[page 171] This article examines a collection of ninety-six letters written from weird fiction author Frank Belknap Long, Jr. (1901-1994), to author and co-founder of weird fiction publisher Arkham House August Derleth (1909-1971) between 1937 and 1969; these unpublished letters are a largely untapped resource for scholars, bibliographers, and fans of Long’s work as well as of weird fiction and science fiction more generally. These letters were transcribed exactly, in adherence to best practices and to the best of my ability, with only essential emendations added when their absence would cause confusion or misunderstanding.
Long lived from the earliest years of the century, when the cosmic horror written by his close friend H. P. Lovecraft blasted new literary and philosophical ground, into the age of the atom bomb and moon landings. His letters track the course of social and literary history from before World War II into the Cold War and Flower Power eras. This is not intended to be comprehensive biography, bibliography, or literary criticism; rather, I hope to extract what information as I can from these letters about Long, a writer celebrated both for his Lovecraftian weird fiction (such as “The Eye Above the Mantel”) and for inaugurating a new genre of twentieth-century science fiction, “Atomic Age” or “Space Age” fiction, for which he was awarded the Lifetime Achievement Award by the World Fantasy Convention in 1979.
The letters, most of them typed, are photocopies on yellow paper1 that were given to me by Marcos Legaria, who obtained them from the Wisconsin Historical Society in Madison, Wisconsin. Reference Archivist Jennifer Barth tells me that their collection of letters written from Long to Derleth was the gift of several donors, including Derleth himself. Long [page 172] biographer Perry Grayson asserts that the Wisconsin collection comprises the complete extant body of letters written from Long to Derleth.2 Many have penciled notes written by an unidentified person, whom Barth suggests may have been Derleth or the collection archivist who received them. Dating this correspondence is difficult, as at least half of the letters are without dates or are incompletely dated (i.e., a day of the week or a month and day without a year), but I have clustered them by subject matter in an attempt to arrange them somewhat chronologically.
Frank Belknap Long chose to earn his living by writing. He was a writer of weird fiction, having honed his talents under the supervision of his close friend H. P. Lovecraft, whom he called “Howard” in his letters, and later made successful forays into mystery, science fiction, and comic book writing. Earning enough by writing to pay the rent and buy the groceries was a challenge even though Long cranked out up to four pulp novels, ranging from weird fiction to gothic and science fiction, for the paperback market each month. At times, he also read scripts for Twentieth Century Fox and worked as an editor for various genre publications including The Saint Mystery Magazine, Fantastic Universe, Satellite Science Fiction Magazine, and Mike Shayne Mystery Magazine. The letters that he wrote to August Derleth reveal a beleaguered man always on the brink of disaster, frantic for cash and ecstatic with relief whenever a check arrived in time to forestall eviction. They are the story of the man behind the pulps who outlived his friends, the struggling visionary coping with prodigious literary talent and personal limitations in a world determined by economic and social status.
August Derleth founded Arkham House with Donald Wandrei in Sauk City, Wisconsin, in 1939 in order to publish hardcover editions of Lovecraft’s work and other weird fiction: during Lovecraft’s lifetime, much of his work had been published in the pulp magazines Weird Tales and Argosy and in amateur press magazines, but not by mainstream pub-[page 173]lishing houses, and many additional stories had never been published. Desiring to preserve, and capitalize on, their friend’s work after Lovecraft’s death in 1937, Derleth and Wandrei convinced Lovecraft’s literary executor Robert H. Barlow to turn the manuscripts over to them for publication. Long supported their intentions, writing to Derleth:
You are of course the man to do full justice to his literary memory. I have written to Barlow, urging him to tender his fullest cooperation, and that you will have my cooperation goes without saying
I shall write at more length in a few days. Just now I’m too utterly heartsick to discuss such matters as the chronology of his stories, his own preferences etc., but we’ll get to that in good time. (Letter dated March 24, 1937)
After Lovecraft died, Long developed a close relationship with Derleth, calling him as close a friend as Lovecraft had been:
Howard was the only person I’ve ever known who hadn’t a self-seeking side to his nature, who was utterly disinterested in his art and a true, loyal friend in a sense that is rare nowadays. It seems as though this greatness in him has been fully requited by you and Donald – for the same quality which set him apart from the common run of men, and even the rare few capable of occasional generosities, has been displayed by you in the service you have rendered his memory and genius. (Letter dated February 17, 1940)
The letters are largely concerned with Long’s publications. Arkham House was generating anthologies and single-author collections, and Long would suggest stories of his for inclusion, making recommendations based on which stories he liked the best, which were most likely to get critical attention, and which had had good reviews in the past (for example, “The Flame Midget” and “The Dark Beast”). Long, however, was neither organized nor efficient, and he frequently wrote that he was hunting for the manuscripts and tear sheets. When [page 174] hard copies were not to be found within his own files, he would write to friends for copies. Similarly, he seldom had the publication information that Derleth had requested at hand. On June 16, 1944, in a letter which includes his “list of stories I’d most like to see preserved” in his Arkham House collection The Hounds of Tindalos, he wrote:
Well, I’ve been through my files from A to Z and the one story I couldn’t find was The Black Druid. I’ve even got the second half from The Horror from the Hills and there’s a manuscript carbon of the first half hidden away somewhere which I may be able to find if I keep on searching. Out of 75 tear sheets in my readily accessible files the Druid had to be missing!
