Conan and the Dweller Part 4: Some Notes on William Lumley by Daniel Harms, Michael Lesner, and Bobby Derie

Despite his role in lives of H. P. Lovecraft, Clark Ashton Smith, and Robert E. Howard, we know less about Lumley than most others of Lovecraft’s circle.  Six letters in Lovecraft’s Selected Letters were written to him (SL 3.372-3, 450; 5.207, 213-4, 273, 420), but none of them truly reveal anything other than that he was interested in occultism, mythology, and Lovecraft’s dreams; a bit more is revealed in scattered references from the letters Lovecraft, Howard, and Smith discussing their correspondence with Lumley, or the appearance of his work in print.

William Lumley’s most notable work is the short story “The Diary of Alonzo Typer,” as revised by H. P. Lovecraft and finally published in Weird Tales (Feb 1938). Lumley’s original draft, published in Crypt of Cthulhu #10 (1982) and reprinted in Price’s Black Forbidden Things and Medusa’s Coil and Others, has its interesting moments, but it consists mainly of an undated, rambling set of entries. No information was given for the author or the diary, save that it was “found after his mysterious disappearance.” The piece has no clear purpose or conclusion, and the only virtue is that this brings it a touch of authenticity.

Lovecraft did a considerable amount of work on the manuscript. He wrote the introduction setting the scene in Lumley’s New York state near Buffalo, describing the village of Chorazin and the history of the van der Heyl family, provided a chronological framework for most of the work, and introduced the idea of Typer being a relative of the van der Heyl family. This, of course, was in addition to dropping the names of a few Mythos tomes. Oddly enough, the insertions of Theosophical lore (the city of Shamballah, the Book of Dzyan) are Lovecraft’s.

Lovecraft’s finances were already running out, but as he considered this collaboration philanthropy (OFF 299), he accepted only a copy of E. A. Wallis Budge’s Egyptian Book of the Dead as payment for the revision (SL 5.208). Lovecraft supposed the story would land with William Crawford at Marvel Tales, but instead Lumley sent it to Weird Tales. (ES 2.711-2) When Farnsworth Wright accepted the story and inquired as to why it sounded so similar to Lovecraft, Lumley revealed to the editor that Lovecraft had revised many pieces that had appeared in the magazine under the names of others (SL 5.207). Despite this acceptance, Wright held on to the story for over two years.

In his letters, Lovecraft gives little biographical data on his correspondent. Lumley is described regularly as “old,” and while described as living in Buffalo, New York in 1931 (ES 1.339), the only full address given is in 1933, which Lovecraft lists as 742 William St. (LRBO 55) L. Sprague de Camp quotes a letter from Lovecraft to Robert Bloch stating that Lumley:

who claims to be an old sailor who has witnessed incredible wonders in all parts of the world, & to have studied works of Elder Wisdom far stronger than your Cultes des Goules or my Necronomicon. (HPL 407)

However, de Cramp but provides no source, and the quote does not appear in any of Lovecraft’s published correspondence. Yet, the possibility that Lumley may have been a seaman is valid, for in another letter Lovecraft says that Lumley: “has been at sea & seen odd parts of the earth[.]” (LFO 153)

Lumley was a common name in Buffalo in the early-mid 1930s, and four or five William Lumleys can be found in the city directories for the period, but only one lived at 742 William Street. The directories list a William Lumley who had lived in this building for a few years (having moved there from 450 Niagara Drive). The building in question stood at the corner of William and Smith Streets in Buffalo, but has since been demolished. It appears to have been a business and attached carriage house, the second floor of which was let out to lodgers. When Mr. Harms visited the site around 2000, the building was abandoned. A paint store had been the last occupant of the storefront on William St. The bulk of the structure, extending down Smith Street from the intersection, was painted deep green and had a decided tilt to one side.

Weird Tales Feb. 1938

Lumley dropped in and out of the city directory over the years.  He never appeared again after he left 742 William St. The only other information given was an entry that he worked as a “watchman” at an unspecified business.

A systematic search of the cemeteries in Buffalo found one record of a “William Lumley” in the French and German Cemetery, and a search of the plots turned up Lumley’s unmarked grave.  The cemetery records stated that Mr. Lumley was born on March 20, 1880, and died on May 31, 1960 of coronary sclerosis.  His death occurred in Alden, New York (a town to the east of Buffalo where the Erie County Home and Infirmary is based), and welfare paid for his burial expenses.  The dates appeared to be right – Lovecraft implied that Lumley as an older man – but it was difficult to say whether this was the Lumley who lived at 742 William St.

In “The Diary of Alonzo Typer,” Alden, New York, south of Attica, is Typer’s last stop in civilized areas before walking to the town of Chorazin. If Lumley’s character followed the actual geography, it is likely that Typer would have walked to the van der Heyl mansion in this direction, as the landscape is much hillier than that elsewhere in the area. The region’s legends include mentions of Native American mounds in this area, as well as at least one mysterious stone structure, most likely the remnants of a former house, which could have provided some inspiration for Lumley’s handwritten draft. Still, no town named Chorazin exists in the area, and no one ever built a house in this region that has dates near those of the van der Heyl mansion: these were elements that came from Lovecraft’s imagination.

