Correspondence

A large part of the interest and scholarship involving weird fiction has focused on the correspondence of different authors, most notable H. P. Lovecraft, who was a phenomenal epistolarian, and who corresponded with many other weird fiction writers such as Clark Ashton Smith, Robert E. Howard, August Derleth, etc. Many of their letters have been archived in university libraries, or else saved and sold among collectors, and a subset of these have been published in various books and journals - Lovecraft's published letters and postcards occupy well over a dozen volumes, and still only represent a fraction of those he sent over his lifetime, but enough remain and have been published to give an intriguing look at the exchange of ideas, congratulations, and commiserations between various authors of weird fiction, as well as important information of interest to biographers and bibliographers.

For the purposes of this wiki, each published letter or postcard is given a seven-digit number code. The number code is used solely to uniquely identify each letter so that it may receive it's own page to show where it has been published or referenced. The first three digits of the code correspond to the volume the letter is from (or, where it has been published in multiple volumes, the primary reference publication), and the last four digits indicate which letter in the volume it is. For example, 000 is the three-letter code for the Selected Letters of H. P. Lovecraft (Arkham House, five vols.); the code "000-0101" would refer to letter #101 in the SL, and its wiki page is 000-0101.

Each source will have a list of letters identifying sender("From"), receiver("To"), and date mailed ("Date"), as well as the identifying number ("Identifier"), and each individual letter will be sorted into categories based on sender and receiver. A master spreadsheet for all letters and identifiers on the wiki is available here: Wikithulhu Correspondence Index

Note on Dates & Abridgement

Many letters are abridged, and not always in the same way; where possible difference between abridgements will be notes in the summary of the letter. Some letters are noted as "unabridged"; this is to distinguish them from abridged versions of the same letter, but does not always mean that the letter is complete - only that it is produced unabridged from its source, which may include copies or transcripts. Likewise, earlier and later sources do no always agree on what date a letter was mailed, the date for the later source is presumed to be more correct and will be listed, but in the letter summary the discrepancy will be noted.

Sources of Printed Letters & Postcards

000 Selected Letters of H. P. Lovecraft
001 Dreams & Fancies
002 The H. P. Lovecraft Dream Book
003 H. P. Lovecraft in the Argosy
004 H. P. Lovecraft in "The Eyrie"
005 H. P. Lovecraft The Vivisector
006 H. P. Lovecraft Uncollected Letters
007 H. P. Lovecraft Letters to Robert Bloch
008 H. P. Lovecraft Letters to Samuel Loveman & Vincent Starrett
009 H. P. Lovecraft Letters to Henry Kuttner
010 H. P. Lovecraft Letters to Richard F. Searight
011 Fritz Leiber and H. P. Lovecraft Writers of the Dark
012
013 O Fortunate Floridian
014 Letters from New York
015 Mysteries of Time and Spirit
016 Letters to James F. Morton
017 Letters to Alfred Galpin
018 Letters to Rheinhart Kleiner
019 Essential Solitude: The Letters of H. P. Lovecraft and August Derleth
020 Letters to Robert Bloch and Others
021 Letters to C. L. Moore and Others
022 Dawnward Spire, Lonely Hill: The Letters of H. P. Lovecraft and Clark Ashton Smith
023 Selected Letters of Clark Ashton Smith
024 Clark Ashton Smith Letters to H. P. Lovecraft
025 Klarkash-Ton and Monstro Ligriv
026 Shadow of the Unattained
027 Robert E. Howard Selected Letters
028 Runes of Ahr-Eih-Eche
029 Conan Grimoire
030 Conan Swordbook
031 Howard Collector
032 A Means to Freedom: The Letters of H. P. Lovecraft and Robert E. Howard
033 Collected Letters of Robert E. Howard
034 Collected Letters of Dr. Isaac M. Howard
035 Lovecraft Remembered
036 Letters to Elizabeth Toldridge & Anne Tillery Renshaw
037 Letters to F. Lee Baldwin, Duane W. Rimel, and Nils Frome
038
039 Lord of a Visible World: An Autobiography in Letters
040 Yr Obt Servant
041 Hail, Klarkash-Ton!
042 The Spirit of Revision: Lovecraft's Letters to Zealia Brown Reed Bishop
043 Normal Lovecraft
044 Sable Revery
045 Books at Brown Vols. XXXVIII-XXXIX
046 Robert E. Howard - World's Greatest Pulpster
047 The Last Celt
XXX Unpublished Correspondence
Unless otherwise stated, the content of this page is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 License