Lovecraft on Pornography

{7 February 1924 to Frank B. Long} As to pornography - no Child, I don't believe you enjoy it! You've heard all the big boys praising it, and you think it's awful grown-up and everything ... there's nothing beautiful or artistick {sic} about i ... its only value is extrinsick {sic} - as a necessity in the detail'd and realistick {sic} depiction of mankind in psychological fiction. I am undogmatick enough to affirm that it hath no interest in itself, and that its apparent interest amongst the young is whlolly factitious. When I was six or seven I was of course curious ... I naturally followed up the mysteries step by step in encyclopedias and other books ... ending with the medical books of my physician uncle. ... The entire subject has become merely a tedious detail of animal biology ...

pp. 304-305, Selected Letters I, H. P. Lovecraft, Arkham House, 1965.