Abstract

Lovecraft's advice for Zealia as a writer; on writing and motivation (mentioning Plato, Lucretius, Ralph Waldo Emerson), waxing fantastic on the author's purpose; on the necessity of literary competence and a sense of beauty in a writer; on Zealia's writing, particularly "The Unchaining" and "Under Cover" and seguing into style and stylists (mentioning Brian Oswald Donne-Byrne, James Branch Cabell, Arthur Machen, Lord Dunsany, Walter de la Mare, William Butler Yeats, as well as Parker's Aids to Composition) and advising her to read Walter Pater, OScar Wilde, Lord Dunsany, Thomas De Quincey, Washington Irving, Lafcadio Hearn, Addison, Steele, Swift, Defoe, etc.; on a necessary grasp of the realities of life (mentioning the Saturday Evening Post, Harper's Century, Scribner's, and The Atlantic), and to avoid stock scenes and stereotypes (mentioning Charles Garvice and Harold Bell Wright), and recommending many classic poets and authors, as well as the Little Blue Books land Modern & Everyman Series, mentioning specifically H. L. Mencken's "Prejudices," "In Defence of Women," "A Book of Prefaces," etc., George Jean Nathan's "The American Credo," and Samuel Butler's "Way of All Flesh" as well as philosophers (mentioning Arthur Schopenhauer, Friedrick Wilhelm Nietszche, and Will. H. Durant's "The Story of Philosophy"), and advising finally to focus on modest themes over spectacle.

Cited By

TBD

Included In

• Selected Letters of H. P. Lovecraft (abridged)
• The Spirit of Revision (unabridged)