Samuel Loveman

Samuel E. Loveman (January 14, 1887 – May 14, 1976) was an American poet, critic, and dramatist probably best known for his connections with writers H. P. Lovecraft and Hart Crane.

Early life and career

Samuel Loveman lived in Cleveland for the first 37 years of his life. He worked first as a cost accountant. Between 1905 and 1908 he published many poems, and again between 1919 and 1926 in such amateur journals as Clevelander, Cartoons, Sprite, The National Amateur, and The United Amateur.

In 1918 he was drafted and spent the next year and a half at Camp Gordon, Georgia. Bronchial trouble, bad eyesight and heart trouble prevented him from being sent overseas. Upon his return to Cleveland he was unemployed for some years. Around this time he met Hart Crane and became closely associated with the 'Hart Circle'. In the early 1920s he translated Charles Baudelaire and Paul Verlaine from the French, publishing them in his little magazine The Saturnian (June–July ; Aug-Sept ; March 1922). The third issue of this included Loveman's translations from Heinrich Heine (on which he had worked since 1909). He was a self-taught specialist in Elizabethan prose and drama, and Ancient Greek poetry. His own exotic and imaginative verse included The Hermaphrodite (begun Feb 1921; 1926) described as "a long, gorgeously evocative poem that flawlessly recreates the atmosphere of classical antiquity" and The Sphinx (a prose drama begun as early as 1918, finished by around April 1922 and published in 1926 by W. Paul Cook in the second number of his journal The Ghost.). The latter work has been called "a riot of exotic imagery and diction". Other friends included Allen Tate, H. P. Lovecraft (he was a member of Lovecraft's literary circle, the Kalem Club) along with Frank Belknap Long, and Hart Crane, with Loveman functioning as executor of Hart Crane's estate.

Friendship with H. P. Lovecraft

H. P. Lovecraft had written the poem "To Samuel Loveman, Esquire, on His Poetry and Drama, Writ in the Elizabethan Style" (Dowdell's Bearcat, Dec 1915). Lovecraft and Loveman began correspondence in 1917. Loveman was close friends with Lovecraft during Lovecraft's New York years (he put Lovecraft in touch with the revision clients Zealia Bishop and Adolphe Danziger de Castro). Lovecraft was hugely impressed by Loveman's personal collection of rare first editions and early books including incunabula. At one point in his career Loveman, low on financial resources, was forced to sell much of this collection.

H. P. Lovecraft's story "The Statement of Randolph Carter" was based on a dream Lovecraft had, which included Loveman; Loveman became Harley Warren in the story. A manuscript of Lovecraft's story "Hypnos" (1922) has recently been discovered with the original header dedication of "To S.L.". Lovecraft's "Nyarlathotep" was also inspired by a dream he had about Loveman.

After Lovecraft's death Loveman wrote two affectionate memoirs, "Howard Phillips Lovecraft" (in Something About Cats and Other Pieces) and "Lovecraft as a Conversationalist" (Fresco, Spring 1958). Loveman later bitterly repudiated the memory of Lovecraft's friendship in an essay titled "Of Gold and Sawdust" when Lovecraft's ex-wife Sonia Greene (also Jewish) told him that Lovecraft was an anti-Semite. Loveman burned all his correspondence from Lovecraft; five letters and two postcards from Loveman to Lovecraft do survive; a few scraps of Loveman's letters to Lovecraft survive because Lovecraft used the versos of them for rough drafts of his stories or essays.

He never married. Though he claimed to have been rejected by a woman during a youthful romance, he reportedly lived with a male dancer from the Metropolitan Opera for many years. He left his entire estate to a friend, Ernest Wayne Cunningham. He published no poetry, so far as is known, for the forty years prior to his death. In 1971 he suffered a coronary infarction but recovered. In 1972 he was resident in South Euclid, Ohio. He died in relative obscurity in 1976 at the Jewish Home and Hospital for the Aged.

Books by Loveman . Cleveland, 1911. 24-page pamphlet published at the poet's own expense. Twenty-One Letters of Ambrose Bierce. Cleveland, 1922. Published by Loveman's Cleveland friend George Kirk. Includes Loveman's poem "In Pierrot's Garden". Limited ed of 1000 copies, 50 signed, on Japanese vellum; 950 on Antique Paper. Reprinted July 1991 – West Warwick, RI: Necronomicon Press, with an introduction "Ambrose Bierce and H.P. Lovecraft" by Donald R. Burleson. Loveman and Don Bregenzer (eds). A Round Table in Poictesme. Cleveland: The Colophon Club. Collection of essays on James Branch Cabell The Hermaphrodite. Athol, MA: The Recluse Press, 1926. Published by W. Paul Cook. The Hermaphrodite and Other Poems. Caldwell, Idaho: Caxton Printers, 1936. The Sphinx: A Conversation. Athol, MA: The Recluse Press, 1944. Published by W. Paul Cook. Hart Crane: A conversation with Samuel Loveman..Edited by Jay Socin and Kirby Congdon. NY: Interim Books, 1964 (500 copies). Out of the Immortal Night: Selected Works of Samuel Loveman. Edited by S. T. Joshi and David E. Schultz. NY: Hippocampus Press, 2004. New, much-expanded edition 2021. Born Under Saturn: The Letters of Samuel Loveman and Clark Ashton Smith. (Hippocampus Press). Edited by S. T. Joshi and David E. Schultz. NY: Hippocampus Press, 2021.