In 1922, George Saintsbury published A Letter Book, Selected with an Introduction on the History and Art of Letter-Writing, with the Introduction running to a fulsome 100 pages. The rest of his 300-page book draws on classic letters, almost all English, to provide examples of points made in the Introduction.

Did the most formidable letter writer of the 20th century read this? I can find no evidence that Lovecraft read this particular book, but we do know that he knew of George Saintsbury’s large and judicious anthology Tales of Mystery (1891). In I Am Providence, S.T. Joshi informs us that…

Lovecraft had obtained [this book] in one of his New York trips of 1922. He drew very heavily upon this latter compilation [for Supernatural Literature]

Tales of Mystery was a gift from Long, presumably picked up from one of the bookstores and used book-stalls he knew so well. Thus Lovecraft was strongly aware of the author in 1922/23, and would have been alert to his name in the various book reviews of that year. It is then probable that he, and his growing circle, were at least aware of the existence of a worthy new introductory book on the history of letters. It does seem the sort of book that Lovecraft might have corresponded with Loveman on, though we can’t know unless the perhaps-lost letters to Loveman re-surface. The book also seems one that a good public library might have wanted on their shelves. However, is is not a book listed in the edition of Joshi’s Lovecraft’s Library I have access to.

Nevertheless Saintsbury’s Introduction offers an interesting and accessible introduction to the epistolary traditions of which Lovecraft was aware of in other ways, and which he sought to perpetuate into the new Machine Age with his ever-dashing pen.