The Tomb, 1947

Of Lovecraft's early tales, Dagon gets all the press and The Tomb has alwys been the step-child. HPL didn't even seem to like it, but he defended Dagon. Early on it appeared in Weird Tales and once in an Arkham edition, and lay dormant for decades. One bright light was its inclusion in Elinore Blaisdell's ecelctic book of death.

The gang is all here! Lovecraft, Derleth, Quinn, Bloch, Wellman, Klarkashton, Starrett, and FB Long !

And is that ever a groovy cover?







Crowell, 1947. First Edition. TALES OF THE UNDEAD VAMPIRES AND VISITANTS, Crowell, 1947, first edition. Interesting selection of stories including several lesser known yarns from WEIRD TALES. Nicely illustrated in wood-cut style by the editor; with contributions by H. P. Lovecraft, Sheridan Le Fanu, August Derleth, Seabury Quinn, H. R. Wakefield, Robert Bloch, Manly Wade Wellman, Clark Ashton Smith, F. Marion Crawford, Lafcadio Hearn, M. R. James, Vernon Lee, Frank Belknap Long, Vincent Starrett, Edith Wharton, E. F. Benson, et.al.

Lovecraft Manuscripts for sale (1947)

Fantasy Advertiser, LA. Digest Wraps. Book Condition:FINE condition. Vol. 1, No.6. Cover by Ralph Rayburn Phillips. Includes a Prozine checklist for 1946 full page advertisement for "RHODE ISLAND ON LOVECRAFT" and a full page ad by Charles Hornig selling five LOVECRAFT MANUSCRIPTS and other items. A wonderful magazine.

FANTASY ADVERTISER#6 JAN 1947 RHODE ISLAND ON LOVECRAFT

Lovecraft Mentioned in 1947

This was found in a fanzine called Tympany. Edited by Redd Boggs and Robert Stein, issue of 7 July 1947 (Vo. I, No. 9). The lead off was by Forest J. Ackerman who wrote:

Avon to issue TWO new pro mags: To clear up the confusion about what is going on at Avon. there will not be one but two new fantasy mags from that source in the near future. The higher class one will aim at literary quality for the adult reader, reviving the policy of Stirring Science Stories in presenting a mixture of straight science-fiction, pure fantasy, and out and out pure weird. Weinbaum, Merritt and Lovecraft would be the authors to expect in this periodical, were tehy alive today/ Their calibre of story is being sought. The second periodica will be the standard sort of story of stf {scientifiction}: interplanetaryarns, time travel tales, dimensional adventures, atomic action, etc., with a certain amount of wacky, off-trail and supernatural fiction included. Among those authors from whom material already has been bought for these magazines are Wellman, Leiber, Jacobi, Bloch and Long. Roy Hunt will be among the illustrators.

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Nothing to do with HPL, but in the same edition, a recap of some selected "flying saucer" reports are listed. Here's the text:

Flier Sights Strange "Aircraft" Near Mt. Ranier. Nine bright saucer-like objects flying at 1200 miles an hour over the Cascade mountains of Western Washington - - that's what pilot Kenneth Arnold reported he saw Tuesday, June 24th, while on a flight in search of a missing airplane. He said the "aircraft" were flying north at 10,000 feet and moving in a peculiar dipping manner, "like a fish flipping in the sun." A flash of reflected sunshine brought them to his attention when they were 25-30 miles away. Stunned by their "incredible" speed he clocked them between Mt. Adams and Mt. Ranier, a distance of 47 miles. It took 1:42 minutes, he reported, adding that after he had landed, he got out a map and by triangulation figured the speed of the "objects" at 1200 miles an hour. "One thing that struck me," Arnold said, "was that they were flying so low. Ten thousand feet is very low for anything going at that speed." He said they appeared to fly almost as if fastened together - - if one dipped, the others did too. He estimated the "objects" were about the same size as a four-engined DC-4 passenger plane, although they did not have wings.

Credit: David C. Sparks

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The "Flying Whizzits" - - Fortean Field Day. "Those flying saucers - - they're records that escaped from some disc-jocke," cracked a radio comedian, and scientists snapped, "Spots in front of their eyes," but following the first report of the flying objects (see above) "eye-witness" observations began to pour in from points in every corner of the United States and canada. There was a similarity in all reports: the objects were round, like saucers, traveling at a high rate of speed with little or no noise, and of such brightness that reflections from the sun were blinding. A Dr. Forrest Shaver (repeat: SHAVER) of Akron O., reported seeing the saucers at night, looking like a balloon with a light inside". A Seattle coastguardsman caught a picture of a disk. Dr. Oliver J. Lee of Northwestern U. declared that the disks "are probably man-made and radio-controlled." As Tympany goes to press, the Army Air Forces have alerted pursuit planes on the West Coast in an attempt to intercept a "saucer"; Mead Layne of San Diego, Calif., editor of an occult publication not unknown to fandom, claimed to be in contact with passengers on the "saucers", and a Detroit meteorologist therized that the disks may be signals from mars. Thirty-nine states have reported seeing the flying saucers.

Credit: Jewett, Carlson, Rapp, Guerry Brown.

William Easton Loutitt: Lovecraftiana

This cache went in 4 bids at $22.49.




1968 "A Bibliographic Catalog of the Largest Collection Ever Offered For Sale of the Works of Clark Ashton Smith and H.P. Lovecraft" by Roy A. Squires.

