A new question from a Patreon patron: “Did HPL ever mention the U.S. state of Michigan, or its city of Detroit?”
There is nothing to be found in the fiction or poetry, but small gleanings can be picked up elsewhere.
In his youth Lovecraft would have been aware of the astronomy work at the University of Michigan, and he mentions this in his essays “Are There Undiscovered Planets?” (c. 1906) and “Does ‘Vulcan’ Exist?” (also c. 1906 and about an as-yet undiscovered planet)…
Another remarkable ‘discovery’ was that made by Profs. Watson and Swift at Ann Arbor, Mich., during the eclipse of 1878, when both observers pointed out two objects, one as the hypothetical Vulcan
Lovecraft’s uncle Franklin Chase Clark had published a number of articles in the Detroit Medical Journal. Lovecraft also knew some the very early and tangled history of Detroit and noted its ill-fated Governor of the 1790s and his grisly end…
thirteen of the pirate Blackbeard’s men were subsequently hang’d near by — as well as the royal governor of Detroit, Henry Hamilton
This was as gory as some of the 1920s newspaper reporting it seems, The Unique Legacy of Weird Tales noting that…
Throughout the 1920s, newspapers and journals broke stories about alternative religions (almost always labelled as cults) that made extravagant claims about their ability to secure earthly power and riches for their followers. Additionally, tabloid-style papers like the New York Herald claimed that cultists were responsible for a variety of murders and disappearances (for example … a Detroit murder cult).
… and referencing as the source Phillip Jenkins, Mystics and Messiahs: Cults and New Religions in American History (Oxford University Press, 2000).
Lovecraft was later aware of Detroit as the home of the far more mass-murderous automobile cult. For instance, he writes…
Brattleboro came in the dead of midnight. The rail journey was at an end, and five miles of narrow hill road in a Detroit chaise brought me to the isolated Orton dwelling.
Houdini tried to get Lovecraft to visit Detroit, early in their business relationship. But Lovecraft demurred…
Our slippery friend Houdini, who was here early in the month, and rushed me to hell preparing an anti-astrological article to be finished before his departure — a matter of five days … He says he has a devilish lot more for me to do and has been trying to get me to meet him in Detroit at his own expense to talk things over — but I have maintained that I can do business best within sight of my native town’s Georgian steeples.
The amateur journalist and early Lovecraft collaborator Winifred V. Jackson seems to have had a connection, as she was married there for her first marriage. The amateur whose supernatural desert story provoked Lovecraft’s own “The Transition of Juan Romero” was from Michigan, or at least was educated there…
Philip B. McDonald graduated M.E. (Master of Engineering) from Michigan College of Mines. In Lovecraft’s The Conservative, McDonald was stated to be ‘Assistant Professor of Engineering English, University of Colorado’ in July 1918.
“The Transition of Juan Romero” being a quick ‘demo story’ for Lovecraft’s friends, to demonstrate how a ‘total makeover’ revision could be achieved. Hence the unusual desert setting, which had been in the original tale… and which I later discovered to be ‘Area 52’ of UFO fame.
Lovecraft had a late post-1933 correspondent-protege from Michigan, the telegraphist Richard F. Seawright (see Letters to Richard F. Seawright, 1992).
Major amateur journalist meetings were not unknown in the state, and Lovecraft had verbal and written reports from those who attended. Which may also have given him some impressions of the state…
I had an enjoyable visit from our good old colleague Mocrates the Sage [Moe], now on a visit to various eastern points after a sojourn at the Grand Rapids N.A.P.A. Convention.
Amateurs evidently gleaned some linguistic amusement from listening in on the local lingo during such convention visits, and Lovecraft reported that one…
James F. Morton, Jr., lent a climactic touch [to the end of one meeting of amateurs] with some inimitable stanzas on the pronunciation of English as practiced in various centres of culture, including Kalamazoo.
In chronicling the early interest in Lovecraft, S.T. Joshi observed substantial contributions from Detroit…
In 1958 the University of Detroit’s literary magazine, Fresco, devoted an entire issue to works by and about Lovecraft.
There was also Maurice Levy’s Lovecraft: A Study in the Fantastic (1988) from Detroit and the Wayne State University Press.
