One of HPL’s most significant personal and philosophical essays, tracing the development of his rejection of orthodox Christianity from boyhood (when, under the influence of classical mythology, he actually thought he saw dryads and satyrs in the woods near his home) to maturity. HPL copied much of the essay in his autobiographical letter to Edwin Baird, February 3, 1924 ( SL1.299–302). Conover, Willis (1920–1996).
Weird fiction fan who corresponded with HPL (1936–37). Conover wished to start a fan magazine, the Science-Fantasy Correspondent,and asked HPL to contribute; HPL sent him “Homecoming” (a sonnet
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from Fungi from Yuggoth), which appeared in the first issue (November-December 1936). The poem “In a Sequestered Providence Churchyard Where Once Poe Walked” appeared in the March-April 1937 issue. Late in 1936 Conover expressed his intention to resume the serialization of “Supernatural Horror in Literature” from the point at which it had ceased in the Fantasy Fan;accordingly, HPL prepared a synopsis of the earlier segments (Conover later published this as a booklet, Supernatural Horror in Literature as Revised in 1936[Carrollton-Clark, 1974]). But Conover never ran “Supernatural Horror in Literature,” nor the celebrated portrait of HPL as an eighteenth-century gentleman, which he commissioned Virgil Finlay to draw; the latter appeared on the cover of the April 1937 issue of Amateur Correspondent,Corwin F.Stickney’s successor to Science-Fantasy Correspondent . In part as a result of HPL’s death, Conover lost his interest in weird fiction for many years. For much of his career he worked with the Voice of America. In 1975 he published his exquisitely printed memoir, Lovecraft at Last(Carrollton-Clark), containing extracts of his letters from HPL and much other interesting matter. He recommenced the Sci-ence-Fantasy Correspondent,but only for one issue (1975); that issue did, however, contain Kenneth Sterling’s fine memoir, “Caverns Measureless to Man,” along with additional letters by HPL.
See obituary, New York Times,May 19, 1996, Sec. I, p. 35.
Conservative, The.
Amateur magazine edited by HPL (1915–23). Rpt. (unabridged) as The Conservative: Complete (Necronomicon Press, 1976, 1977); selections as The Conservative,ed. S.T.Joshi (Necronomicon Press, 1990).
The magazine consists of 13 issues: 1, No. 1 (April 1915), 8 pp.; 1, No. 2 (July 1915), 12 pp.; 1, No. 3 (October 1915), 16 pp.; 1, No. 4 (January 1916), 4 pp.; 2, No. 1 (April 1916), 4 pp.; 2, No. 2 (July 1916), 4 pp.; 2, No. 3 (October 1916), 12 pp.; 2, No. 4 (January 1917), 4 pp.; 3, No. 1 (July 1917), 4 pp.; 4, No. 1 (July 1918), 8 pp.; 5, No. 1 (July 1919), 12 pp.; No. 12 (March 1923), 8 pp.; No. 13 (July 1923), 28 pp. [For complete table of contents, see S.T.Joshi, H.P.Lovecraft and Lovecraft Criticism: An Annotated Bibliography(1981), pp. 173–77.]
The first issue was printed by an unidentified Providence printer. The next five issues were printed by The Lincoln Press (Albert A.Sandusky), Cambridge, Mass. The next three were printed locally, and W.Paul Cook printed the final four. HPL wrote most of the first three issues himself, but subsequently opened the magazine to prose and poetic contributions by his associates, including Rheinhart Kleiner, Winifred Virginia Jackson, Anne Tillery Renshaw, Alfred Galpin, Samuel Loveman, and others. The issue for July 1916 consists entirely of Henry Clapham McGavack’s essay “The American Proletariat versus England.” Beginning with the October 1916 issue, HPL instituted an editorial column entitled “In the Editor’s Study,” containing some of his most controversial political, social, and literary musings.
Rheinhart Kleiner reports on the effect of reading the first issue: “…many were immediately aware that a brilliant new talent had made itself known. The entire contents of the issue, both prose and verse, were the work of the editor, who obviously knew exactly what he wished to say, and no less exactly how to say it. The Conservativetook a unique place among the valuable publications of
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its time, and held that place with ease through the period of seven or eight years during which it made occasional pronouncements. Its critical pronouncements were relished by some and resented by others, but there was no doubt of the respect in which they were held by all” (“Howard Phillips Lovecraft,” Californian5, No. 1 [Summer 1937]: 5). But HPL’s contributions to the issues of 1915–19 are on the whole dogmatic, narrow, and intolerant; he was taken heavily to task for his reactionary racial and literary views by such amateurs as Charles D.Isaacson and James F.Morton. The last two issues reveal a significant broadening of intellectual horizons and a more sophisticated appreciation of cultural change, and thereby foreshadow the development of HPL’s aesthetic and moral thought in his last decade.
Cook, W[illiam] Paul (1881–1948).
Printer, publisher, and amateur press editor residing in Athol, Mass.; he published under the pseudonym Willis Tete Crossman. Cook served as Official Editor (1918–19) and President of the NAPA (1919–20); he was also appointed Official Editor of the UAPA in 1907, but resigned before the end of his term. He edited and published several amateur magazines, including The Monadnock Monthly, The Vagrant, The Recluse,and The Ghost. He met HPL in 1917 through amateur journalism, Cook agreeing to print HPL’s Conservative . His encouragement was instrumental in HPL’s resumption of fiction writing in 1917. Cook wrote a brief article, “Howard P. Lovecraft’s Fiction” ( The Vagrant,November 1919) as a preface to “Dagon”—the first critical article on HPL’s stories. He published many of HPL’s early weird tales and poems in The Vagrant . In late 1925 he enlisted HPL to write “Supernatural Horror in Literature” for The Recluse(1927); in 1928 he printed HPL’s story “The Shunned House” (rejected by Farnsworth Wright for WT) as a small book; his subsequent financial and nervous breakdown, brought on by the death of his wife in 1930, prevented the binding of the book. A small number of sheets of the 300-copy edition were bound by R.H.Barlow; the remainder were bound by Arkham House in 1959–61. In visiting Cook at his home in Athol in the summer of 1928, HPL absorbed many details of local history and lore reflected in his fiction, notably “The Dunwich Horror.” In 1940, Cook wrote In Memoriam: Howard Phillips Lovecraft(Driftwind Press, 1941), which he typeset himself; it is still perhaps the best memoir of HPL. His “A Plea for Lovecraft” ( The Ghost,May 1945) warned against a distorted image of HPL beginning to emerge, largely because of the publications from Arkham House.
See R. Alain Everts, “The Man Who Was W.Paul Cook,” Nyctalops3, No. 2 (March 1981): 10–12. “Cool Air.”
Short story (3,440 words); written probably in February 1926. First published in Tales of Magic and Mystery(March 1928); rpt. WT(September 1939); first collected in O;corrected text in DH; annotated version in An2and CC