H.P. Lovecraft Self Portraits: As He Saw Himself

Thanks in part to Chris Perridas' "H.P. Lovecraft and His Legacy" blog and some Googling, a number of self-portraits done by HPL have surfaced. Naturally, Lovecraft sketched most of these in his voluminous correspondence. It's a well known fact the Providence author's letters allowed him to flex as much creativity as his fiction - and it seems doodling was just as irresistible as word play. Poems, wild yarns, impromptu scholarship, and the occasional sketch adorned many a Lovecraft letter. His epistles became a virtual art form as his mailing list and output grew, an art form that Lovecraft came closer than many others to perfecting.




These little drawings in the selected letters allow brilliant insights into Lovecraft's gentlemanly self-image and sense of humor. Three here depict H.P. Lovecraft as the eighteenth century scholar he imagined himself to be in another life, a human shadow out of time with a code of honor carefully tended for all his years. The last letter-drawing reveals the man's excellence in imitating period-appropriate style (note the long S's). Looking at the drawing of Templeton, it appears Lovecraft actually had some amateur drawing talent.


In another letter, the writer depicts himself drowning in a torrent of his own correspondence. The in-joke is illuminated in the title: "United Activity; or Why a Conservative Doth Not Always Answer his Letters with Promptness." Lovecraft wasn't afraid of poking fun at himself, and it seems he was conscious of his growing obsession with letter writing.

Overall, Lovecraft's letter writing was an activity that vacillated from the lighthearted to the serious. Even as he sent them out to friends and associates, the letters occasionally contained real inward glances at his ego and identity. These self-portraits and sketched fantasies just confirm the letters' ability to serve as a mirror for their writer. For a wealth of information about Lovecraft's life, including more pictures and exhaustive quotations from his letters, see S.T. Joshi's re-issued, expanded, and definitive biography, I am Providence (or its more affordable predecessor, H.P. Lovecraft: A Life).

-Grim Blogger