What, if anything, did H.P. Lovecraft ever say about Oliver Onions? My query arises from reading a blurb on the back of my Collected Ghost Stories of Oliver Onions (Dover), which says HPL considered Onions, as a weird fictioneer, in very high regard. However, HPL doesn't even mention Onions in Supernatural Horror in Literature. Perhaps HPL mentions Onions somewhere in his voluminous correspodence. Anyone out there that can help sort this out? Cheers, Dr. Noivilbo

I cannot help you. Sorry.

I spent some time googling around in hopes of a citation for you
but all I got was the same basic blurb over & over again without
citing a source. The quotes don't exactly say HPL held him in high
regard so much as saying that "both HPL and Blackwood felt that
"The Beckoning Fair One" by Onions was one of the greatest stories
of that kind ever written." (paraphrase, not quote). I would look
for somewhere that Blackwood & HPL intersected: magazine, editor,
etc. Was the story ever serialized? Welcome a reply if you ever find it.

Best of Luck,

Cathexis

That Dover blurb may well be apocryphal. There seems to be just one passing mention of Onions in the entire published correspondence (well, I don't have the early letters to John T. Dunn to check and the ones to Leiber aren't indexed, but I think it's highly unlikely that he's discussed in either of them). HPL to Derleth, 1 Nov. 1930 [The Essential Solitude, p. 283]: "I hope eventually to have a sniff at the new Onions opus" [annotated as The Painted Face (1929) in The Essential Solitude]; but it seems that he didn't do so since it's never brought up again.

In any case, it's probably safe to say that Lovecraft couldn't have held Onions in particularly high regard even if he did read him, otherwise there would be some published indication of this. HPL quite often cites favourite stories and authors without mentioning "The Beckoning Fair One"/Onions.

Juha-Matti

G'day!

I checked the index to the HPL _Collected Essays_ volumes, and there's no mention there either.

Phillip

Blog: The Cruellest Month -- [the-cruellest-month.blogspot.com.au]
Website: [www.phillipaellis.com]

Philip, Juha-Matti, Cathexis,

Thank you for helping out with this. The question was nagging at me terribly, but you've all confirmed my suspicion that the Dover blurb is likely apocryphal.

Cheers!

Noivilbo

I, personally, find Oliver Onions' 'ghost stories' excruciatingly boring--I can't imagine Lovecraft thinking all that highly of him. Sure, "The Beckoning Fair One" is alright, but the rest of his 'supernatural' stuff, I find (I have not read all of it, but a a lot of it), is of far poorer quality, in terms of how entertaining it is--which is my foremost criterion for good fiction.

I was lured into buying the omnibus volume put out by the Wordsworth Mystery and the Supernatural series (very worth looking into for fans of weird fiction looking for budget prices; sorry, no CAS!) by Lovecraft's alleged esteem of him discussed above--but I was quite disappointed by his 'cerebral' approach, as I have heard it put. Le Fanu, M. R. James, Blackwood, Benson--all far, far more interesting. Still, the book was very, very cheap--but I can never recover my precious time! One story, "The Honey in the Wall," I think it was called, was particularly gruelling...very long, not the least terrifying, too psychological--in a very annoying way. Anyone out there really like Onions? (not the food! I'm talking to you clever folk out there--you know who you are). I would like to believe he has merit, but require some persuasion to give him a second chance.

K_A_

Yes, I agree with you entirely regarding "The Beckoning Fair One." I read the book five years ago, and like you, I found it exceedingly dull and tiresome. Not horrible, of course, by hardly the great work that some people would have you believe it is.

Overall, I think that a ghost story succeeds by either being richly atmospheric, or by having an effective "punch" at the end. It's nice to have both, of course, but of the two, I suppose "atmosphere" is the more essential. For that matter, with a good atmospheric work, the emotional impact will often appear later, as a kind of "delayed reaction"--something I often find to be the case with authors like Blackwood and Machen.

Of course, even if the Lovecraft quote is apocryphal, I think it's fair to say that on occasion, HPL can make a big fuss about someone who is completely undeserving! Fortunately, he's right on the mark most of the time (especially when it comes to the "big" names like Poe or Dunsany). But yes, there are those instances where one is left shaking one's head at the excessive praise that he heaps on some people! (For that matter you see this a lot in the correspondence: the way he talks about Alfred Galpin, for example, you'd think Galpin was the very incarnation of Nietzsche's Superman! Good grief!--but I digress.)