As of September 1, 1944, he was still trying to locate some of his stories:
Unknown has seemingly become a collector’s item here, and my search of the used magazine stalls failed to yield a single copy of the numbers containing my stories. But fortunately I believe you have all of the missing items – The Man from Nowhere (June ’40) [here, a pencil line leads to the bottom of the page, where Long has added “And Step into My Garden”] which you tell me you have, and another little story which I like very much and forgot to list before – The Refugees – in one of the 1941 issues, or early in 1942. I could’t find To Follow Knowledge, in Astounding for Dec. ’42, but Koenig has it, and he is sending it to you under separate cover. I promised him you’d return it when the typescript has been made.
He added a postscript: “Oh, yes – I can’t seem to find the October 1938 Thrilling Wonder, containing Mind out of Time. That one may have to be written off – I’m not listing it.” These refrains of missing documents are repeated in many of the letters. On December 31, 1944, he was still trying to locate “Mind Out of Time” because “Leo [Margulies, an editor of Thrilling Wonder Stories magazine] will run an ad for the book if this story is included” but “of course he can’t [run an [page 175] advertisement] if the book doesn’t contain a single [Thrilling Wonder] story.” In an undated letter with “[1944]” written in pencil at the bottom, he wrote, “the Standard editors – and fans – are going to be a little puzzled if T. W3 isn’t even mentioned in the copyright listings.” Finally, in a postcard dated only “Tuesday,” Long wrote, “Unger is sending you Mind Out of Time – you should receive it by Feb. 11, at the latest.” In response to Derleth’s request for an author-title list with publication information, Long stated in the undated 1944 letter that he does not have “anything like complete data at my disposal.”
Trying to come up with jacket blurbs for his collection, Long cited a commendation of his work by Arthur Machen, but he could not find Machen’s letter and suggested that Derleth use an article written by Lovecraft in praise of Long’s work in United Amateur, the official magazine of the United Amateur Press Association. A letter dated May 31 (no year), notable for a partial inky fingerprint, contains the information that Long has “searched my files and can’t seem to locate the carbon of that biographical sketch I sent to Standaard about a month ago.” On April 11, 1946, he wrote that he cannot locate the manuscript for a poem that they wish to include in his collection, but:
My only consolation is that no vital matter has been left unresolved if you simply went ahead and included that sonnet I sent you without a copyright listing. I couldn’t have sent you the Goblin Tower, because I haven’t a complete copy – merely a few tear sheets. I’m not sure I made it plain that the collection was made up entirely of my own poems. Barlow copyrighted it under his own name in Florida in 1935 – Dragon Fly Press, Cassia, Florida – Copyright 1935 by R. H. Barlow. The “Gods are dead” sonnet may have appeared in the amateur press – I can’t remember. But I know that it was never published in a professional poetry magazine and though Barlow technically holds the copyright I can’t imagine him objecting to its [page 176] inclusion in the Farrar and Rinehart anthology. Can you? He certainly wouldn’t object, I’m sure. And as he and Howard surprised me with a complete edition of the book upon publication, and never even told me they were putting the collection together that would leave a technical out anyway. The collection contained about thirty poems.
Long could seldom remember the terms of the contracts, such as what rights he had signed away to a publisher. The undated letter with “[1944]” penciled at bottom states,
Koenig tells me he is sending The Dark Beasts to you posthaste as suggested, and you should have it by now. I feel it’s a grim, gripping, realistic little piece, and would like to see it included, but if Crawford is going to kick up a fuss, or there might be complications later on I’m all for not including it. Incidentally, though, he’d have a helluva nerve to claim he bought all the rights, since all I got in exchange was a promise of a life’s subscription to Marvel Tales which didn’t materialize. He didn’t even send me the third issue and I believe there were five or six issues.
In a letter dated Friday, November 24 (no year), he wrote:
Don’t imagine for a moment I got a big kick out of selling all rights – but a thong-bound writer in a jungle kraal sometimes has very little choice in such matters. They didn’t buy all rights before 1943 – I’m quite sure of that. I do deserve a kick in the sitting down place for not keeping a record of just when the new stipulation began appearing on the checks. I’m quite sure I did not sell all the rights to more than three two or four three of these stories. If an issue should develop you could inquire about this – I imagine it might be important later on, in the disposal of radio, and (dream!) screen rights. What happens to the alligator-skin book rights?
In a letter dated only “Friday,” he wrote of his confusion regarding the terms of a contract with Street and Smith: he was unsure if they had purchased serial rights but knew that [page 177] they had increased their author payments in order to secure all future rights.
The letters are equally concerned with Long’s difficulty in paying his bills. The majority of the letters open with a request for money: Long might ask how sales were going, as a lead in to hints about his next royalty check, or he might ask for an advance or a royalty payment; sometimes, he would ask for a loan. In a letter dated simply “Wednesday,” he wrote,
I’ve had an unprecedented series of bad breaks during the past month, including a siege of family illness which has completely depleted by finances and left me with my back to the wall with a vengeance. It may well be the end of the trail for me. I’ve been trying to get off two stories which I’ve been working on in spurts for a fortnight, but when I’m seriously worried I find that my writing has a tendency to bog down. I secured an advance from Standard on one of the stories, and don’t like to ask them to advance me another fifty bucks until I can at least shoot through to them the long novelette I’ve been groaning over for the past five days. And the only other market I can depend on for a quick check is Astounding, and Campbell as you know, is fussy as hell. So that means I can’t depend on it.
