Lovecraft postcard on offer on the Spanish eBay.
Mailed Providence, 10.30pm, 11th Aug 1933. To Charles D. Hornig, on the subject of reprinting a long (“would make a small book”) article formerly published by Paul W. Cook, presumably Supernatural Horror in Literature. Lovecraft is suggesting he might revise it for its second publication in a new fanzine. The postcard ends with congraulations on Hornig’s new “congenial” job as a staffer with Gernsback.
Essential Solitude: The Letters of H. P. Lovecraft and August Derleth (p.599) mentions the same address…
“The new weird magazine — Fantasy Fan, 137 W. Grand St., Elizabeth, N.J. — offers an 18 months’ subscription for a dollar. Klarkash-Ton & I are contributing old stuff — no pay, but good way to get…”
So this must be the then seventeen year old Charles D[erwin] Hornig (1916-1999). He was a hard-left socialist who edited the Fantasy Fan magazine (it had an 18 month run, to sixty subscribers, Sept 1933-Feb 1935). His magazine contained a column called “The Boiling Point”, which published heated disputes between Lovecraft and others. Fantasy Fan also published a revised version of Supernatural Horror in Literature, Oct 1933-Feb 1935, although the zine closed before the serialisation was complete. FF also provided an outlet for four of the Fungi from Yuggoth poems.
Hornig was also on the Gernsback staff as editor of Wonder Stories from circa summer 1933 until circa May 1936. Later Silberkliet’s Science Fiction magazine was “edited rather stodgily by Charles D. Hornig” (Damon Knight, The Futurians, p.10). Hornig was known for being heavy-handed with his rejection letters… “Apparently Hornig got a real charge out of rejecting stories” (Heavy Planet and Other Science Fiction Stories, Milton A. Rothman and Darrell Schweitzer, p.305).
