishers.
Permission to quote extracts from the works of H. P. Lovecraft has been granted by Robert C. Harrall, Administrator of the Estate of H. P. Lovecraft British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A British Library CIP record is available.
ISBN 0 85323 936 3 cased ISBN 0 85323 946 0 paperback
Typeset in Meridien by Koinonia, Bury, Lancashire Printed in Great Britain by Bell and Bain Ltd, Glasgow v
The Time Machines
Contents
Preface vii
Chapter One: Unmixed English Gentry 1
Chapter Two: A Genuine Pagan (1890–97) 8
Chapter Three: Black Woods and Unfathomed Caves
(1898–1902) 25
Chapter Four: What of Unknown Africa? (1902–08) 40
Chapter Five: Barbarian and Alien (1908–14) 62
Chapter Six: A Renewed Will to Live (1914–17) 77
Chapter Seven: Feverish and Incessant Scribbling (1917–19) 107
Chapter Eight: Cynical Materialist (1919–21) 125
Chapter Nine: The High Tide of My Life (1921–22) 143
Chapter Ten: For My Own Amusement (1923–24) 163
Chapter Eleven: Ball and Chain (1924) 186
Chapter Twelve: Moriturus Te Saluto (1925–26) 211
Chapter Thirteen: Paradise Regain’d (1926) 233
Chapter Fourteen: Cosmic Outsideness (1927–28) 251
Chapter Fifteen: Fanlights and Georgian Steeples (1928–30) 270
Chapter Sixteen: Non-supernatural Cosmic Art (1930–31) 293
Chapter Seventeen: Mental Greed (1931–33) 313
Chapter Eighteen: In My Own Handwriting (1933–35) 329
Chapter Nineteen: Caring about the Civilization (1929–37) 346
Chapter Twenty: The End of One’s Life (1935–37) 364
Epilogue: Thou Art Not Gone 389 Notes 393 Index 411
To David E. Schultz
… from earliest childhood I have been a dreamer and a visionary. —H. P. Lovecraft, ‘The Tomb’ vii
The Time Machines
Preface
I do not believe that much needs to be said here regarding the scope and overall purpose of this volume. I have sought to trace, in some detail, the life of Howard Phillips Lovecraft, to supply some account of his major writings, and to give at least an outline of the philosophical thought that structures his work and in accordance with which he led his life. All these features have been treated in more detail elsewhere, but readers may find their fusion in this work of some benefit.
I have been involved in the study of Lovecraft for two and a half decades, and in that interim have incurred more debts of gratitude from colleagues than I could possibly repay or even record. When I first began to take a scholarly interest in Lovecraft, I was guided by Dirk W. Mosig, J. Vernon Shea, and George T. Wetzel; other colleagues such as R. Boerem, Kenneth W. Faig, Jr, Richard L. Tierney, Scott Connors, Matthew H. Onderdonk, Peter Cannon, and David E. Schultz also helped me considerably. Marc A. Michaud’s Necronomicon Press offered me abundant opportunities to expand my interests into realms I might otherwise not have pursued.
Much of my work on Lovecraft has of course been done at the John Hay Library of Brown University, the largest repository of Lovecraft material in the world. Its assistant librarian, John H. Stanley, has been of invaluable assistance in countless ways, as have such other librarians there as Jennifer B. Lee and Jean Rainwater. I have also done much work at the Rhode Island Historical Society, the Providence Public Library, the New York Public Library, the New York University Library, the Columbia University Library, and elsewhere.
The entire manuscript of this book has been read by Kenneth W. Faig, Jr, and Steven J. Mariconda, both of whom (but Faig in particular) offered a great many useful suggestions. Other facts, large and small, have been supplied by Donald R. Burleson, Stefan Dziemianowicz, Perry M. Grayson, T. E. D. Klein, Dan Lorraine, viii PREFACE
Donovan K. Loucks, M. Eileen McNamara, M.D., Marc A. Michaud, Sam Moskowitz, Robert M. Price, David E. Schultz, A. Langley Searles, and Richard D. Squires. A Note on Sources
Because of the ready availability of most of Lovecraft’s work, I have not seen the need to cite editions of his tales, essays, and poems in this book, or indeed to supply a bibliography at all. Works by Lovecraft are chiefly cited from the editions listed below; full bibliographical information on works about Lovecraft is given in the notes.
Lovecraft’s juvenile fiction and poetry (1897–1905) is contained in my edition of Juvenilia (1984). The juvenile nonfiction (scientific periodicals and treatises) has not been published, but most of it can be found in the John Hay Library of Brown University. The following four volumes, edited by me, contain the great majority of Lovecraft’s stories and revisions: