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Tryout” ( Tryout,December 1921), and “To Mr. Hoag, on His Ninetieth Birthday” ( Tryout,February 1921), and a letter to the Bureau of Critics published in the National Amateur(January 1919) as by “Ned Softly and Ward Phillips.” The name seems used chiefly for HPL’s weird poetry. Phillips is also a character in “Through the Gates of the Silver Key” (1932–33).
“Richard Raleigh” was used for the poem “To a Youth” ( Tryout,February 1921). In a ms. of the poem (JHL), HPL notes: “How is this for an Elizabethan pseudonym?” HPL refers to the celebrated Elizabethan courtier Sir Walter Ralegh (1554?–1618), formerly spelled “Raleigh.”
“Ames Dorrance Rowley” was used for the poems “Laeta; a Lament” ( Tryout,February 1918), “The Volunteer” ( Tryout,April 1918), “To Maj.-Gen. Omar Bundy, U.S.A.” ( Tryout,January 1919), and “To the Old Pagan Religion” ( Tryout,April 1919; as “The Last Pagan Speaks”). The name is a parody of the amateur poet James Laurence Crowley. Only one of the poems (“Laeta; a Lament”) is itself satirical, and does not appear to be a parody of any poem by Crowley.
“Edward Softly” was used for the poems “Damon and Delia, a Pastoral” ( Tryout,August 1918), “To Delia, Avoiding Damon” ( Tryout,September 1918), “Ode to Selene or Diana” ( Tryout,April 1919; as “To Selene”), “Tryout’s Lament for the Vanished Spider” ( Tryout,January 1920), “The Dream” ( Tryout,September 1920), “Christmas” ( Tryout,November 1920), and “Chloris and Damon” ( Tryout, June 1923). The name is probably meant to augment the satirical intent of the several poems here that spoof romantic love poetry. See also “Ward Phillips” above.
“Lewis Theobald, Jun.,” HPL’s most frequently used pseudonym, was used for the two stories cowritten with Winifred Virginia Jackson, “The Crawling Chaos” ( United Co-operative,April 1921) and “The Green Meadow” ( Vagrant,[Spring 1927]), the essays “The Convention” ( Tryout,July 1930 [as by “Theobald”]) “Some Causes of Self-immolation,” and the poems “Unda; or, The Bride of the Sea” ( Providence Amateur,February 1916; as “The Bride of the Sea”), “Ye Ballade of Patrick von Flynn” ( Conservative,April 1916), “Inspiration” ( Conservative,October 1916), “Brotherhood” ( Tryout, December 1916), “The Rutted Road” ( Tryout,January 1917), “The Nymph’s Reply to the Modern Business Man” ( Tryout,February 1917), “Pacifist War Song” ( Tryout,March 1917) “Sonnet on Myself ( Tryout,July 1918), “Damon—a Monody” ( United Amateur,May 1919 [as “Theobaldus Senectissimus”]), “Monody on the Late King Alcohol” ( Tryout,August 1919), “To Mistress Sophia Simple, Queen of the Cinema” ( United Amateur,November 1919), “To Phillis” ( Tryout,January 1920), “Cindy: Scrub-Lady in a State Street Skyscraper” ( Tryout,June 1920), “The Poet’s Rash Excuse” ( Tryout,July 1920), “Ex-Poet’s Reply” ( Epgephi,September 1920), “To Alfred Galpin, Esq.” ( Tryout,December 1920), “On the Return of Maurice Winter Moe, Esq., to the Pedagogical Profession” ( Wolverine,June 1921), “To Mr. Galpin, upon His 20th Birthday” ( Tryout,December 1921), “On a Poet’s Ninety-first Birthday” ( Tryout,March 1922), “To Rheinhart Kleiner, Esq., upon His Town Fables and Elegies” ( Tryout,April 1923), “To Damon” ( Tryout,August 1923), “To Endymion” ( Tryout,September 1923), “To J.E.Hoag, Esq.: On His Ninety-second Birthday” ( Tryout,November 1923), and “The Wood” ( Tryout,January 1929). A brief biography of Theobald ap
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peared in “News Notes” ( United Amateur,March 1918); it is unsigned, but is presumably by the Official Editor of the UAPA at the time, Verna McGeoch. The name is derived from Lewis Theobald (1688–1744), the Shakespearean scholar whom Alexander Pope made the “hero” of the first version of his satirical poem, The Dunciad(1728). (See R.Boerem, “The First Lewis Theobald,” in Discovering H.P.Lovecraft,ed. Darrell Schweitzer [1987].) HPL’s use of the name cannot be entirely systematized, but it appears that he used it most frequently for poems written to friends (Alfred Galpin, Rheinhart Kleiner, Maurice W.Moe, Jonathan E.Hoag, Frank Belknap Long), or other personal poems. HPL pronounced it in the eighteenth-century manner, as a dissyllable (TIB-uld), and frequently referred to himself in correspondence as “Grandpa Theobald.”
For “Albert Frederick Willie,” used for the poem “Nathicana” ( Vagrant,[Spring 1927]), see the entry on Alfred Galpin.
For “Zoilus” see “The Vivisector.”
“Augustus T.Swift” was formerly thought to be a pseudonym of HPL’s for two letters (one of which contains lavish praise of the pulp writer Francis Stevens) published in the Argosy(November 15, 1919, and May 22, 1920); but recent research has ascertained that Swift was a real individual living in Providence. See S.T.Joshi, ed., H.P.Lovecraft in the Argosy(Necronomicon Press, 1994). Some have mistaken “Perrin Holmes Lowrey” to be a pseudonym of HPL’s because of the initials of his name, but he is an actual person—an amateur journalist of HPL’s day. HPL’s sonnet “St. Toad’s” appeared in WT(Canadian; September 1945) as by “J.H.Brownlow,” but this is not a pseudonymn. See Willametta Keffer, “Howard P(seudonym) Lovecraft: The Many Names of HPL,” FossilNo. 158 (July 1958): 82–84; George T.Wetzel, “The Pseudonymous Lovecraft,” Xenophile3, No. 4 (November 1976): 3–5, 73; S.T. Joshi, “The Rationale of Lovecraft’s Pseudonyms,” CryptNo. 80 (Eastertide 1992): 15–24, 29.
“Psychopompos: A Tale in Rhyme.”
Poem (310 lines); begun in late 1917 but not completed until the summer of 1918. First published in Vagrant(October 1919); rpt. WT(September 1937).
The title means “Conveyer of souls [i.e., to Hades],” a somewhat peculiar title for a poem about werewolves. The story concerns Sieur and Dame de Blois, who seem merely to be reclusive nobles but are in fact werewolves. When a citizen kills Dame de Blois (in the form of a snake), the Sieur besieges the house of his wife’s murderer with a band of other wolves, but he is himself killed. HPL apparently was influenced by Winifred Virginia Jackson’s poem “Insomnia” ( Conservative, October 1916) in the two quatrains that open the poem. The final two lines as originally written —“For Sieur de Blois (the old wife’s tale is through)/Was lost eternally to mortal view”—were changed at the instigation of John Ravenor Bullen of the Transatlantic Circulator, who maintained that “through” as used here was impermissibly colloquial (see MW156). HPL included the work in lists of his fiction.