Saturday, October 24, 2009

Lovecraft and Howard Letters

A MEANS TO FREEDOM, The Letters of H. P. Lovecraft and Robert E. Howard: 1930-1936, edited by S. T. Joshi, David E. Schultz, and Rusty Burke, Hippocampus Press, 1004 pages, 2 volume boxed set, limited to 300 sets,, $100.00, ISBN: 9780981488806, reviewed by Barry Hunter.

Due to the limited nature of this volume, you might not want to wait to long to pick up a copy. I would think there are more than 300 people who would have an interest in the correspondence between two of the finest writers of the 1920s and 1930s. Without them, I don’t know if WEIRD TALES would have been as popular, even though there are so many writers of the fantastic working during that time.

Howard, with his stories of Conan, Kull, Solomon Kane and others, was the wild and wooly action writer that caused many a boy to travel the world in his mind to those lost and forgotten lands that only existed on the printed page.

Lovecraft, on the other hand, was the master of spine chilling horror and man being controlled by beings beyond time and space. The Cthulhu Mythos has spread to many writers and covered many, many years of growth and is still being added to today.

The letters between these two amazing writers not only show admiration and respect for each others talent, but go into great detail discussing ideas for stories, critiques of each others writing, commentary on the migration and history of the Celts and much more.

This book is a bit off track for the casual reader but for someone who has an interest in these two writers and wants a look and deeper insights into them as individuals; this is the book for you. I give a very special tip of the hat to the three editors for this enlightening and very special book.

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