A Dreamer & A Visionary; H.P. Lovecraft in His Time

The United aims to assist those whom other forms of literary influence cannot reach. The non-university man, the dwellers in different places, the recluse, the invalid, the very young, the elderly; all these are included within our scope. And beside our novices stand persons of mature cultivation and experience, ready to assist for the sheer joy of assisting. In no other society does wealth or previous learning count for so little … It is an university, stripped of every artificiality and conventionality, and thrown open to all without distinction. Here may every man shine according to his genius, and here may the small as well as the great writer know the bliss of appreciation and the glory of recognised achievement.

This all sounds very well, but Lovecraft regarded it as axiomatic that he was one of the ‘great’ writers in this little realm, one of the ‘persons of mature cultivation and experience’ who would raise his lessers to whatever heights they could achieve. This was not arrogance on Lovecraft’s part but plain truth; he really was one of the leading figures of amateurdom at this time, and his reputation has remained high in this small field. This ideal of amateurdom as a sort of informal university was something Lovecraft found compelling and attempted—ultimately in vain—to bring about.

Only a few months after he joined amateur journalism, Lovecraft obtained a forum whereby he could put many of his developing theories—particularly that of education—into practice. Around November 1914 he was appointed by President Dora M. Hepner to take over the chairmanship of the Department of Public Criticism. It was the first office Lovecraft held, and he made the most of it.

The office entailed Lovecraft’s writing a lengthy article for the United Amateur criticizing in detail each and every amateur journal that was submitted for review. His first article appeared in the January 1915 issue, and over the next five years Lovecraft wrote at least sixteen more. These pieces must be read to gain some idea of his devotion to the amateur cause. Plodding and schoolmasterly as many of them are—painstakingly correcting every grammatical blunder, pointing out flaws in prosody, lapses in taste, and errors in fact—it is exactly the sort of criticism that the amateurs needed. It would have been futile to present a lofty dissection of the aesthetic substance of their work when many were struggling to achieve the barest minimum of grammatical correctness in prose and verse. Lovecraft is tireless in the patient, careful advice he gives: he always attempts to find some merit in the work under consideration, but never lets a technical flaw go by.

Naturally, Lovecraft had his biases. His greatest flaws as an official critic (at least in his early phase) are political and social prejudices and a relentless advocacy of ‘Georgian’ standards in prose and verse. Slang and colloquialism particularly offended him. Another frequent target was simplified spelling. We may find Lovecraft’s comments on this subject somewhat heavy-handed— akin to using a sledgehammer to crack a nut—but simple spelling was being advocated by a number of distinguished critics and grammarians of the day. Lovecraft delivers a learned lecture on the history of the subject in ‘The Simple Spelling Mania’ (United Cooperative, December 1918).

The degree to which Lovecraft was devoted to the literary standards of the eighteenth century is no more evident than in ‘The Case for Classicism’ (United Co-operative

, June 1919), in which he takes to task one Professor Philip B. McDonald for belittling the relevance of classic authors in developing effective style and rhetoric. Although Lovecraft claims that ‘It is not my purpose here to engage in any extensive battle of ancient and modern books, such as that fought in Saint-James’s Library and veraciously chronicled by Dean Swift’, such a battle of the books is exactly what Lovecraft conducts here: ‘I cannot refrain from insisting on the permanent paramountcy of classical literature as opposed to the superficial productions of this disturbed and degenerate age.’ As if this were not enough, Lovecraft continues:

The literary genius of Greece and Rome, developed under peculiarly favourable circumstances, may fairly be said to have completed the art and science of expression. Unhurried and profound, the classical author achieved a standard of simplicity, moderation, and elegance of taste, which all succeeding time has been powerless to excel or even to equal.