Fake Letter from H.P. Lovecraft to R.H. Barlowe, Esq. (3 images)

in #artzone6 years ago

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I made this a while ago and I forgot I put it in my Steemit folder. I also forgot I had a Steemit folder.

H.P. Lovecraft is famous not only for being a weird fiction and horror writer (he invented his own sub-genre of horror which has since inspired modern creators like Stephen King, Guillermo del Toro, and Mike Mignola) but he's also well-known as a prolific letter writer. It's been estimated by his biographer, L. Sprague de Camp, that Lovecraft wrote almost 100,000 letters in his life. Another Lovecraft expert, S.T. Joshi, agrees with this incredible number. According to one of his aunts, when Lovecraft died, a partly-finished letter was on his desk.

Lovecraft's circle of correspondence included other pulp fiction writers recognizable today: Clark Ashton Smith, Robert Bloch, and Robert E. Howard--the creator of Conan the Barbarian. Several collection of his letters have been published, and two can be read for free here: http://www.hplovecraft.com/writings/letters/.

To make this fake letter from HPL to RHB, I took a page of cream-colored notebook paper and copied an excerpt from one of his stories. The pen used was a rollerball from the dollar store. I stained the paper with Chinese ink. The same inks were used for the envelope. The vintage-looking picture and stamp were purchased from Michael's.

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The illustration on the letter is based on one of Lovecraft's illustrations of his most infamous creation, Cthulhu:

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(Courtesy Wikipedia.com)