On November 28, 1939, he wrote:
It was inexcusable of me to have so long delayed sending you a remittance for Howard’s book. But I was down to bed rock financially, and used the usual self justification, to wit, that I intended to buy the book eventually, no doubt of that at all, so why not wait until another check came in?
Yesterday, I was gloomily deciding to send you a remittance anyway, even though my bank account was approaching annihilation with the speed of light, when I received 2 rather large checks simultaneously, and now feel like a plutocrat again. It won’t last, of course, [page 178] but for a few days I can at least enjoy the sensation of having a little in reserve to fall back on.
And on February 28, 1948, he asked
if it would be possible for you to send me a forty-buck advance on either I – Coming royalties on The Hounds or 2 – an advance on the “World of Wulkins” . . . I can reasonably count on another forty bucks from another source within the next few days. That, together with an Arkham advance and what remains of my dwindling bank balance should enable me to hold out for about three weeks. And I desperately need that much time to write some new stories or make another comic book connection.
A letter dated April 12, 1950, opens with Long’s gratitude:
That anthology check was welcome, indeed, as I’ve had some heavy medical expenses to meet, and my bank balance has been hovering close to the zero mark for several weeks . . . My financial situation at the end of January was so acute that I expected to be wheeled out into the street to die.
The above was written more than a decade before Long married Lyda Arco in 1960, but in a letter dated July 20 (no year), Long blamed his wife for his poverty: “I’m virtually broke. Never marry a reckless and extravagant girl, unless you love her very much.” On November 24, 1967, he thanked Derleth for the Famous Monster Tales check: “Modest as the sum was, it enabled me to pay an over-due electric light bill in time to avoid a dunning threat from Consolidated Edison.”
On December 21 of the same year, he sought a loan:
if I don’t raise about fifty bucks by the middle of next week I shall be facing eviction proceedings. So I’ve been wondering if you could send me fifteen or twenty dollars solely as a loan – not an advance on future sales or anything of the sort – simply a third of what I’ll need with the absolute guarantee you will get it back within a fortnight. I’ve some assured dough coming in after the first of the year. There are two other friends I’m [page 179] writing to, and all I really have to do is raise fifty to cover the remainder of the rent . . . Two of Lyda’s friends she can usually depend on for small loans are in Europe and another is not in a position to loan her more than 100, which she did about two weeks ago, and now has unexpected medical expenses to meet. . . Leo won’t buy another story from me – he’s overstocked . . . A vanity press I’ve been doing some copy editing for has just gone into bankruptcy. . .
By this time, Long has been complaining about his financial distress for at least thirty years.
In light of publishers’ changing terms and a tightened market, Long was frustrated by his inability to live comfortably on his writing: “If I had a fighting chance to make a decent living at any other occupation on terms of reasonable dignity I’d give up professional writing forever,” he wrote in 1951 (Letter dated March 21, 1951). Stapled to this letter is one written on Arkham House stationery by Derleth in which he counsels Long,
I admit that if I were an author so victimized, I would instantly stop writing for such a market, or sell to them only on a clear understanding that they were buying only first NA serial rights, and would assign copyright to me immediately after publication. I never sign checks for stories which specify anything but limited rights.
In the letter of July 16, 1952, Long is experiencing an existential depression because of his inability to live on his art:
An increasing sense of bitterness against the rewards of creative effort being so gnatlike in dimensions, so completely at variance with the creative mind’s contribution to society – may have had something to do with it. For quite a while nothing has mattered to me except money. You can’t debase the currency of the mind without becoming indifferent to every human value above the level of the jungle, and that I have done deliberately – out of an immense weariness and an [page 180] immense despair. I have not lost my anger, however, which is good.
I am living in old Chelsea, on a block which is a delightful little island of old houses and garden patches in a vast surrounding slum. Directly below me there lives a Western story writer who, in one week, appeared on Martha Dean’s program, Luncheon at Sardi’s, Lucheon with the Fitzgeralds on TV, and three book review programs. He also received long splendid reviews in the Times and Saturday Review etc. He is about to starve to death.
I have to lend him money – which I can ill – afford to do – to keep him alive.
Atop this page is a scrawled in pencil “File New Long Address,” a directive which could have been written either by Derleth or by the archivist.
“File New Long Address” appears many more times throughout the correspondence, almost every time Long changed his address. Early letters, for example one dated November 28, 1939, bore the return address of “230 West 97 Street, New York, N.Y.,” while the letters dated July 12, 1941, and February 28, 1948, are from “37-49 85 Street, Jackson Heights, N.Y.”3 The July 16, 1952, letter quoted above is addressed from “469 West 21 Street, New York II, N.Y.” but on October 14, 1952, Long gave Derleth the new address of “121 East 37 Street, New York 16, N.Y.” One with the address “Care Morrisey, 58-06 43 Avenue, Woodside, N. Y.” (Letter dated March 31, 1953) dates from when Long was subletting an apartment, and a letter dated October 4, 1956, has the address “33-52 39 Avenue, Flushing 54, N.Y.” A letter dated February 5, with “Long, F @ 2-5-54” written in pencil, states, “I’ve moved again – incredible as it may seem. My new address is as follows: 41 – II Case Street, Elmhurst, L.I., N. Y.” and “50-05 Junction Blvd., Elmhurst 73, N. Y. (Care Morse)” is the return address on a letter dated December 3, 1956. On March 19, 1958, Long was living at “37-17 71 Street, Jackson Heights 72, [page 181] N. Y.” and, on October 12, 1958, he wrote from “155 State Street, Brooklyn, N. Y.” January 2, 1962, saw him living at “421 West 21 Street, New York II, N.Y.” Strangely enough, though, letters from August and October, 1942, place him in San Diego, California, while in June of 1943 he is in White Water, California.