In the Alden Town Clerk’s Office is the death certificate for the Lumley buried in the French and German Cemetery, who was listed as a watchman for the American Agrico Chemical Company.  Because of the profession and name, we can be fairly certain that this Lumley was our man.  The certificate noted that William Lumley was born to Edward Lumley and Isabel Johnson in New York City, and that he was single. His last address in Buffalo was 8 Park Street (within a few miles of the two addresses already mentioned), but in 1958 he was moved to the Erie County Home and Infirmary in Alden, where he passed away two years later. Any records at that institution would have been destroyed in a fire, according to a clerk there.

This is where the trail went cold. While we now know Lumley’s whereabouts for the end of his eighty-year life, the man himself remains an enigma. Did he stay in Buffalo all of his life, or did he move about the country in search of work before returning home? Were his trips to China and India that Lovecraft mentioned products of Lumley’s (or Lovecraft’s) imagination, or did they really occur?

Writing the John Hay Library, we discovered that a few letters by Lumley – totaling six pages – had been preserved. Lumley’s letters, for the most part, discuss his favorite tales in the pulp magazines and fan journals. In addition to Lovecraft, his two main correspondents seem to have been Smith and C. L. Moore, both of whom encouraged him in his fiction. Lumley submitted many pieces of fiction, including the titles “The Phantasy” and “Dread Words,” to Marvel Tales and other magazines, apparently to no avail. He and Lovecraft shared a love of cats, and one of Lumley’s letters discusses the worship of Bast at some length. Those looking for more clues as to Lumley’s past are given only a few items of interest – a brief mention that Lumley had been in Port Said in Egypt, and that he had once owned a black panther from Sumatra who had been given to a circus. (The most likely candidate, the Ringling Brothers Barnum and Bailey Circus, has no record of any such transaction.)

At this point, our research into Lumley’s life has to be put on the back burner, yet we hope that someday more investigation into this fascinating figure’s life will be done. What we have now is merely a skeleton.

Works Cited

CL       Collected Letters of Robert E. Howard (3 vols. + Index and Addenda)

ES        Essential Solitude (2 vols.)

HPL     H. P. Lovecraft: A Biography

LFO     Letters to F. Lee Baldwin, Duane W. Rimel, and Nils Frome

LRBO  Letters to Robert Bloch and Others

MF      A Means to Freedom (2 vols.)

MTS    Mysteries of Time & Spirit

OFF    O Fortunate Floridian!

SL        Selected Letters of H. P. Lovecraft (5 vols.)

SLCAS Selected Letters of Clark Ashton Smith

Thanks to E. P. Berglund, Monika Bolino, Derrick Hussey, Cheri Lessner, Donovan Loucks, and Mason Winfield.  Special thanks to John Stanley and the John Hay Library.

Conan and the Dweller, Part 3 by Bobby Derie

We hear nothing from Howard about Lumley for some time, though this is to be understood as they only shared the venue of The Fantasy Fan. Howard and Lumley seem not to have written directly to one another, Howard’s correspondence with Clark Ashton Smith was sporadic and marked by long gaps, and Lovecraft’s scarce mentions Lumley at all in his letters to Howard.

Late in 1935, Lovecraft broke his rule against collaboration to revise and rewrite a manuscript by William Lumley. The story that resulted was “The Diary of Alonzo Typer,” which Lovecraft hoped to sell to Farnsworth Wright of Weird Tales or William Crawford of Marvel Tales. (OFF 296, 299; ES 2.711-2, 719) The story was accepted by Wright, with Lovecraft sending his congratulations:

Just received yours of the 12th telling of Alonzo’s (The Diary of Alonzo Typer) acceptance. Congratulations!! Your reply to Wright’s letter seems to me exactly right. I suppose he was curious about getting stories from several authors—Heald, de Castro, Reed, &c (besides parts of mss. From Barlow, Bloch, Rimel, &c)—which contained earmarks of my style. I have no objection at all to Wright’s knowing of my share in polishing off the MS. And I think that what you said was admirable. (SL5.207)

Lovecraft insisted Lumley accept full payment ($70) for the story; and considering the nearly illiterate state of Lumley’s draft (published in Crypt #10, 1982), this was true philanthropy. (HPLE 68) In gratitude, Lumley sent Lovecraft a copy of E. Wallis Budge’s translation of the Egyptian Book of the Dead. (OFF 301, 308; SL5.208) However, for whatever reason the story was not actually published in Weird Tales until February 1938, long after both Howard and Lovecraft were dead—and credited solely to Lumley. E. Hoffmann Price, on reading the story, immediately detected Lovecraft’s hand in it, and wrote a letter to the Eyrie affirming as much, and adding:

If William Lumley wrote that yarn without consultation with HPL, he has succeeded in a feat I had deemed utterly impossibly: writing a story that is more like Lovecraft than Lovecraft himself! Whatever its history, I was glad to see it in print. The references to Shamballah reminded me of many a letter HPL and I exchanged, and of our own collaboration, a few years ago. Now here is a challenge to one or more of Lovecraft’s followers: The Old Master had pondered, for some time before his death, on this matter of a weird story whose locale was to be the Valley of Teotihuacan—‘the dwelling of the gods’—in the now bleak and desolate expanse of country somewhat north of Lake Texcoco, nearly forty minutes’ drive from Mexico City. I had sent HPL photos, data, personal impressions and reactions to the pyramids and crypts of the valley. We had even planned, whimsically of course, to have Robert E. Howard join us in one expedition to Teotihuacan: I to be chauffeur, R. E. H. swordsman and gunner, and HPL to be necromancer for the party. And whenever I see their names it reminds me of a plan that was really not impossible, up until that tragic day in June of 1936 when R. E. H. went on an exploration unaccompanied by any of his friends. This whole issue, I might say, reminds me of the dead that have no equals among the survivors: Lovecraft, Howard, Whitehead. Like the Valley of Teotihuacan, the February issue is a memento of dead giants. Well, what valiant acolyte of HPL will fictionalize the mysterious Valley of Teotihuacan? Me, I am not equal to the task [...] (WT Apr 1938)

