This is part two of a post arising from the latest Voluminous podcast, in which some of Lovecraft’s public letters are read. Sent to a Haldeman-Julius publication in 1923, his letters followed the editor’s call for lists of ‘the top 10 greatest names of all time’. In my first post I looked at Lovecraft’s naming of Remy de Gourmont, and also the use of the perennial alarmist’s “inevitable decline of civilisation, starting now” notion, of the sort which can look so ridiculous 30 years later.

In this second post I look at the links with Haldeman-Julius as a publisher.

A 1925 ‘Houdini’ special-issue of the Monthly version, with interview.

Lovecraft was sending for Haldeman-Julius ‘blue books’ by mail-order in 1923. Since we know he early on obtained a copy of Schopenhauer’s “Art of Controversy” and many others that way. He soon acquired even more, because we know he packed a pocket-full for light-relief when he hiked the New Jersey Palisades with Sonia. That was shortly before their marriage. One might then wonder if some of these ‘blue books’ might have been of the type then referred to as ‘marital hygiene’ advice, which were to be found among the Haldeman-Julius line. Though perhaps he was not thinking quite that far ahead.

He tells Moe that he did not intend the 1923 letter — as read in the Voluminous podcast linked above — to be published…

I’ve been having a bit of fun with the Haldeman-Julius Weekly, which is the old socialistic Appeal to Reason partly turned sane under a new name. … [the editor printed] an 8-page letter of mine, not meant for the vulgar eye. Ho hum… not that it matters.

How had Lovecraft come into contact with Haldeman-Julius and the magazine? Via Morton would be my guess, or maybe David V. Bush suggesting it as being of possible interest as a market. As an anarchist pamphleteer Morton would have had an interest in the political angle of the enterprise, and Bush an interest in the ‘hygiene’ and sexology side. But perhaps the publisher just sent a free copy of Haldeman-Julius Weekly with Lovecraft’s order, on the sound principle that anyone brave enough to tackle Schopenhauer also deserved some lighter reading matter along with it. The title in question only sold a few hundred copies in 1923. Four years later it was re-issued with the snappier title “How to Argue Logically” and sold 30,000.

By 1925 Lovecraft can be found telling his aunt that he is buying up Blue Books in bulk, because he has heard that the 5-cent and 10-cent prices are to double. He reads them to pass the time on the longer New York City subway journeys. At one point he hears (again wrongly) that Haldeman-Julius has ceased publishing, then that he is about to cease. Somewhere near Grand Central Station he discovers a ‘Little Blue Book Store’, apparently stocked with nothing but the Blue Books. Possibly this store is the source of the false rumours, designed to boost panic bulk buying. Tentaclii readers who have paywall access can find the newspaper article on this store, titled “Pay as You Go Out, 5 Cents a Copy, in the New Cafeteria Bookshop” (New York Times, 24th February 1924). At that time Lovecraft picked up many of the line’s science booklets, and three weirder booklets featuring tales by Poe, Kipling and E.F. Benson’s ghost stories respectively. According to Joshi’s Lovecraft’s Library these three were the only Blue Books thought to be worth noting in his Library at his death, though he owned far more. In his mid 1920s letters he later comments that the New York store had closed down, and bemoans that he will have to go back to the ‘old method’ of ordering by mail from Kansas.

In 1928 he comments in passing on the Haldeman-Julius organisation’s ‘militant atheist’ stance…

I cannot sympathise with the violent anti-Christian agitators and “debunkers” of the Truth-Seeker and Haldeman-Julius Weekly type.

Many of Morton’s pamphlets were issued by “The Truth Seeker Co.” in New York, but I’m uncertain of its connections if any with the later Truth-Seeker magazine.

Lovecraft did not have a collection of these magazines, and his comment implies that the strident atheism of the 1920s and 30s was just as simultaneously boring and as dangerous as today (i.e.: Christians relentlessly depicted in movies and popular novels as sadists, bigots, perverts, sentimental milksops, hypocrites, dogmatic, anti-science etc). But Lovecraft did own the Blue Books in quantity by the early 1930s. He talks of a tall “stack” of them balanced up against one wall of his personal library. In 1933 he signs off a letter to Morton with… “Now to get my Haldeman-Julius booklets tied together to avoid shuffling”, which suggests he has a substantial collection of all the titles he might want from the publisher. The context of “avoid shuffling” was his house move to No. 66.

Yet in a letter to Shea of early 1934 he affects not to be familiar with their current catalogue and their newer titles… “I suppose there must be dozens of Haldeman-Julius booklets about the matter [active homosexuality] now”. He may just be trying to give a casual hint to the lad about where such helpful reading might be ordered. Or he may have no longer been receiving the annual catalogue. Probably the former, since… why would be not be on the mailing-list for this cheap and interesting catalogue?

“Hygiene” was then a euphemism for sex matters.

In 1936 he talks discreetly of the “Brobst H-J” stuff which Barlow had presumably borrowed during his long visit to Lovecraft in August 1936, and by then had with him at home in Fort Leavenworth. “H-J” being “Haldeman-Julius”. Lovecraft advises that this “stuff” should be returned directly to Brobst. The implication is that the Providence asylum nurse Brobst had his own large collection of the Blue Books, most likely especially relating to mental illness and eccentricity and suchlike. As a trained and qualified nurse Brobst would have been able to order the riskier psychology and sexology titles without having to fear postal or parental censorship.