Long, ever struggling to pay the rent, was always on the lookout for cheaper lodgings, even moving in with friends from time to time, writing as fast as he could to keep pace with the bills. He offers many excuses for his inability to write enough to live on. “The last day of the worst year yet” (Letter with “[1944]” penciled in), he wrote that he could not get started on his Preface:
When I wrote you that I’d very much like to do a preface for The Hounds of T[indalos]. I must have been just entering the exalted stage of my manic-depressive cycle. Now I’m on the downswing. I can’t seem to get started . . . If the readers are curious about me they’ll find an abundance of psychiatric material in the stories.
He frequently cited “distractions”:
I intended to rush a couple of final proof-changes through to you before Mar. I, which you indicated was to be the deadline for that sort of thing. But I tried to include a fairly long letter with the changes, and it bogged down in the machine, as letters occasionally do when I’m subjected to a running barrage of distractions from several directions.
Now you’ll probably be cussing me out all over the lot for sending you emendations which will have to be made in the galleys – if at all. (Letter dated March 18, 1945)
From time to time, he would resolve to work harder:
I’m at a crucial period, standing off a bit and taking stock, and preparing to release unbelievable energies in several directions. I’m going to hold myself to a rigid schedule of production. If I can stay in the comic book [page 182] field and crash a slick now and then I’ll be sitting pretty. (Letter dated February 28, no year)
It seems never to have occurred to him to get a regular job:
I have never seriously worried about merely keeping F. B. L. afloat – there are plenty of places where one can survive indefinitely on a few hundred berries, artist colonies in Mexico and off the Florida Keys etc., but I have my mother to think about and can’t just hop a train “no matter where it’s going.” (Letter dated July 12, 1941)
Long’s economic fortunes wax and wane with the vicissitudes of the publishing industry. Arkham House was founded on H. P. Lovecraft’s legacy at a time when the horror market exploded. For a period, the sale of slim, inexpensive books greatly eclipsed those of hardcover titles, but then the paperback market became glutted. Long took to writing comic book stories for another source of revenue–they could not arrive on the newsstands fast enough in their heyday–but when sales took a downturn, Long found himself laid off from one of the few regular jobs he had held.
Although Long was dependent upon freelance writing, on July 12, 1941, he wrote that he was doing well:
I’ve never written and sold so many stories – Unknown has six, Astounding three, Thrilling Wonder four, Comet one, Planet Stories two, Astonishing two and I’ve a dozen detective yarns coming up in miscellaneous mystery books – but the remuneration seems to vanish before I can bolster up my bank balance and throw off a sense of strain and apprehension, and I often ask myself if the game is worth the candle.
In a letter dated October 27, 1942, from San Diego, he boasted of the salubrious effect on book publishing of the wartime economy, and on December 30, he wrote, “The N.Y.T. Book Review had 64 pages nearly all ads on 12/13, but only 16 pages on 12/20.” The stars are right, it seems: [page 183]
The present epidemic of pocket-bookitis and the sudden upswing of popular interest in the weird made me feel that possibly a collection would stand a better chance now than in the old days (The Horror from the Hills seems a “natural” for pocket-book publication – though it should be longer.) (Letter dated June 16, 1944)
Yet, in a letter dated simply “Wednesday,” he cited the wartime paper shortage as the reason for the dearth of magazines on the newsstands, stating that editors had become more selective and that it was no longer a “writer’s market.”
On October 4, 1956, he wrote, “I’ve been submerged in an editorial post for 2 ½ years, but have just returned to freelancing and have just moved again.” As per a letter dated October 12, 1956, he had been an editor of The Saint Mystery Magazine and Fantastic Universe, a position which had required him to do heavy revision of bad writing by well-known authors, including a Pulitzer Prize winner. In a letter dated “July 20” with a return address of “Care General Delivery, Short Beach, Conn”–the year is probably 1960, because in the letter he stated that Lyda, whom he had married that year, had taken a cottage at Short Beach called “The Pink Elephant”–he wrote that some of the phrases he used in “Horror from the Hills,” which would be published by Arkham House in 1962, “were a little highfalutin, over-ornate, stilted and old-fashioned – at least they would seem old-fashioned in 1960.” He was doing well: finishing an Ellery Queen, Jr., novel, a mystery novel, an X-rated science fiction novel, and another science fiction novel; Random House had used his story “Second Night Out” in an Alfred Hitchcock anthology.
Among the letters are two statements from the Museum Press in London regarding sales of their edition of The Hounds of Tindalos. Long complained to Derleth about the double taxation on his royalties (U.S. and U.K.), as British book sales in the U.S. were not twice taxed. The statement of July 1, 1952, puts “Remainder Sales. . . Below Cost” at 1,052 copies. On January 2, 1953, Long wrote, “I’ve ended the year reasonably [page 184] solvent because science fiction has reached such a peak of popularity that my problem is simply one of turning out the stuff on a rigorous schedule.” Columbia Pictures had purchased his title “The Lost Planet” —but only the title—for $150, “the highest word rate paid an American writer!”
