Quote:They all shared encouragement, praise, and criticism with one another in their letters - I wouldn't say there was a specific instance where one of them would have stopped writing without that praise, but there is the instance where August Derleth submitted Lovecraft's "The Shadow over Innsmouth" to Weird Tales because Lovecraft was afraid of rejection - and it was accepted.I take it that no one remembers anything like -that- in the remarks of Lovecraft, Smith, or Howard.
Quote:Without their correspondence, at the minimum you would not have any references to one another's work - so, no "The Black Stone" from Howard, probably no Book of Eibon or Tsathoggua from Smith, and a profoundly smaller mythos for Lovecraft to draw upon in works like "The Mound" and "The Whisperer in Darkness." Howard's "Little People" stories were directly inspired from his correspondence with HPL, and of course without REH's intervention Lovecraft would never have met E. Hoffmann Price in New Orleans, and there would be no "Through the Gates of the Silver Key."If we shouldn't go to the other extreme, and say that these men enjoyed sharing their work but there's no reason to think it would be significantly different if that sharing hadn't happened -- then what can we say with reasonable certainty?
Quote:Lovecraft dedicated some poems to CAS and others, and would put nods into his stories - CAS is mentioned by name in "The Horror in the Museum," "The Call of Cthulhu," "At the Mountains of Madness," "Medusa's Coil," and his essay "Supernatural Horror in Literature."None of the Lovecraft circle writers ever dedicated a story to another member, except for HPL dedicating "The Haunter of the Dark" to Bloch -- ?