I began reading the first volume of Essential Solitude: The Letters of H.P. Lovecraft and August Derleth last night. The relationship between the two began in 1926 when Derleth wrote a letter to Lovecraft asking for help in tracking down a couple of short stories by M.P. Shiel, and blossomed into a correspondence that continued on a weekly basis through 1937.

David E. Schultz and S.T. Joshi have edited the hundreds of letters into a fascinating two-volume set from Hippocampus Press. I read the five-volume Selected Letters of H. P. Lovecraft thirty years ago, but as those books contained letters to multiple correspondents, I don’t remember the reading experience as having had as intimate a feeling as this.

I’m also finding that these these letters will appeal to more than just those with either a scholarly or fanboy interest in Lovecraft. The editors’ helpful footnotes make sure that no prior knowledge of either Lovecraft or Derleth is necessary. I think any writer, whatever his or her level of familiarity with these men, will find something of interest here relating to the creative process, dealing with rejection, the nature of fantasy, and more.

The two writers were very different in their approach to the market. As Schultz and Joshi put it in their introduction, “Where Lovecraft had let the rejection of a single tale sour him forever on writing for the professional magazines, Derleth relentlessly submitted and resubmitted work—sometimes a dozen times, even to the same magazine—until ultimately it was accepted.

With that in mind, here are a couple of quotes from early on in the relationship. First, here’s what Lovecraft had to say about rejection on August 13, 1926:

As to editorial rejections of tales dear to their authors—apparently that is a very frequent type of phenomenon. Commercial standards have twists & phases incomprehensible to the artist, & the eyes of an editor are fixed on points of which an author would never think. Acceptance or rejection, indeed, forms no criterion whatsoever of absolute merit.

A few days later, on August 18, 1926, Lovecraft wrote specifically of the recent rejection of his story “Nameless City”:

I wondered a bit a Wright’s rejection of it because he has accepted so many still worse things of mine. I don’t mind rejections, though, for I attach no importance to judgments based on commercial expediency.

I’ll share further as I move deeper into the book. But don’t limit yourself to experiencing only what I decide to excerpt. Pick up a copy for yourself!