Works Cited


AMtF       A Means to Freedom (Hippocampus Press, 2 vols.)
CL            Collected Letters of Robert E. Howard (Robert E. Howard                                                Foundation, 3 vols. + Index and Addenda)
ES            Essential Solitude (Hippocampus Press, 2 vols.)
HPLE       The H. P. Lovecraft Encyclopedia (Hippocampus Press)
LRBO      Letters to Robert Bloch and Others (Hippocampus Press)
MTS        Mysteries of Time and Spirit (Night Shade Books)
OFF         O Fortunate Floridian (University of Tampa Press)
SL            Selected Letters of H. P. Lovecraft (Arkham House, 5 vols.)
SLCAS    Selected Letters of Clark Ashton Smith (Arkham House)
TFF         The Fantasy Fan (Lance Thingmaker)
UL           H. P. Lovecraft: Uncollected Letters (Necronomicon Press)

Part 1, Part 2

Conan and the Dweller, Part 2 by Bobby Derie

By 1933, William Lumley was a fixture among Lovecraft’s correspondents, and on the circulation list for manuscripts (SLCAS 226; MTS 364, 372; OFF 205) Few other details were forthcoming, that Lovecraft expanded on Lumley’s claims, saying that the aged mystic claimed to see ghosts and “Talks sometimes of being persecuted by enemies” (LRBO 55), as well to have:

[W]itnessed monstrous rites in deserted cities, has slept in pre-human ruins and awaked 20 years older, has seen strange elemental spirits in all lands (including Buffalo, N. Y.—where he frequently visits a haunted valley and sees a white, misty Presence), has written and collaborated on powerful dramas, has conversed with incredibly wise and monstrously ancient wizards in remote Asiatic fastnesses [...] His own sorceries, I judge, are of a somewhat modest kind; though he has had very strange and marvelous results from clay images and from certain cryptical incantations. (SL4.270-1)

Clark Ashton Smith

With regard to the various and interlocking myth-cycles of Robert E. Howard, Clark Ashton Smith, Lovecraft et al., the Gent from Providence assured Smith in one letter:

He is firmly convinced that all our gang—you, Two-Gun Bob, Sony Belknap, Grandpa E’ch-Pi-El, and the rest—are genuine agents of unseen Powers in distributing hints too dark and profound for human conception or comprehension. We may think we’re writing fiction, and may even (absurd thought!) disbelieve what we write, but at bottom we are telling the truth in spite of ourselves—serving unwittingly as mouthpieces of Tsathoggua, Crom, Cthulhu, and other pleasant Outside gentry. Indeed—Bill tells me that he has fully identified my Cthulhu and Nyarlathotep ……. So that he can tell me more about ‘em that I know myself. With a little encouragement, good old Bill would unfold limitless chronicles from beyond the border—but I liked the old boy so well that I never make fun of him. (SL4.270-271)

In this belief, Lumley was several decades ahead of the occultist Kenneth Grant, who made the hidden occult reality of the Mythos crafted by Lovecraft & co. a crucial part of his Typhonian Trilogies, beginning with Dreaming Out of Space (1971) and The Magical Revival (1972).

At this point in 1933, Lumley was corresponding with both Lovecraft and Clark Ashton Smith—as was Robert E. Howard. As a consequence, Howard began to hear of Lumley from both men. While none of Smith’s letters to Howard survive, from references in Howard’s letters to Smith we know they spoke of Lumley, who is presumably “the correspondent who maintains that reptile-men once existed.” (CL3.137) In a November 1933 letter to Lovecraft, Smith wrote of Lumley: “The idea of a primeval serpent-race seems to be a favourite one with him, since he refers to it in his last letter as well as in one or two previous epistles.” (SLCAS 236)

WT Oct. 1934

Likely the reference to serpent-men arose because Smith was at that point working on “The Seven Geases” (WT Oct 1934), which contains a section referring to a race of Serpent-Men, or else perhaps because he made comment or reference to Howard’s own serpent-folk in “The Shadow Kingdom” (WT Aug 1929). There is an outside possibility that Lumley was familiar with Maurice Doreal (sometimes given as Morris Doreal, real name apparently Claude Doggins), the founder of the Brotherhood of the White Temple. Doreal’s poem “The Emerald Tablets of Thoth the Atlantean” appeared in mimeographed form in the 1930s, and describes the secret history of a shape-changing Serpent Race which have strong parallels to Howard’s story “The Shadow Kingdom.” Another reference to Lumley from Smith’s letters to Howard mentions a “seven-headed goddess of hate,” which intrigued the Texan. (CL3.151)

The story William Lumley was working on, “The City of Dim Faces” was never published—possibly never completed—but Lovecraft continued to encourage Lumley’s creative efforts, telling Robert Bloch: “Probably has a strong latent literary gift—thwarted by ignorance. Some of his weird verses are really good—even if misspelt & mis-capitalised.” (LRBO 55) Lumley had better luck with his verses, which were published in issues of The Fantasy Fan, alongside the work of Howard, Lovecraft, Smith, Derleth and others.