Wartime paper shortages and the wartime economic boom affected publishing, but so, at war’s end, did the Atom Bomb. In an undated letter, Long wrote, “The atom bomb has given a tremendous boost to science fiction,” especially to Crown Publishers’ science fiction anthology, which has taken a full-page ad in the New York Times: “They played up the atom bomb and radar contact with the moon angle.” On April 11, 1946, he apologizes for not getting Derleth a promised copy of “Feb. Astounding. A new crop of young science fiction fans – just xxxx out of the army – have descended on the used magazine stalls – all of them – and bought up every available copy. I conducted a quite elaborate search – in vain!”
In the undated letter in which he wrote of the influence of the atom bomb upon science fiction, he reported that he is getting good at pumping out comic book stories; on June 16, 1944, in the margin above the main body of his letter, he asked Derleth: “Did I ever tell you I wrote comic book stories for Superman and Fawcett4 last winter?” But, on February 25, 1948, he wrote that comic books had stopped buying stories, and on November 3, 1948, he wrote ominously of “recent attacks on comic books.”5 For a time, he even had “an editorial post with Fiction House – more strictly, a staff-writing post, on the comics. It’s a tremendous break” (Letter dated January 12, 1952); he told Derleth, “Right now, I’m making enough on comic book sales to keep the wolves at bay” (Letter dated July 16, 1952). Unfortunately, he later offered the dismal news that he had been laid off from his comics job at Cinema, which provided material for Standard Comics (Letter dated November 6, no year).6 The postwar boom had not led to the anticipated demand. He would have to return to freelancing. [page 185]
Frank Belknap Long’s correspondence is not only about the business of writing. He often wrote of H. P. Lovecraft, both as a friend and as a posthumously famous writer. The oldest dated document in the collection is a brief letter dated March 24, 1937, in which Long mourned the passing of Lovecraft days before, on March 15:
I would have written sooner, but Howard’s passing was such a terrible blow to me that I couldn’t think clearly. I can’t seem to fully realize even now that he isn’t still with us. He seemed somehow as permanent and immutable as the ancient hill he loved so well. He was my best and oldest friend.
He reiterated, in a postcard postmarked July 11, 1937, how distraught he was over Lovecraft’s death:
Howard’s death depresses me so that I can hardly bear to think about it & must even now. But I thought you ought to know that I’ve probably the most extensive collection of Lovecraft’s letters in existence – at least 2000 epistles and 300 pages in length and going back to 1918.
He wrote of his grief again on July 12, 1941:
I’ve never written better stories, despite a pronounced morbidity of outlook stemming from social bitterness, the realization that I am growing old, and a sense of bereavement which time is supposed to alleviate, but has not somehow.
Over an extended period, Derleth requested that Long write a memoir of H. P. Lovecraft—whose fame skyrocketed after his death—first for inclusion in a 1939 omnibus of Lovecraft’s fiction titled The Outsider and Others. On May 6, 1944, Long wrote that he was happy to contribute; in an undated letter, he promised to send the memoir by May 20, while on June 16, 1944, he stated that he would have it completed by July 1. His plan was to write it as a series of letters from an imaginary correspondent. On a “Monday” (an otherwise undated letter), he wrote that he has sent his memoir and a “head and [page 186] shoulders photograph” but had abandoned the imaginary correspondent conceit. We have already observed Long’s predilection for procrastination, and it was not until 1975 that Dreamer on the Nightside, Long’s full-length, informal, and affectionate memoir of his old friend, was published, written in response to L. Sprague de Camp’s error-riddled 1975 biography of Lovecraft.
On October 12, 1958, Long wrote of walking near Lovecraft’s New York apartment at 169 Clinton Street. On July 3 (no year), he wrote of not being able to find Lovecraft’s “cat article,” “Cats and Dogs” (1926): “I remember distinctly reproaching Howard for keeping it a deep, dark secret about fourteen years ago (I believe he wrote it about 1925) I heard about it indirectly, precisely as you’re hearing about it now, and – he sent it to me by return mail. . . The article assuredly should be preserved, and I’m hoping that it will turn up eventually somewhere.” He reminisces in an undated letter about Lovecraft’s famous wedding night, on which Lovecraft lost the manuscript of “Tomb of the Pharaohs” (which he had ghost-written for illusionist and escape artist Harry Houdini). The newlyweds were obliged to spend the whole night retyping it, and “Sonia was fit to be tied sitting up all night on their wedding night watching him labor over a second version.” In a letter dated April 12 and sent from West 97th Street, so probably circa 1939, he tells of sending Lovecraft’s aunt, Annie Gamwell,7 flowers on the anniversary of his death: Donald Wandrei, James Morton, Arthur Koenig, Wilfred Talman, and himself had each donated a dollar toward it, and would Derleth like to donate, too?
There are two or three letters from Derleth to Long in this packet, each stapled to the appropriate Long letter. On October 19, 1951, Derleth offers his condolences on Long’s mother’s death by invoking Lovecraft:
I wish I could take HPL’s place for the moment and write you in the wonderfully sympathetic way in which he could write of these times in life when we are brought face to face with the inevitable change, much-[page 187]ahorr’d, as perhaps he would have put it. . . Understandably, the creative impulse is at a low ebb now, but my dear friend, consider that in it lies ultimately the very balm you need at this time.
