Lot 70
  • 70

Lovecraft, H. P.

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Description

Typescript of sonnets I to XXXII of "Fingi from Yuggoth," 11 pages (11 x 8 1/4 in.; 275 x 210 mm), [Providence],1930, ribbon copy, inscribed by Lovecraft at top of first page: "To Saml. E. Loveman and Patrick McGrath, Esqrs., with the compliments & appreciation of the author—H. P. Lovecraft, May 22, 1930."

Catalogue Note

Fungi from Yuggoth was a series of sonnets, ultimately comprising thirty-six, written in December 1929 and January 1930. Like the present typecript, the first separate appearance of the Fungi, published in June 1943 by Bill Evans in Washington, D.C., did not include the final three sonnets. 

'In the first three sonnets, the unnamed narrator obtains a mysterious tome—a 'book that told the hidden way / Across the void and through the space-hung screens'—from an ancient bookseller and is followed home by an unseen pursuer. The remaining poems, which Lovecraft considered suitable for publication independent of the introductory poems, are discontinuous vignettes concerning a variety of weird themes, told in the first person and (apparently) third person. The cumulative effect is that of a series of shifting dream images. The poem was written following a burst of versifying, after a long hiatus, that occurred in late 1929 …" (Lovecraft Encyclopedia). Patrick McGrath was a good friend of Samuel Loveman.