The Fantasy Fan Feb. 1934

“The Dweller” (“Dread and potent broods a Dweller”) appeared in the February 1934 issue The Fantasy Fan, which Lovecraft described to editor Charles D. Hornig as “haunting and excellent” (UL 13), Fantasy Fan regulars Bob Tucker and Duane W. Rimel described it as “a masterpiece” and “certainly have a touch of the bizarre that grips one,” (TFF 97, 114) and Clark Ashton Smith as “a fine thing” (SLCAS 250). Robert E. Howard wrote to Smith:

I read Lumley’s “Dweller” in the Fantasy Fan and liked it very much; it certainly reflects a depth of profound imagination seldom encountered. I hope the Fan will use more of his verse. (CL3.197)

Howard repeated the sentiment in a letter to the Fantasy Fan in a subsequent letter (CL3.203). Hornig obliged with Lumley’s “Shadows” (“There’s a city wrought of shadows”) in the May 1934 number. Clark Ashton Smith wrote to the Fantasy Fan:

I wish to commend Mr. Lumley’s remarkable poem, ‘Shadows,’ in the May TFF. The poem seems to have in it all the mystic immemorial anguish and melancholy of China. (TFF 162)

Apparently, Lumley at some point lost a statue of the Hindu god Ganesha, and Lovecraft endeavored to help replace it. (SLCAS 253) The solution came in the form of Lovecraft’s young friend and correspondent R. H. Barlow, who had recently begun doing some amateur sculpting (including a bas-relief of Cthulhu), who endeavored to make an image of Ganesha for Lumley. (ES 2.636, SL4.411, SLCAS 259, AMtF 2.801; cf. TFF 164) Lumley also received a Cthulhu print that Barlow had made. (OFF 153)

Lumley’s success at publication in the Fantasy Fan was due largely to Lovecraft’s editing of his verses, which the man from Providence freely admitted to Barlow:

Incidentally—old Bill Lumley is getting ahead of me …. Sending more verse than I can possibly attend to. Unless he can find one or more supplementary “angels” I fear his reputation—either for fecundity or for quality—is going to encounter a downward curve! (OFF 180)

Lumley’s final verse publication was “The Elder Thing” (“Oh, have you seen the Elder Thing”) in January 1935—an issue he shared with Robert E. Howard’s “Voices of the Night 2. Babel” (“Now in the gloom the pulsing drums repeat”). This was the penultimate issue of The Fantasy Fan, and though Lovecraft recommended Lumley to Donald Wollheim of The Phantagraph (which would later publish Howard’s The Hyborian Age), nothing came of it. (LRBO 313)

Works Cited


AMtF       A Means to Freedom (Hippocampus Press, 2 vols.)
CL            Collected Letters of Robert E. Howard (Robert E. Howard                                                Foundation, 3 vols. + Index and Addenda)
ES            Essential Solitude (Hippocampus Press, 2 vols.)
HPLE       The H. P. Lovecraft Encyclopedia (Hippocampus Press)
LRBO      Letters to Robert Bloch and Others (Hippocampus Press)
MTS        Mysteries of Time and Spirit (Night Shade Books)
OFF         O Fortunate Floridian (University of Tampa Press)
SL            Selected Letters of H. P. Lovecraft (Arkham House, 5 vols.)
SLCAS    Selected Letters of Clark Ashton Smith (Arkham House)
TFF         The Fantasy Fan (Lance Thingmaker)
UL           H. P. Lovecraft: Uncollected Letters (Necronomicon Press)

Part 1, Part 3

Robert E. Howard and the Amateur Press (Part 4) by Bobby Derie

4: Fan Press: Marvel Tales, The Fantasy Fan, Fantasy Magazine, and The Phantagraph

By the way—I enclose a circular from a new weird magazine to which Clark Ashton Smith and I [are] contributing. There is no pay for contributions, but we are glad of a chance to get printed copies of the tales all other magazines have rejected. [...] First issue of The Fantasy Fan came the other day. It looks sadly amateurish, though the editor promises better things to come.

— H. P. Lovecraft to Robert E. Howard, 24 Jun 1933, AMTF 2.620, 630

Robert E. Howard’s correspondence with H. P. Lovecraft introduced him into a wider circle than any he had ever known—professional writers and fans from across the United States, like E. Hoffmann Price, R. H. Barlow, August Derleth, and Clark Ashton Smith. As part of the “group,” Howard shared in the circulation of manuscripts, criticism of stories published and unpublished, and tips on the state of the industry and potential new markets for industrious pulpsters to splash...even if they didn’t always pay.

Pulps brought science fiction, fantasy, and weird fiction to the masses; while science fiction novels can trace their genesis to Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein (1818), and dime-novels could reach a mass audience, pulp fiction created communities of fans who, instead of interacting solely through letter-columns, began to meet, organize in their own clubs and mailing lists...and publish. The products of the fan press are distinguishable from any other form of amateur journalism or literary “small magazines” only in focus, not in the material product produced, and must have reminded Howard clearly of the amateur papers produced by himself and his friends, if more ambitious and better-presented.