H.P. Lovecraft article neatly taken from "The Esquire", January 1946: "The Ten-Cent Ivory Tower" by John Wilstach.

January, 1966 "Herald Review", featuring "H.P. Lovecraft: Genius of the Macabre" by Laurence Goldstein.

April, 1947 "Saturday Review of Literature". H.P. Lovecraft is mentioned in the article "The Phoenix Nest".

All of these items were previously a part of William Easton Loutitt's private library. Loutitt was a noted collector and the official archivist for the John Hay Library at Brown University from the 1950's through the 70's. A loose Loutitt's private library book plate can be found within the manilla envelope containing the article from "The Esquire".

All ephemera has been stored in protective manila envelopes, which are also labeled for convience.

Avon Fantasy Reader # 3 (1947)

Step into the ebayeum, my friends and time travel back to 1947. One suspects the hand of Mr. Derleth placing Lovecraft's "The Silver Key" into this reprint magazine. One of the nicest extant editions I've seen for sale. {-CP}
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Notes on Sonia Greene Letters to Loveman

Here are excerpts of comments about a cache of letters. {and some Chrispy comments too}

(Lovecraft, Howard Phillips) Davis, Sonia Haft Greene Lovecraft. ARCHIVE OF LETTERS, mostly to Sam Loveman. Includes 12 AUTOGRAPH LETTERS SIGNED, 7 TYPED LETTERS SIGNED, 1 TYPED NOTE SIGNED. Written between 1947 and 1968. Addressed "Dear Sam," signed "Sonia." // About 45 pages in all. Also 1 AUTOGRAPH LETTER SIGNED to Alyce Loveman. // ... Samuel Loveman, another writer (and a Jew), came to New York from Cleveland in 1924, the same year Lovecraft moved there to marry Sonia, and he became part of the inner circle of Lovecraft's writer-friends. (He also became a good friend of Hart Crane.) // Loveman opened a rare book store, The Bodley, that became a fixture of New York book life. // The friendship that Sam and Sonia had with HPL (along with their shared ethnic background and interest in books) drew them together after his death in 1937 -- but these letters suggest it was Sonia who pursued the friendship. // She frequently urges him in these letters to write, to come visit, to eat better, to get out and meet some women, to stop being morbid, to take better care of himself, etc. // Most letters are bunched in the period from 1947-1951; a three-year gap follows; then a twelve-year gap, at which point Sonia's handwriting is that of an older woman (she was 83 in 1966). // Aside from her affectionate mother-hen nagging of Sam, the letters mention Lovecraft frequently as well as other writers, including Adolph de Castro Danziger (who also lived in L.A.) and who made a strong impression on her.
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{De Castro, despite Lovecraft's derogatory comments was deeply respected and influential in the Jewish community. Letters in Chrispy's possession show many positive comments by luminaries.}
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Selected highlights: 26 October 1947: Urges Sam to come visit L.A., but not to fly -- too dangerous. Relates correspondence with August Derleth (publisher of Arkham House) about her writing a memoir of HPL, using his letters to her; Derleth says he owns the copyright to the letters and won't let her use them in print unless she shows them to her first -- at which point (she points out) he could copy them and use them for his own purposes without any compensation or credit to her. Another publisher wanted her to pay for the book and market it by herself.
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See elswhere on the blog about notes and letters on this extreme controversy between Sonia and Derleth - CP
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18 June 1949: Says her "expose of Howard's anti-Semitism was very mild in comparison to its real force," and, had she known the full extent of it earlier, "I would probably not have permitted myself to fall in love with H. P. I accepted his person because it could not be separated from his personality & intellectuality." Says that Adolph de Castro Danziger "was probably one of the very few Jews whom H. P. admired." // {The auctioneers' notes continue}>>(That's news to anyone reading HPL's letters that mention de Castro, who came to him in the late 1920s with ideas for collaborations ... Sonia ... here relates that "Dr. Danziger" showed him HPL's letters to him, and that the "were the shortest I ever saw.")
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21 August 1951: "I have lost all I ever owned. I am still alive and now have nothing more to worry about. My income is just barely enough to keep soul and body together, but this doesn't bother me much."
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29 August 1951: "I have about seven books that H. P. inscribed to me .... I've had many requests from some of HP's readers and admirers offering me picayune sums of money .... A day will come when these books with his inscriptions will be worth a great deal of money."
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19 July 1968: warns him about Randal Kirsch, a Lovecraft collector who was allegedly unscrupulous in his dealings with her (as he was with others, it seems: see http://bulk.resource.org/courts.gov/c/F2/757/757.F2d.124.84-1027.html for details on a court case involving Kirsch and Brown University). {See elesewhere on the blog} An unusual and sometimes poignant collection of letters. Sonia remains cheerful and loyal throughout, despite Loveman's apparent lapses as a correspondent.
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Even with Derleth, whose hardball business tactics may have dissuaded her from writing a memoir of HPL, she is gracious; when he visits her in a nursing home (after taking his kids to Disneyland), she remarks on how well-behaved his children were and what a good parent he must be.
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Both Sonia and Sam eventually burned most of their letters from Lovecraft because of his anti-Semitic sentiments (which no doubt took on a more sinister meaning to them after the Holocaust). Detailed calendar of letters available upon request.