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Robert E. Howard and H. P Lovecraft, two of the towering figures of weird literature of their time, engaged in a six-year correspondence that currently constitutes more than 400,000 words-a treasure-trove of immense value to students and scholars of both writers. It is a shame that a variety of legal and logistical obstacles have so far prevented the full publication of this series of documents: we have seen large fragments of it in the last two volumes of Lovecraft's Selected Letters and in the two volumes of Howard's Selected Letters; but only a joint publication of their correspondence-as with the joint publication of the letters of Lovecraft and Clark Ashton Smith, which may also be imminent-can properly convey the rich texture of this variegated mass of letters, each so revelatory of their respective authors. For now, the best we can do is to convey some sense of the overall direction of the correspondence, focusing on the central intellectual questions that the two writers debated with such vigor.1
The very survival of the extant correspondence could be considered almost an accident. Lovecraft scrupulously preserved all of Howard's letters (the great majority of them typewritten), sending them down to Howard Payne University in Brownwood, Texas, following Howard's death. The fate of the Lovecraft side is less happy. Whether Howard himself preserved Lovecraft' s letters entirely intact is not certain; in any event, after the death of both Howard and Lovecraft, Howard's father, Dr. I. M. Howard, allowed August Derleth to have the letters transcribed for ultimate publication in Lovecraft's Selected Letters. Derleth put the letters into the hands of his secretary, Alice Conger, having indicated which portions of the letters were to be transcribed. While Derleth did have substantial portions transcribed, he decided (as he did with almost every other body of letters that came into his hands for this purpose) that some of the more ephemeral sections could be omitted. This would not be a problem if the original letters had not, through an apparent accident, been destroyed in the early 1940s. As a result, all we are left with, for Lovecraft's side of the correspondence, are the so-called Arkham House Transcripts-an amount totalling more than 150,000 words, but nonetheless not absolutely complete. Some entire letters...