Charles D. Hornig produced the first issue of The Fantasy Fan in September 1933; the first of the fan magazines dedicated to weird fiction. Clark Ashton Smith sent Howard a copy of the first issue, and Howard replied in a letter from October that same year:

Thanks for the copy of Fantasy Fan. I subscribed for a year; a dollar is little enough to pay for the privilege of reading stories by Lovecraft, Derleth and yourself. I enjoyed very much your “Kingdom of the Worm”. It is an awesome and magnificent and somber word picture you have drawn of the haunted land of Antchar. (CL3.136, cf. 141-142)

Howard’s letter asking for a subscription was likewise full of praise for the magazine (which Hornig would quote in the November 1933 issue).

Thanks for the copy of The Fantasy Fan. I found it very interesting, and think it has a good future. Anybody ought to be willing to pay a dollar for the privilege of reading, for a whole year, the works of Lovecraft, Smith, and Derleth. I am glad to see that you announce a poem by Smith in the next issue. He is a poet second to none. I also hope you can persuade Lovecraft to let you use some of his superb verse. Weird poetry possesses an appeal peculiar to itself and the careful use of it raises the quality of any magazine. I liked very much the department of “True Ghost Stories” and hope you will continue it. The world is full of unexplained incidents and peculiar circumstances, the logical reasons of which are often so obscure and hidden that they are lent an illusion of the supernatural. Enclosed find my check for a year’s subscription. I shall be glad to submit some things, if you wish. (CL3.139-140, cf.145)

Frank Frazetta's artwork for
"The Frost Giant's Daughter"

Howard by this point was working full-time as a professional writer, but following Lovecraft’s suggestion of submitting “tales all other magazines have rejected” (AMTF 2.620), sent Hornig a “The Frost King’s Daughter”—which originally had been written as a tale of Conan the Cimmerian, entitled “The Frost-Giant’s Daughter” and submitted to Weird Tales, where it was rejected (CL2.315, 329); so he changed the hero to Amra and retitled it. Hornig accepted the story, which was published in the March 1934 issue of The Fantasy Fan as “Gods of the North.” Lovecraft wrote to Hornig in praise of the story (“Glad to see the interesting tale by Robert E. Howard” UL 13).

A few months later, Howard submitted some verse to Hornig, which was duly published in The Fantasy Fan in September 1934 as “The Voices Waken Memory,” and in January 1935 as “Voices of the Night: 2. Babel”, which caused Lovecraft to write to Richard F. Searight:

Yes—the Wooley & Howard material is really admirable. Both writers are genuine poets, & really ought to be able to have verse in the remunerative magazines right along. Most of Two-Gun’s verse has never been submitted for publication. Some of it really marvelous in its savage, barbaric potency. (LRS 48)

For the most part, however, Howard’s interaction with The Fantasy Fan was mostly as a subscriber who wrote the occasional letter in praise of his friend’s writings, praising the poetry of Clark Ashton Smith (CL3.149, 150) and William Lumley (CL3.195, 197), Lovecraft’s stories and article-series Supernatural Horror in Literature (CL3.192, 194, 274-275), the fiction of R. H. Barlow’s (CL3.215) and Emil Petaja (CL3.260), and sometimes several at once:

Smith’s poem in the March issue was splendid, as always. By all means, publish as many of his poems as possible; I would like to see more by Lumley, and it would be a fine thing if you could get some of Lovecraft’s poetry. (CL3.203)

Yet, Howard never became as involved with The Fantasy Fan as he was with The Junto, nor was he ever a prolific contributor—understandable, as he was working to write salable material at the time. An example of Howard’s distance from the magazine can be seen in how he kept out of the kerfuffle in “The Boiling Point” (The Fantasy Fan’s letter column) between Lovecraft, Clark Ashton Smith, and a young Forrest J. Ackerman, limiting himself to a private comment to Lovecraft:

I’ve also been considerably amused by the controversy raging there, apparently precipitated by this Ackerman gentleman — I believe that’s the name. It’s always been a strange thing to me why some people think they have to attack fiction they don’t care for personally. If it was an article on government or sociology, dealing with some vital national problem, it might be different. But it seems rather absurd to me for one to attack a fiction story that has no connection with everyday problems at all. If Ackerman doesn’t like Smith’s stories, why, no law compels him to read them. (CL3.192)

The Fantasy Fan ran monthly from September 1933 to February 1935, running for 18 issues in total. Subscriptions for a year (12 issues) was a dollar; Howard subscribed around November 1933, and probably the first issue he received was December 1933. His subscription would then have run out around November of 1934, and apparently he sent another check to renew, but of course the publication ceased a few months later. Hornig, to his credit, sent Howard a “refund” on his subscription in the form of stamps covering the remainder, to which Howard replied:

I’m very sorry to learn that The Fantasy Fan has to be discontinued. I enjoyed the magazine very much, and had hoped that it would be able to carry on. It doesn’t seem quite fair for the editor of a fan magazine to have to bear all the financial loss of the magazine’s failure. In the case of my unfinished subscription, at least, let’s split the expense. I’m taking the liberty of returning half the stamps you sent me. I got all my money’s worth and more out of the pleasure I derived from the magazine. (CL3.305)

Having been involved in the amateur press a bit himself, Howard was probably very conscious of the cost of producing such periodicals, hence his magnanimous gesture.

