Lovecraft on C L Moore

I posted this on the antiquarian thread at Horror Mall. Thought I'd copy it here, too.

Lovecraft on CLM ("Sister Katy, as he called her):

Oct. {1934} W{eird} T{ales} about average, on the whole. The Moore item is really very notable - full of tensity & atmospheric suggestion of encroaching dream worlds which none of the other authors seem able to achieve. {26 Oct 1934) This was The Black God's Thirst. HPL had not yet read Astounding's The Bright Illusion.

Klarkashton ... expresses a fear that Catherine the Great may develop into a single-plot artist like Ed Ham{ilton} ... What ... Miss Moore ... needs is to be steered to a diet of good reading - such a diet will carry its own condemnation of pulp junk & the ignominous commercial psychology behind it. (16 March 1935)

Black Thirst ... vapid idea of human-looking beauties on another planet (25 march 1935)

Recent line from Dora Caterina ... speaks of infantile nightmares & juvenilie fever-deleria in which she saw unearthly landscapes & non-Euclidean shifting dimensions as fantastic as anything in Blackwood or Klark-Ashton. Obviously the unreal elemnet in her work is a genuine one - no matter how much it may be overlaid by pulp mannerisms. (29 May 1935)

{Barlow's} story ... distinctly good ... {but} below The Were Woman ... it beats most recent Mooreiana, though scarcely attaining {her} Shambleau, Black Thirst, Were-woman level. (24 August 1934)

I certainly was sorry to hear of Dora Caterina's bereavement {her then fiancee (name?) was killed in a fire arms accident} ... A Daytona card arrived from her ... I at once started a letter of what I thought to be the most consoling ... {containing} history ... the main theme .. Roman Britain & its long decline, as brought up by CLM's discussion of Talbot Mundy's Tros stories ... I managed to finish the dispatch ... the tragic accident is a beastly shame ... the brief Florida trip was the best thing for Katy ... (11 Mar 1936)

CLM's Tree of Life adheres more or less to her formula, though it has effective atmospheric touches. (30 Sept 1936)