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Lovecraft’s New York Circle:
The Kalem Club, 1924–1927

Edited by Mara Kirk Hart and S.T. Joshi

[Cover]

Back Cover Text

The Kalem Club was one of the great literary partnerships in American literature. Taking shape even before H.P. Lovecraft arrived in Brooklyn in 1924, the group featured some of the most distinctive figures of their day: George Kirk, genial bookseller and collector; Rheinhart Kleiner, a worldly versifier and man about town; Samuel Loveman, exquisitely refined poet and friend of Hart Crane; James F. Morton, devotee of freethought, the single tax, and Esperanto; Everett McNeil, prolific writer of historical novels for boys; Frank Belknap Long, poet, aesthete, and writer of weird fiction; and, of course, H.P. Lovecraft, on the threshold of becoming the 20th-century Poe. As chronicled in largely unpublished letters by George Kirk to his fiancée, the Kalem Club comes alive as never before—gathering for weekly sessions, taking long, leisurely strolls throughout the New York area, and sharing their works-in-progress. In the second half of this book, an abundance of writings by the Kalems—poems, essays, excerpts from treatises and novels—allows readers to grasp at first hand why the Kalem Club has left an indelible mark upon the literature of its time.

Lovecraft’s New York Circle has been compiled by Mara Kirk Hart, daughter of George Kirk and a longtime student of Lovecraft and the Kalem Club, and by S.T. Joshi, a leading authority on Lovecraft.

Contents

  • Preface by Peter Cannon
  • Introduction by Mara Kirk Hart
  • The Kalem Letters of George Kirk
    • Introduction
    • 1924
    • 1925
    • 1926
    • 1927
  • Writings by the Kalems
    • George Kirk
      • Book Collecting: The Prince of Hobbies
    • Rheinhart Kleiner
      • A Glee
      • At Providence in 1918
      • Epistle to Mr. and Mrs. Lovecraft
      • The Four of Us (Rondeau)
      • Brooklyn, My Brooklyn
      • Columbia Heights, Brooklyn
      • [Prisky]
      • On a Favorite Cat: Killed by an Automobile
      • To George W. Kirk, Upon His 26th Birthday
      • To His Peculiar Friend, G. Kirk, Esq.
      • Your Street
      • Blue Pencil Anniversary Song
      • What My Ancestors Were Like
      • The Great Adventure
      • If I Had Lived a Hundred Years Ago
      • H.P.L.
    • Arthur Leeds
      • He Had to Pay the Nine-Tailed Cat
    • Frank Belknap Long
      • A Man from Genoa
      • Come, Let Us Make
      • The Man Who Died Twice
    • H.P. Lovecraft
      • Plaster-All
      • To Endymion
      • Providence
      • Waste Paper
      • Primavera
      • To an Infant
      • To George Kirk, Esq.
      • To George Willard Kirk, Gent., of Chelsea Village in New York, upon His Birthday, Novr. 25, 1925
      • Two Christmas Poems to G.W.K.
      • A Year Off
      • In Memoriam Oscar Incoul Verelst of Manhattan 1920–1926
    • Samuel Loveman
      • A Letter to G––– K–––
      • To George Kirk on His 27th Birthday
      • For the Chelsea Book Shop [1]
      • For the Chelsea Book Shop [2]
      • For a Cat
      • For a Book of Poems
      • Admonition
      • Limbo
      • To H.P.L.
      • Genesis
      • Spring at El Retiro
      • Arcesilaus
      • John Clare in 1864
    • Everett McNeil
      • From Tonty of the Iron Hand
    • James Ferdinand Morton
      • To G.W.K. on His 27th Birthday
      • From The Curse of Race Prejudice
  • Appendix
    • After a Decade and the Kalem Club by Rheinhart Kleiner
    • Bards and Bibliophiles by Rheinhart Kleiner
  • Sources and Works Consulted
  • Index

Bibliographic Information

Lovecraft’s New York Circle: The Kalem Club, 1924–1927. Edited by Mara Kirk Hart and S.T. Joshi. New York, NY: Hippocampus Press; 2006; ISBN 0-9761592-9-5 (softcover); 240 pages.

Purchasing This Book

This book may be purchased in softcover from Amazon.com or Barnes & Noble or directly from the publisher, Hippocampus Press.

 
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