In the fall of 1933, as Hornig was first issuing The Fantasy Fan, small publisher William F. Crawford was sending around a circular for a magazine to be titled Unusual Stories, soliciting material from Lovecraft and his correspondents, including Howard:

I hope Crawford has good fortune with Unusual Stories. I let him have a yarn entitled “The Garden of Fear”, dealing with one of my various conceptions of the Hyborian and post-Hyborian world. He seemed to like the story very well, and I intend to let him have some more on the same order if he can use them. I have an idea which I’d like to work out in a series of that nature. (CL3.136)

This was, like “The Frost-King’s Daughter,” another story that had been rejected by Farnsworth Wright when Howard had submitted it to Weird Tales. When Crawford’s magazine did appear, the name had changed to Marvel Tales, and Howard’s story appeared in the second issue (July 1934). Lovecraft’s assessment of the fanzine was frank (“ambitious size but rotten contents” AMTF 2.892), excepting Howard’s story (“I really can’t understand Wright’s rejection of that item.” AMTF 2.791) and other items. Howard’s opinion isn’t given, though he praised Emil Petaja’s poem “Witch’s Berceuse” (CL3.366, 369) and looked forward to Lovecraft’s “Some Notes on Interplanetary Fiction” (CL3.274).

The Fantasy Magazine had begun life as the Science Fiction Digest in 1932, and by 1934 had changed its name and come under the editorship of Julius Schwartz, who would go on to act as an agent for H. P. Lovecraft, and later would have an influential career in comics. Schwartz arranged several round-robins, the most famous of which is “The Challenge from Beyond,” which was serialized in the magazine and included contributions by Catherine L. Moore, A. Merritt, H. P. Lovecraft, Robert E. Howard, and Frank Belknap Long; with Howard’s contribution appearing in the September 1935 issue. (LRS 64-65)

If Howard was otherwise a subscriber to the Fantasy Magazine prior to being approached for this endeavor, there is no evidence for it in his surviving letters, though as Fantasy Magazine advertised in The Fantasy Fan, he must at least have been aware of it, and it remains essentially his only contribution (though a portion of one of his letters was excerpted in the July 1935 issue as “A Biographical Sketch of Robert E. Howard”). “The Challenge From Beyond” stands out as Howard’s first original fiction created solely for a fanzine, as opposed to a previously rejected tale, and his only “collaboration” with Lovecraft et al. Lovecraft himself was enjoyed Howard’s section (“It amused me to see how quickly Two-Gun converted the scholarly & inoffensive George Campbell into a raging Conan or King Kull!” LRBO 163)

The final, and arguably most important, interaction between Robert E. Howard and the fan press occurred near the end of his life, when H. P. Lovecraft sent him a copy of a new fanzine:

And I got a big kick out of your sonnet in the current issue of the Phantagraph, which is the first copy of that publication I’d seen. A nice looking little magazine, and one which I hope will have a better future than many of such ventures. I believe of all the various clans of readers, the weird and scientific-fiction fans are the most loyal and active. (CL3.461)

Similar to how The All-Around Magazine and possibly even The Junto had grown out of the Lone Scout “tribe papers,” the Phantagraph had started out as The International Science Fiction Guild’s Bulletin, a fan club paper that first appeared in 1934, but was reincarnated in July-August 1935, under the editorship of Donald Wollheim (and actually printed by William Crawford of Marvel Tales).

Howard and Lovecraft had apparently discussed the Phantagraph some months prior to the Texan ever seeing an issue; though those specific letters don’t survive, we have a letter dated 9 July 1935 from Lovecraft to Wollheim suggesting he solicit Howard for material, and providing the Lock Box 313 address (LRBO 313), and Howard duly sent his contribution along to Lovecraft to forward to Wollheim:

Here is something which Two-Gun Bob says he wants forwarded to you for The Phantagraph, & which I profoundly hope you’ll be able to use. This is really great stuff—Howard has the most magnificent sense of the drama of “history” of anyone I know. He possess a panoramic vision which takes in the evolution & interaction of races & nations over vast periods of time, & gives one the same large-scale excitement which (with even vaster scope) is furnished by things like Stapledon’s “Last & First Men”. (LRBO 319, cf. LRS 69)

“The Hyborian Age” was a lengthy historical essay that served as kind of historiographic background to Howard’s stories of Conan the Cimmerian, starting in dim prehistory and proceeding up to the roots of known history, and apparently never intended for publication. Wollheim began to serialize the essay in the Phantagraph, publishing the first three parts of the essay in February, August, and October 1936—the latter two published after Howard’s suicide in July of that year—but left it incomplete after only three installments.

The critical importance of Howard’s work in the fan press is less the fiction he produced, than the simple interaction with the burgeoning fandom. As a professional writer during this period, Howard was growing more prolific and profitable, writing less weird fiction but splashing western, spicy, and other markets with some regularity, and most of his efforts went to paying markets, usually through his agent Otis Adelbert Kline. Yet part of the enduring popularity of Robert E. Howard is due in no small part to his legion of fans, and the Texan’s contribution to the fanzines and interaction with the burgeoning fandom left a legacy that was felt after his death.

