An H. P. Lovecraft Encyclopedia

After HPL’s death August Derleth and Donald Wandrei founded Arkham House to publish HPL’s work in hard covers. Wandrei was particularly insistent that HPL’s letters be published, and he spent years editing HPL’s Selected Letters(1965–76), even though his enlistment in the army in 1942 curtailed his literary career and his other work for Arkham House. Wandrei’s literary career never resumed thereafter, largely because he needed to tend to his increasingly ailing mother and sister; he became a virtual recluse in his home in St. Paul. Arkham House published two collections of his weird tales, The Eye and the Finger(1944) and Strange Harvest(1965), and his poetry, Poems for Midnight (1964). Wandrei prepared texts of the last two volumes of HPL’s Selected Letters,and, although his name does not appear as editor, it seems that his texts were largely used as the basis of the selections. After Derleth’s death in 1971, Wandrei became embroiled in a bitter dispute with Derleth’s successors at Arkham House and ultimately severed his relations with the firm. Following his death, his work was gathered in more thematically coherent editions: Collected Poems(Necronomicon Press, 1988); Colossus(Fedogan & Bremer, 1989), his collected science fiction tales; Don’t Dream(Fedogan & Bremer, 1997), his collected horror and fantasy tales; and Frost(Fedogan & Bremer, 2000), a collection of his detective tales (others are forthcoming). The joint HPL-Wandrei correspondence is forthcoming as Mysteries of Time and Spirit(Fedogan & Bremer, 2002).

See Studies in Weird FictionNo. 3 (Fall 1988) (special Wandrei issue, with articles by Dennis Rickard, S.T.Joshi, Marc A.Michaud, Steve Behrends, and T.E.D.Klein); Richard L.Tierney, “Introduction” to Wandrei’s Colossus(1989); D.H.Olson, “Afterword: Of Donald Wandrei, August Derleth and H.P. Lovecraft,” in Wandrei’s Don’t Dream(1997).

Wandrei, Howard [Elmer] (1909–1956),

artist and late associate of HPL (1933–37). Howard, Donald Wandrei’s younger brother, had a turbulent youth, being arrested for burglary at the age of eighteen and spending three years in a reformatory. By this time, however, he had developed into a brilliant and distinctive pictorial artist, chiefly in pen-and-ink work. He illustrated Donald’s book of poetry, Dark Odyssey(1931), and then did some illustrations for the weird and science fiction pulps. He also took to writing, publishing numerous detective, horror, and science fiction tales in the pulp magazines. HPL met Wandrei for the first time in New York on December 27, 1933, and they corresponded sporadically thereafter. HPL had a high regard for Wandrei’s artwork (“he certainly has a vastly greater talent than anyone else in the gang. I was astonished at [the paintings’] sheer genius & maturity”: HPL to Annie E.P.Gamwell, [December 28, 1933; ms., JHL]); later, when he read some of Wandrei’s stories, he was also impressed (“I’m hang’d if I don’t think the kid is, all apart

< previous page page_290 next page > < previous page page_291 next page >

Page 291

from his pictorial genius, getting to be a better writerthan big bwuvver!”: HPL to R.H.Barlow, April 20, 1935; ms., JHL). Wandrei’s weird tales have now been collected in Time Burial(Fedogan & Bremer, 1995); some of his detective tales are contained in The Last Pin(Fedogan & Bremer, 1996) and The Eerie Mr. Murphy(Fedogan & Bremer, 2001). Other volumes are forthcoming. Ward, Charles Dexter (1902–1928).

In The Case of Charles Dexter Ward,the great-great-great-grandson of Joseph Curwen. Ward’s discovery of a colonial portrait of Curwen (who is an exact double of Ward) spurs his search, beginning in 1919, for more information about a man so despised and feared that nearly all information about him had disappeared from the public record. Ward’s quest takes him to Europe to investigate Curwen’s correspondents overseas. He unearths Curwen’s papers and is able to resurrect Curwen from his “essential Saltes.” But Curwen kills Ward and attempts unsuccessfully to adopt his identity. Ward is not quite an autobiographical character, but his celebrated homecoming from Europe parallels HPL’s own joyous return to Providence shortly before the novel was written. Ward, Theodore Rowland.