The topic of Lovecraft’s posthumous ascension to literary prominence arose from time to time as well. On February 9 (“1940’s” penciled in), Long noted the rising value of early issues of Weird Tales. He exclaimed over the 100,000 copies, plus 80,000 overseas copies, of a volume of Lovecraft’s work issued by the World Publishing Company in his letter of June 16, 1944. The same letter mentioned an article on Lovecraft written by Winfield Scott, Literary Editor of the Providence Journal; the Innsmouth Pocket Book reprint; and the “middle-aged spinster literary tea following” that Lovecraft had accrued in his hometown of Providence, Rhode Island: “That is something he would have enjoyed coming back to see, I think – though he might have done a little quiet cussing.” On May 31 (no year), he expressed satisfaction that Winfield Scott was seeking information on Lovecraft’s New York years, suggesting that it was high time that the man had recognition in his hometown. On November 6 (no year), he was happy to report that “The Dunwich Horror,” featuring matinee idol Ronald Colman, had been presented on an NBC national radio program, but he seemed wary of the new (and suspect) Lovecraft profile by John Hudnall Wilstach which had appeared in Esquire magazine in 1947: in an unnumbered page separated from a letter, he wrote,
That Esquire H. P. L. article left me a little stunned! In all the years I knew Howard he never mentioned the guy – and Howard usually mentioned people, even when they got in his hair. Aprocrypha of a knave’s character is the only possible verdict.
On April 9, 1960, he wrote that the editor of New Frontiers had requested an essay based on the talk he would be giving on Lovecraft at PittCon (the 18th World Science Fiction Convention, held in Pittsburgh that year) and, on January 2, 1962, he sent a photo of himself giving that talk. [page 188]
Long wrote often of the “old gang” of Lovecraft’s satellites, the Kalem Club and other literary friends, many of whom survived Lovecraft by many years. On November 28, 1939, he wrote that he was planning a December 7 get-together of the old gang and encouraged Derleth to bring his business partner Donald Wandrei with him; a decade later, he informed Derleth, who was seeking contributions for his new scholarly magazine, Arkham Sampler, that Samuel E. Loveman can be reached at his Bodley Bookshop, 104 5th Avenue (Letter dated February 15, 1948). In an undated letter, he wrote that Arthur Leeds had a stroke and was suffering right-sided paralysis; Leeds was living in an eight by twelve room in the slums, and
memories of the Lovecraft circle comprised the major part of his emotional life, and are about all he has left. Howard thought as much of Arthur as he did of James F. Morton, and I know he would have been immeasurably grieved by his plight.
He asked Derleth to send Leeds some Arkham House books, and on April 1, he wrote that Leeds was delighted with the books that Derleth sent him. “The old H. P. L. circle is narrowing rapidly,” he wrote mournfully on November 29 (no year) upon the passing of Arthur Leeds.8 In this letter, he also wrote of seeing Donald Wandrei at a party (and says that Wandrei is working on Superman); they spoke of Lovecraftian friends’ recent books, Henry Kuttner’s The Day He Died and Robert Bloch’s Scarf. He wondered how much Leeds’s sister should get for a now sought-after copy of The Outsider. On October 12, 1956, reflecting on the death of Howard Wandrei following a long and painful illness, he philosophized that, as we change over the years, we remain “our youthful selves.” On August 28 (no year), Long wrote that Sonia, Lovecraft’s wife, whom he says is approximately 65 now, had dropped in. Long had not seen her since his early twenties. Her second husband of ten years, a professor, had died two years previously, and she was in New York City to attend a niece’s wedding. Long [page 189] expresses his utter disbelief that she was unaware of Lovecraft’s growing fame: “Her not knowing rather stunned me.”
Long corrected some of Derleth’s misconceptions about Lovecraft in his letter of January 2 (“1940’s” in pencil). He had been sending Derleth’s manuscript around to Lovecraft’s friends, he said–Henry Kuttner, Herman Charles Koenig, Catherine L. Moore, William Paul Cook, Robert Bloch—and he reported:
I liked that memoir very much. I thought it a well-rounded and moving tribute and appraisal, and only wish that Howard could have been on the circulation list. Perhaps it some elusive way he’ll know somehow.
In the matter of suggestions and emendations – you mention Howard’s habit of pulling down the shades and working by lamplight all night. I’m not sure he reverted to earlier habit patterns to quite the extent that you imply. I visited him in Providence in 1933 (I think it was 1933) and got the impression that his daily routine had been influenced to a considerable extent by his N. Y. days and subsequent travels. He was never again quite the hermit that he was in the 1915-1922 period. He went out more, for instance, attended Brown University lectures with Mrs. Gamwell, saw his Providence friends often (the Eddy’s, Brobst etc.) and was quite a “day about” person when young Sterling and his parents visited him at 66 College Street just before the last, fatal illness. A minor matter – but I thought I’d better set down my impressions for the record.
Personal matters—outside the realm of making literature and all things Lovecraftian—appear sporadically within this correspondence of three decades. In 1942, Long was living in California, and a long and very gossipy letter written on October 27, 1942, covered a lot of ground: he expressed his interest in what presidential candidate Wendell Wilkie has to say; he enclosed a clipping about blue-jays which would be of [page 190] interest to Derleth; and he expounded upon dive-bombing birds that he had observed. Birds “snatching the hair off the heads of humans . . . reminds [him] of a friend,” a prospector named Penzig who slept in abandoned mines in California and whose hair was snatched off by field mice. For several months, Long explained, he worked with Penzig clearing a campsite in the redwoods of the Santa Clara mountains. They slept in a ramshackle hut, and Penzig was fond of shooting rats all night. Ultimately, Penzig was jailed for selling moonshine, but the sheriff gave him a key to the jail and allowed him to come and go.