Charles D. Hornig

  The Fantasy Fan (vol. 1, no. 4) - Dec 1933 - letter (CL3.142, cf.139-140)

  The Fantasy Fan (vol. 1, no. 5) - Jan 1934 - letter (CL3.145)

  The Fantasy Fan (vol. 1, no. 7) - Mar 1934 - “Gods of the North”

  The Fantasy Fan (vol. 1, no. 9) - May 1934 - letter (CL3.149)

  The Fantasy Fan (vol. 2, no. 1) - Sep 1934 - “The Voices Waken Memory”

  The Fantasy Fan (vol. 2, no. 5) - Jan 1935 - “Babel”

William L. Crawford

  Marvel Tales (vol. 1, no. 2) - Jul 1934 - “The Garden of Fear”

Conrad H. Rupert

  Fantasy Magazine (vol. 5, no. 2) - July 1935 - “A Biographical Sketch of Robert E. Howard” (based on a letter from Robert E. Howard, cf. CL3.287-288)

  Fantasy Magazine (vol. 5, no. 4) - Sep 1935 - “The Challenge From Beyond”

Shepherd & Wollheim

  The Phantagraph (vol. 4, no. 3) - Feb 1936 - “The Hyborian Age” (part 1)

  The Phantagraph (vol. 4, no. 5) - Aug 1936 - “The Hyborian Age” (part 2)

  The Phantagraph (vol. 5, no. 1) - Oct 1936 - “The Hyborian Age” (part 3)

______________________________

Works Cited

AMTF  A Means to Freedom: The Letters of H. P. Lovecraft and Robert E. Howard (2 vols., Hippocampus Press, 2009)

BT       Blood & Thunder: The Life and Art of Robert E. Howard (REH Foundation, 2013)

CL       Collected Letters of Robert E. Howard (3 vols. + Index & Addenda, REH Foundation, 2007 – 2015)

CLIH    Collected Letters of Dr. Isaac M. Howard (REH Foundation, 2011)

HAJ     The History of Amateur Journalism (The Fossils, 1957)

LC       The Last Celt: A Bio-Bibliography of Robert E. Howard (Berkley Windhover, 1976)

LRBO  Letters to Robert Bloch and Others (Hippocampus Press, 2015)

LRS     Letters to Richard F. Searight (Necronomicon Press, 1992)

LS        “Robert E. Howard and the Lone Scouts” by Rob Roehm, in The Dark Man (vol. 7, no. 1; 2012)

LSL      Lone Scout of Letters (Roehm’s Room Press, 2011)

PWM   Robert E. Howard: The Power of the Writing Mind (Mythos Books, 2003)

SFTP   So Far the Poet & Other Writings (REH Foundation, 2010)

THA     The Hyborian Age Facsimile Editions (Skelos Press, 2015)

TJ        “The Junto: Being a Brief Look at the Amateur Press Association Robert E. Howard Partook In as a Youth” by Glenn Lord, in Two-Gun Bob: A Centennial Study of Robert E. Howard (Hippocampus Press, 2006)

UL       Uncollected Letters (Necronomicon Press, 1986)

WGP   Robert E. Howard: World’s Greatest Pulpster (Dennis McHaney, 2005)

Part 1, Part 2, Part 3

An Escape from The Depression: The Fantasy Fan, Marvel Tales & The Pulps by Todd B. Vick

The Great Depression was the longest lasting economic downturn in the history of mankind. It not only had a deep effect here in the U.S. but the rest of the world felt its squeeze as well. Despite its woes, those who lived through The Great Depression still had to get on with their lives and try and find a way to survive. By 1933 when the Great Depression had reached its nadir, some 15 million people in the U.S. alone were without work, almost half the banks in the U.S. had closed their doors, and Americans (as well as the rest of the world) were in dire straits. However, in the midst of this nadir, the entertainment industry was booming. People were trying to forget their troubles by turning their attention to films, sports (in large part boxing), books, magazines and other distracting things.

     In 1933 some of the greatest classic films were released: King Kong, Duck Soup, I’m No Angel, Queen Christina, Little Women, and others. The first drive-in movie theater was built in Camden, NJ that year, and MGM worked on gaining the rights to a film titled The Wizard of Oz. In June of 1933, Primo Carnera defeated Jack Sharkey in the sixth round (with a KO) to win the World Heavyweight Championship. That same year, Jerry Siegel and artist Joe Shuster created the iconic character “Superman.” Underneath all these hugely popular events a seventeen year old teenager was hard at work developing the first fanzine for the weird fiction genre in hopes that it would attract some of the most popular writers in the Weird Fiction and Science Fiction pulp magazine industry.

     

Charles D. Hornig, from New Jersey, was a huge fan of weird fiction and science fiction. He was a regular subscriber to Wonder Stories and Amazing Stories. There’s no written history/information on why or where Hornig got the idea of beginning a fanzine. Even so, Hornig contacted the editor of “The Science Fic-Digest”—Conrad H. Ruppert—in an attempt to find out how such an effort could get off the ground. Ruppert guided Hornig in his endeavors, and in September of 1933, volume 1, no. 1 of The Fantasy Fan was first printed. It is believed that Hornig, a somewhat long time reader of Wonder Stories, sent a copy to its publisher Hugo Gernsback (who has been called the Father of Science Fiction). Through a series of circumstances, Gernsback had recently fired his editor, David Lasser, and after seeing Hornig’s first issue of The Fantasy Fan, hired Hornig. This is apparently confirmed in The Fantasy Fan Oct. 1933, Volume 1, no. 2 issue. “Managing Editor: Wonder Stories” is typed in that issue under Hornig’s name on the title page.  This would certainly explain how Hornig was able to get such high profile authors during The Fantasy Fan’s existence between Sept. 1933 to Feb. 1935.

