Most of Lovecraft's fiction has been published in Penguin Modern Classics and presumably sales went well. If they relate sales of Lovecraft to the potential sales of Smith then they should realise that they're on to a winner. As for covers, I never did get over the shock of seeing a nude female ghost on the cover of The Tomb (Panther). What would Howard have thought?

He would simply have torn the cover off and dropped it in the same wastebasket where he put the Brundage covers torn off from his copies of Weird Tales!

Ken K. Wrote:
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> He would simply have torn the cover off and
> dropped it in the same wastebasket where he put
> the Brundage covers torn off from his copies of
> Weird Tales!

Did he really do that? I read somewhere that that is a myth and that HPL's collection of Weird Tales is in very good shape.

Martinus Wrote:
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> Ken K. Wrote:
> --------------------------------------------------
> -----
> > He would simply have torn the cover off and
> > dropped it in the same wastebasket where he put
> > the Brundage covers torn off from his copies of
> > Weird Tales!
>
> Did he really do that? I read somewhere that that
> is a myth and that HPL's collection of Weird Tales
> is in very good shape.

According to Joshi in I Am Providence, this is a myth. All of HPL's copies are intact and filed in the library at Brown, along with the additional issues donated by Barlow to fill in the gaps in the collection. Evidently there are a lot of misconceptions about HPL's level of prudishness.

Radovarl Wrote:
> According to Joshi in I Am Providence, this is a
> myth. All of HPL's copies are intact and filed in
> the library at Brown, along with the additional
> issues donated by Barlow to fill in the gaps in
> the collection. Evidently there are a lot of
> misconceptions about HPL's level of prudishness.


Yes, it's a myth. HPL himself addresses the subject of the Brundage covers in one of his letters, feeling they were silly, but also essentially stating that anyone who would be truly offended by such was a ridiculously prudish person; that the nude had a very prominent proper place in art (something to the effect that there was nothing wrong or salacious about a healthy human body save to perverts and Victorian holdovers), and the only thing wrong with these covers is that a) they were not particularly good examples of art; b) they had little or nothing to do with the contents... both of which, sadly, still remain the case with the bulk of cover art for genre works....

Hi jdworth
My point exactly. A nude on the cover may (or may not) improve sales, but to the best of my recollection there are no nudes in Lovecraft's fiction. Faces went missing occasionally, but never clothes.

asshurbanipal Wrote:
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> Hi jdworth
> My point exactly. A nude on the cover may (or may
> not) improve sales, but to the best of my
> recollection there are no nudes in Lovecraft's
> fiction. Faces went missing occasionally, but
> never clothes.

Yeah, but as I recall HPL never had a WT cover while he was living. So whichever stories (which I've undoubtedly not read unless perhaps they were Conan or CAS efforts) the covers were for weren't relevant to his work... In any case, I kinda like Brundage's nudes :).

Radovarl Wrote:
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> >
> Yeah, but as I recall HPL never had a WT cover
> while he was living. So whichever stories (which
> I've undoubtedly not read unless perhaps they were
> Conan or CAS efforts) the covers were for weren't
> relevant to his work... In any case, I kinda like
> Brundage's nudes :).


Well, there were those nude, orgiastic rites, of course, and the ghouls were nude....

As for HPL and WT covers... I'm going entirely on memory here, but as I recall, he did at least get one cover... but it was for the Canadian or British release of that particular issue, not the American printing.....

On Brundage's nudes (and WT covers in general)... for what they are, some of them are quite good; certainly they have a kitschy attraction to them; and, on a somewhat facetious note... given that her models were her daughters (at least according to the sources I've seen), de Camp's phrase "the shapely Misses Brundage" was not terribly far off....

jdworth Wrote:
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> On Brundage's nudes (and WT covers in general)...
> for what they are, some of them are quite good;
> certainly they have a kitschy attraction to them;
> and, on a somewhat facetious note... given that
> her models were her daughters (at least according
> to the sources I've seen), de Camp's phrase "the
> shapely Misses Brundage" was not terribly far
> off....

That seems to be another myth -- according to Wikipedia, at least, Brundage didn't have any daughters...

jdworth Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> As for HPL and WT covers... I'm going entirely on
> memory here, but as I recall, he did at least get
> one cover... but it was for the Canadian or
> British release of that particular issue, not the
> American printing.....

It was a Canadian release of a WT issue; I recalled once you mentioned it (I just finished the Joshi HPL bio). I don't remember for which story.

Thanks, Martin; I hadn't looked at more modern sources, but I had my suspicions it was probably such, hence my caution... pity; it was such a good piece of fluff!

Radovarl... Thanks for the update.

jdworth Wrote:
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> Thanks, Martin; I hadn't looked at more modern
> sources, but I had my suspicions it was probably
> such, hence my caution... pity; it was such a good
> piece of fluff!
>

It certainly was.

Thanks for clarifying the matter of HPL's prudishness in regards to Brundage's covers. Picturing him defacing a mint copy of Weird Tales makes for such a great story I'm not surprised it stuck with me. Oh well--the unadorned truth is better.

I also seem to recall Henry Kuttner complaining about those same covers, though not out of any disapproval of the unclad female form. His point was that such pictures were available on many pulp magazines; every time Weird Tales did so, it robbed their readership of truly weird and horrific cover paintings.