This was wartime, and Long told Derleth that he was rejected by the army “because of [his] ears and eyes” (Letter of August 30, 1942). He now had a new vacuum tube hearing aid and new glasses, and he found out that he had previously only been able to see about “50%” of the world. The draft was in full force, and the army was reclassifying medical categories so that more men could join. Long talked about a book that he was reading, a new “multicultural” novel, Lance by Edward F. Haskell (1941), which he had borrowed from the library. He wished Derleth luck if he were drafted.
On December 6, 1942, Long was in San Diego. His nephew was in the army, and Long was asking friends to send the lad postcards from fictitious people (“dames mostly”) from all around the country; perhaps this would make a good wartime story, he wrote in an aside. He enclosed clippings of comics for Derleth’s “funnies collection.” He had joined the Book of the Month Club. On December 30, he reminisced about bulltop sleds, the racing of which down the steep city streets was a tradition in his hometown; they were long sleds, he explained, holding thirty to forty people, and there were a lot of accidents. He talked of the meat shortage and the stray dogs who were not getting their scraps; there was a shortage of eggs and butter, too. He inquired whether Derleth has heard from Selective Service.
On June 2, 1943, he wrote from a mailing address in White Water, California, but he was living in Twentynine Palms, [page 191] California, working as a janitor and doing building maintenance for the Twentynine Palms Air Academy, a private school contracted to the army.9 The Krazy Kat comics that Derleth liked, he reported, were not to be found in the Los Angeles Examiner, and he had met “the woman he has been waiting for.” She was not, however, identified.
On July 16, 1952, with a return address of West 21st Street in New York, he wrote cryptically once more, withholding details of the break-up of a “romance.” On May 31, 1953, Long reported falling in love with a woman whom he had known for fifteen years and with whom he had been reunited by circumstance: “I have been dictating my stories recently and find that it stimulates me tremendously and may increase my production considerably. Writing is a lonely job and it helps to have a woman present.” On October 12, 1956, he writes from Flushing, New York, “I’d have married five years ago if I hadn’t become involved in one of those hopeless love affairs you read about in Hemmingway.” March 19, 1958, found him distraught over the death of Marion, a woman whom he had loved “dearly and who loved me in return.” He groaned that he was all alone without love: “It has really flattened me out, not only overwhelming me with grief but filling me with a kind of fright – that hollow, constricted feeling in the chest you get when something seems so bad that you don’t know how you can stand it.” He said that he would have to keep busy visiting friends to assuage his grief; he also stated that he came across his story in a Space and Time pocket book and asked if he has any royalties due him. He moved to State Street in Brooklyn, explaining that there were too many Marion memories in Queens (Letter dated October 12, 1958).
In a letter written in longhand on April 9, 1960, Long told Derleth that he had injured his arm three weeks before typing six thousand words a day with one finger. He pondered several possible diagnoses but did not go to a doctor. He missed Marion every day. He had been invited by Dirce Archer, the head of the Pittsburgh science fiction group, to talk about Lovecraft at PittCon. He continued: [page 192]
H. P. L. would have found in Dirce’s husband a perfect representative of an English gentleman of the old school – a man with an open-hearted friendliness, dignity and distinction of aspect rare in this age. I told Dirce that Howard would have esteemed his friendship highly – as I did – and she seemed quite pleased.
On April 15, 1960, he wrote, again in longhand, an extensive account of a Poetry Recital at the National Arts Club and of how the Establishment had turned away Village and Beatnik types who did not wear ties. On January 2, 1962, Long sent Derleth a photograph of his wife Lyda and asked him to return it. On October 26, 1963, Lyda fell and broke her hip. On May 2, 1967, Long enclosed a clipping from the New York Post that highlighted Lyda’s acting career; she was 58. The article stated that they expected sixty guests in their apartment for a performance of Chekhov’s The Cherry Orchard. Lyda came from eight generations of Yiddish actors, the article explained, noting also that she’d had polio, had fallen and broken her hip three years previously, and had then broken her other leg. On July 13, 1969, Long reported churning out paperback novels for Lancer Gothic novels; his pseudonym was “Lyda Belknap Long.” He complained that Lyda was “extravagant.”
By this time, one of Long’s stories was on television and fans mobbed him at an event; by the 1960’s, he knew that he was famous enough: “I seem to have acquired across the years a subterranean kind of fame which should be very gratifying to my ego. But it isn’t exactly – perhaps because I allow myself to brood too much over the smallness of my income across the years” (Letter of October 12, 1956).
This overstuffed envelope of letters offers insights into Frank Belknap Long’s writing and personal life and is a potential source for Lovecraftians in search of references to the state of the publishing industry at various periods in the twentieth century and the impact of World War II and the Space Race on American life and business. On a more personal level, Long reveals himself to be a man always on the edge of ruin. With a [page 193] flash of insight, on November 3, 1948, he penned this reply to Derleth:
You’re right, of course, but if one is a worrier by temperament, if the folly is largely a matter of ingrained neural responses to the slings of outrageous fortune – just try and stop worrying! Your cool attitude in the face of the burden you mention I found extremely bracing – in fact, your letters made me feel pretty damned good. Like when you say the guy next door fell out of the window, and you feel glad to be alive.
