The Spirit of Revision: Lovecraft’s Letters to Zealia Brown Reed Bishop

The discovery in 2014 of a cache of letters written by H.P. Lovecraft to Zealia Bishop, one of the horror writer’s revision clients, was cause for celebration in the Lovecraft fan and scholar community. This volume combines these new items with other letters, already published in whole or in part, for the most complete record of Lovecraft’s efforts to instruct a pupil in the art of writing salable prose. Lovecraft is ever the gentleman as he encourages Bishop to aspire to literature and avoid the clichéd prose of the popular confession and love stories to which she was inclined . Branney and Leman include abundant illustrations, notably of postcards and brochures of the 1920s and 1930s, that are close to the materials, no longer extant, that Lovecraft often enclosed with his letters. Unlike the uniform letter collections published by Hippocampus Press, this compilation indicates words that Lovecraft crossed out, giving the reader an idea of how he edited himself. In an inspired bit of design, an extract about limiting paragraphs to no more than 300 words, taken from one of the style guides that Lovecraft recommended, appears in a two-page spread of solid prose with no paragraph breaks. For the Lovecraft neophyte wanting to get to know the man through his letters, this is a good place to start. (Aug.)