By H.P. Lovecraft
Edited by S.T. Joshi & David E. Schultz

Back Cover Text

Rheinhart Kleiner (1892–1949) was one of H.P. Lovecraft’s earliest correspondents. The recipient of the first issue of Lovecraft’s amateur paper, The Conservative, in 1915, Kleiner challenged Lovecraft to reconsider his dogmatic views on race, literature, and society. A poet of exquisite skill and sensitivity, Kleiner inspired Lovecraft to write a number of poems directly addressed to him or inspired by his own poems. This volume prints, for the first time, the complete surviving letters of Lovecraft to Kleiner, showing how Lovecraft gradually transformed himself from an eighteenth-century fossil to a participant in the society and culture of his time. The letters address such wide-ranging subjects as erotic love, racial prejudice, the art of poetry, Lovecraft’s boyhood and upbringing, and much else. Also included are the three surviving letters of the Kleicomolo, the round-robin correspondence group whose members included Kleiner, Lovecraft, Ira A. Cole, and Maurice W. Moe. Richly philosophical, these letters display the fundamentals of Lovecraft’s distinctive cosmic vision. In an extensive appendix are found all of Lovecraft’s and Kleiner’s poems addressed to each other, along with Kleiner’s several provocative essays on Lovecraft.

Meticulously edited and annotated by David E. Schultz and S.T. Joshi, this volume continues Hippocampus Press’s series of unabridged Lovecraft letters, with detailed notes and commentary.

Contents

• Introduction (7 pages)
• Letters to Rheinhart Kleiner (223 pages)
• Works (43 pages)
  • Poems by Rheinhart Kleiner
    • Alas!
    • Dream Days; or, Metrical Musings
    • Another Endless Day
    • Motes
    • At Providence in 1918
    • Brooklyn, My Brooklyn
    • Epistle to Mr. and Mrs. Lovecraft
    • The Four of Us!
    • After a Decade
    • H.P.L.
  • Essays by Rheinhart Kleiner
    • A Note on Howard P. Lovecraft’s Verse
    • The Kleicomolo
    • After a Decade and the Kalem Club
    • Howard Phillips Lovecraft
    • Lovecraft in Brooklyn
    • Some Lovecraft Memories
  • Rheinhart Kleiner vs. H.P. Lovecraft
    • To Mary of the Movies [Kleiner]
    • To Charlie of the Comics [Lovecraft]
    • To a Movie Star [Kleiner]
    • To Mistress Sophia Simple, Queen of the Cinema [Lovecraft]
    • Ruth [Kleiner]
    • Grace [Lovecraft]
    • John Oldham: 1653–1683 [Kleiner]
    • John Oldham: A Defence [Lovecraft]
    • Ethel: Cashier in a Broad Street Buffet [Kleiner]
    • Cindy: Scrub-Lady in a State Street Skyscraper [Lovecraft]
    • On Collaboration
  • Poems by H.P. Lovecraft Addressed to Rheinhart Kleiner
    • The Bookstall
    • Content
    • To Mr. Kleiner, on Receiving from Him the Poetical Works of Addison, Gay, and Somerville
    • R. Kleiner, Laureatus, in Heliconem
    • To Rheinhart Kleiner, Esq., Upon His Town Fables and Elegies
    • [On Rheinhart Kleiner Being Hit by an Automobile]
• A Partial Bibliography of Rheinhart Kleiner (6 pages)
• Index (10 pages)

Bibliographic Information

H.P. Lovecraft: Letters to Rheinhart Kleiner. By H.P. Lovecraft, Edited by S.T. Joshi & David E. Schultz. New York, NY: Hippocampus Press; 2005; ISBN 0-9748789-5-2; Softcover, 298 pages.

Purchasing This Book

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