Long always seemed to be at a loss to provide for his basic needs, yet he wrote. And wrote. And wrote. And much of what he wrote is of an enduring quality. He was a pioneer in science fiction and weird fiction. He adapted his writing to the conditions of the market, producing what people wanted to buy. He would not learn another way of living, despite the fact that he lived from sale to sale, always facing the possibility of hunger and homelessness. As he himself wrote, “If the readers are curious about me they’ll find an abundance of psychiatric material in the stories.”
Notes
1. An “old security measure” to prevent patrons from passing off photocopies as original documents, per Jennifer Barth of the Wisconsin Historical Society (“Attn: Jennifer”).
2. Long scholar Perry Grayson, whose Tsathoggua Press has published collections of Long’s work, writes:
The John Hay Library at Brown University in Providence houses not only the biggest collection of Lovecraft mss., letters, books, mags and ephemera, but also an astonishing amount of Long’s letters to/from HPL. The John Hay also has some letters from FBL to other members of the Lovecraft circle, including Alfred Galpin, Samuel Loveman and also some letters from Belknapius’ [Lovecraft’s name for Long] mother (May Doty Long). . . . There are a few FBL mss. hidden away in the archives of magazine editor/publisher Leo [page 194] Margulies at the University of Oregon. Unfortunately the Margulies papers are missing over a decade worth of Standard pulp mags material, which would’ve been a monumental treasure trove. If only they had survived! There would’ve been dozens of Belknapius’ story mss. But, no, Standard Magazines destroyed their files, and we’re left only with the files from the Renown Publications digest mag era of the 1950s through the 1970s (“FBL Archives”).
Additionally, Hippocampus Press has recently issued the complete correspondence between Lovecraft and Long (A Sense of Proportion: The Letters of H. P. Lovecraft and Frank Belknap Long, edited by David E. Schultz and S. T. Joshi, 2025).
3. In a letter he wrote to Donald Wandrei, dated November 3, 1951, Long writes: “I’m staying at present with Ellen and Ora Fay Kline in Short Beach. As you probably know, Otis Kline passed away five years ago, and Ellen has been having quite a struggle. My coming here has helped, and the arrangement may prove so mutually satisfactory that I may decide to stay all winter, or even longer.”
4. Perry Grayson has informed me that Long wrote the “entire first issue of the pre-EC (and pre-comic code) horror comic book Adventures into the Unknown in 1948” (“Belknapius”).
5. The Comic Code Authority was a set of voluntary rules adopted in 1954 by some publishers of comic books to prevent government regulation of their content. At the time, social pundits were claiming that depictions of violence and horror in comic books led to juvenile delinquency. Comic book burnings were held around the country, and some retailers would not carry comic books which lacked the CCA Seal of Approval. The code even forbade the use of “horror” or “terror” in the title of a comic book (“Comic Book Code”).
6. In 1954, Fawcett, which owned Captain Marvel, dropped its comic book line and furloughed its employees. Charlton [page 195] Comics Group acquired their material; Standard Comics went under in 1956 (Cooke 64).
7. On July 12, 1941, Long wrote that “it was quite a shock to encounter that reference to Mrs. Gamwells ‘estate’ in your letter. I suppose that it can only mean that she has passed on . . . It is very sad news, for she was a living link to an older 66 College Street, and a very kindly and lovable person.”
8. The H. P. Lovecraft Archive has “1952?” as the year of Leeds’s death (“Friends and Acquaintances”).
9. Perry Grayson kindly elucidated this plot twist: Long, he writes, was working as a janitor in California in lieu of being deployed overseas because of his health problems (“Belknapius”).
Works Cited
Barth, Jennifer. “Attn: Jennifer Garty – [WHSArch #498595].” Received by Katherine Kerestman, 22 Nov. 2024.
“Comic Book Code of 1954.” Wikisource, en.wikisource. org/wiki/Comic_book_code_of_1954.
Cooke, Jon B. The Charlton Companion. Two Morrows Publishing, 2022.
“Friends and Acquaintances.” The H. P. Lovecraft Archive. hplovecraft.com/life/friends.aspx. Accessed 1 Apr. 2025.
Grayson, Perry. “FBL Archives.” Received by Katherine Kerestman, 16 July 2025.
---. “Belknapius.” Received by Katherine Kerestman, 24 Nov. 2024.
Long, Frank Belknap. Correspondence. August William Derleth Papers, Box 32, Folders 2-3. Wisconsin Historical Society.
---. Correspondence. Donald Wandrei and family papers, Box 2. Minnesota Historical Society.
Katherine Kerestman earned a B.A. in English and History from John Carroll University and an M.A. in English from Case Western Reserve University. She is the author of Cultes des Goules (2025), Creepy Cat's Macabre Travels: Prowling around Haunted Towers, Crumbling Castles, and Ghoulish Graveyards (2020), and Haunted House and Other Strange Tales (2024), as well as the editor, with S. T. Joshi, of The Weird Cat (2023), Shunned Houses: An Anthology of Weird [page 196] Stories, Unspeakable Poems, and Impious Essays (2024), and Witches and Witchcraft (2025). Additionally, she has published more than 90 works, including gothic and Lovecraftian short stories, poems, and articles for both mass media and academic publications; her website is www. CreepyCatLair.com.
MLA citation (print):
Kerestman, Katherine. "Reading over Derleth’s Shoulder: The Letters of Frank Belknap Long to August Derleth, circa 1937-1969." Supernatural Studies: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Art, Media, and Culture, vol. 11, no. 1, 2026, pp. 171-196.