An eBay listing brought to my notice the book H.P.L.: A Memoir (1945), by August Derleth. It’s in part a short basic biography of Lovecraft, as it was understood at that time, with bibliographies. Published as a $2.50 hardback of 122 pages, with apparently a list of Derleth’s own work in the rear.
It would be interesting to get this, if only to get a better handle on what the interested readership of the late 1940s, 50s and 60s understood about Lovecraft’s person, prior to the famous de Camp biography of 1975. Sadly it seems to be unavailable except on the high-priced £50+ collectors’ market.
Joshi’s Bibliography has a main entry on it, but only very tersely states: “broadly surveying his life and work”. I Am Providence is a little more forthcoming…
Derleth’s small monograph can hardly be called a biography… two [chapters] are biographical and one critical; all three are quite undistinguished.
The reader — curious as to Lovecraft’s reception by a new generation in the 1940s and early 50s — is rather left wondering about such basic matters as: did Derleth get the facts basically right, or not?
The I Am Providence bibliography also notes…
Derleth, August. “Addenda to ‘H. P. L.: A Memoir.’” in Lovecraft’s Something about Cats and Other Pieces (1949).
Again, we have to learn elsewhere that this reprints Clara L. Hess’s letter to The Providence Journal newspaper (19th September 1948), with a few additional facts and memories gleaned from an interview that Derleth obtained with her (presumably in late 1948).
While these items have obviously been superseded, they might form the basis of an article examining “what could the interested reader of 1960 have known about Lovecraft’s life?” But the current cost of obtaining both volumes, and similar supporting vintage materials, suggests that I won’t be the one to write that.