     The first writers to jump on board Hornig’s fanzine were Clark Ashton Smith, H.P. Lovecraft, and August Derleth. Other writers would join the fanzine in its first year: Julius Schwarts (who would eventually make his name in the comic book industry), Forrest Ackerman (magazine editor and an agent for Sci-fi writers such as Ray Bradbury, Isaac Asimov, L. Ron Hubbard, etc.), R.H. Barlow (author, poet, and previous executor of H.P. Lovecraft’s literary estate) and Robert E. Howard. In its second year, Robert Bloch made a contribution. The circulation of The Fantasy Fan is unknown. My guess is that it was fairly exclusive. Additionally, according to Wikipedia, here are some of the new stories from weird fiction authors that appeared in The Fantasy Fan,

First publication of several works by noteworthy authors occurred in The Fantasy Fan, including works by Lovecraft, Smith, Robert E. Howard, August Derleth, and Robert Bloch. Perhaps one of the magazine's greatest achievements, though, was the serialization of the revised version of Lovecraft's Supernatural Horror in Literature (October 1933-February 1935); the serialization proceeded until it had reached the middle of Chapter VIII and the magazine folded. The Fantasy Fan also saw the first publication of Lovecraft's stories: "The Other Gods" (November 1933) and "From Beyond" (June 1934) as well as reprints (from amateur papers) of "Polaris" (February 1934) and "Beyond the Wall of Sleep" (October 1934); it also published the poems "The Book" (October 1934), "Pursuit" (October 1934), "The Key" (January 1935), and "Homecoming" (January 1935) from Lovecraft's sonnet cycle Fungi from Yuggoth. Lovecraft was represented in no less than seventeen of the eighteen issues published. The October 1934 issue was dedicated to Lovecraft.

     

Marvel Tales w/Slipcase
The Fantasy Fan

Fortunately, a little over 5 years ago (in 2010), Lance Thingmaker put together an extremely nice hardback facsimile of The Fantasy Fan. The collection was limited to 100 copies and sold rather quickly on Ebay. In its heyday, The Fantasy Fan was a way for fans and writers to connect. Also, for those people who were reading the pulps and various science fiction and fantasy magazines, this was just another way for them to find a little escape from the hardships of the Great Depression.

     In the same year that The Fantasy Fan ceased publication, another fanzine called Marvel Tales began publication.  Marvel Tales was edited by William L. Crawford. He was the first to use the name Marvel Tales which would be subsequently used again several times after Crawford’s zine ended. William Crawford was a publisher and editor who also wrote science fiction stories. Crawford lived in Everett, PA and had been an ardent science and weird fiction fan. He was also responsible for the inception of another non-paying weird fiction zine titled Unusual Stories. His Marvel Tales zine had a very short run, all of 5 issues. However, he was able to garner a few top-notch fantasy and science fiction authors of the day to contribute: H.P. Lovecraft, August Derleth, Robert E. Howard, and Frank Belknap Long.

     Marvel Tales has a more mysterious history and demise than The Fantasy Fan. After the fifth issue, the magazine announced with great enthusiasm that its next issue would be on newsstands. After this last mention, no other issues were printed. It disappeared. This was probably due to its non-professional (non-paying) status and the high costs of publishing such a zine in the 1930s. It also never gained a strong enough readership to keep it alive. There is scant material written about Crawford’s Marvel Tales. Even so, in 2012, Lance Thingmaker, after the success of his facsimile for The Fantasy Fan, created a facsimile for Marvel Tales. Thingmaker did a 300 print run with the first 100 books tagged, numbered, and placed in nice slipcases.

     

In the 1930s, if fans of the pulps were fortunate enough to hear about these two fanzines, they would have access to original stories written by some of the more popular pulp writers. Moreover, the paper quality of these fanzines was a notch better than those of the pulps. Like films and sporting events, these fanzines and especially the pulp magazines were a nice inexpensive escape from the troubles that stemmed from the Great Depression. 1939 fanzines more or less fell by the wayside to World War II, dime novels, and the comic book industry. However, weird fiction and science fiction fanzines made a strong comeback in the early 1970s, but eventually faded again toward the mid to late 80s. Fortunately, the stories have survived through the years and are enjoying a steady growth today with a surge of new fans.

The Mirror of E’ch-Pi-El: Robert E. Howard in the Letters of H. P. Lovecraft (Part 2) by Bobby Derie

Lovecraft’s esteem for Howard’s correspondence was such that he expressed the wish that “I’d like to publish all his letters with their descriptive and historical riches.” (SL5.277, cf. LJFM 389, LRS 82), much as August Derleth and Donald Wandrei would later do for Lovecraft himself, noting that “They’d need editing, since they are all replies to specific arguments of mine.” (LRBO 399)—and indeed, having both sides of the argument in A Means to Freedom makes considerably better sense than trying to collate the much-abridged contents of the Selected Letters of Robert E. Howard and the Selected Letters of H. P. Lovecraft.

For all that Lovecraft praised these letters, he quoted rather little from them—as Howard had requested they be kept private (“I don’t have to tell you that a lot of the things of which I speak are in strict confidence.” CL2.416, cf. 3.363), telling Willis Conover “About one of REH’s argumentative letters—he always used to ask me to keep them confidential” (LRBO 399) and F. Lee Baldwin “I’d show you some of his letters if he hadn’t asked me not to let anybody see them.” (SL5.108) Despite this injunction from Howard, Lovecraft did write “I’ll lend you some of his encyclopaedic letters if you think you’d enjoy a sidelight on such an unusual character.” (ES2.524) and a notation on a letter from Howard to Lovecraft ca. December 1932 includes a notation that shows it was “lent out” in this fashion. (CL2.489)