An H. P. Lovecraft Encyclopedia

Novelette (10,070 words); ghostwritten for Hazel Heald, probably in the summer of 1932. First published in WT(March 1934); first collected in Marginalia;corrected text in HM.

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A scientist, Thomas Slauenwite, discovers a rare insect in South Africa whose bite is fatal unless treated with a certain drug; the natives call the insect the “devil-fly” because after killing its victim it purportedly takes over the deceased’s soul or personality. Slauenwite kills a rival scientist, Henry Moore, with this insect, but is later haunted by an insect that seems uncannily to bear tokens of Moore’s personality. Slauenwite is killed (by heart failure induced by fright, not by the bite of an insect), his soul enters the body of the insect, and he writes a message on the ceiling of his room by dipping his insect body in ink and walking across the ceiling. His diary is found in his hotel room by puzzled policemen and medical examiners.

HPL discusses the story in a letter that probably dates to summer 1932: “Something odd befell a client of mine the other day—involving a story-element which Ihad intended & introduced under the impression that it was strictly original with me. The tale was sent to Handsome Harry [Bates], & he rejected it on the ground that the element in question (the act of an insect dipping itself in ink & writing on a white surface with its own body) formed the crux of another tale which he had accepted. Hell’s bells!—& I thought I’d hit on an idea of absolute novelty & uniqueness!” (HPL to August Derleth, [August 1932]; ms., SHSW). The interesting thing about this is that the tale had thus been submitted to Strange Tales,edited by Harry Bates. It is plausible that the earlier Heald tales were written with this better-paying market in view (the magazine folded after the January 1933 issue). After its appearance in WT,HPL wrote: “‘Winged Death’ is nothing to run a temperature over…. My share in it is something like 90 to 95%” ( SL4.403).

“Wisdom.”

Poem (49 lines); probably written in the fall of 1919. First published in the Silver Clarion(November 1919); rpt. National Enquirer(December 4, 1919).

The poem’s subtitle declares: “The 28th or ‘Gold-Miner’s Chapter of Job, paraphrased from a literal translation of the original Hebrew text, supplied by Dr. S.Hall Young.” If this seems an odd poem for the atheist HPL to write, we should remember that the Silver Clarion,an amateur paper edited by John Milton Samples, was, in HPL’s words, “an able and consistent exponent of that literary mildness and wholesomeness which in the professional world are exemplified by The Youth’s Companionand the better grade of religious publications” (HPL, “Comment,” Silver Clarion,June 1918). Wolejko, Anastasia.

In “The Dreams in the Witch House,” a “clod-like laundry worker” in Arkham whose two-year-old child, Ladislas Wolejko, vanishes and is later killed by Brown Jenkin.

Wollheim, Donald A[llen] (1914–1990),

science fiction fan and editor, and correspondent of HPL (1935–37). In 1935 Wollheim took over a magazine previously edited by Wilson Shepherd and renamed it The Phantagraph;he asked HPL to contribute, and HPL sent several poems as well as the essays “Robert Ervin Howard: 1906–1936” (August 1936) and “The Weird Work of William Hope Hodgson” (February 1937). A letter to Duane W.Rimel (September 28,

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1935) appeared anonymously as “What’s the Trouble with Weird Fiction?” (February 1937). Wollheim also coedited, with Shepherd, one issue of Fanciful Tales(Fall 1936), containing HPL’s “The Nameless City,” which was marred by numerous typographical errors. Wollheim continued to publish HPL’s work in The Phantagraphafter his death. Wollheim later became a distinguished science fiction and fantasy editor ( The Portable Novels of Science[1945]; Avon Fantasy Reader[1947–52; 18 volumes]; Terror in the Modern Vein[1955]) and author of numerous science fiction tales for young adults. Wooley, Natalie H[artley],

poet and correspondent of HPL (1933–37). Wooley published poetry widely in amateur journals in the 1930s. She was, with Maurice W.Moe, John Adams, and HPL, a member of a round-robin correspondence circle, the Coryciani, mainly devoted to the criticism of poetry.

World War I.