Autograph Postcard, signed (“HP”), to Howard Wandrei, raving about the beauty of Nantucket

Nantucket, 1934. Picture postcard of Stone Alley, Nantucket, postmarked Nantucket 30 Aug 1934. 27 lines, approx. 125 words. 1 vols. 3-1/2 x 5-1/2 inches. Fine. Picture postcard of Stone Alley, Nantucket, postmarked Nantucket 30 Aug 1934. 27 lines, approx. 125 words. 1 vols. 3-1/2 x 5-1/2 inches. A wonder-filled postcard from H.P. Lovecraft to artist and writer Howard Wandrei. Reading in part:
Greetings from the quaintest spot in N. America! And only 90 m. from Providence — & to think I never saw it before […] Whole tangles of cobblestoned streets with nothing but colonial houses on either side — narrow lanes — ancient belfries — picturesque (truncated) waterfront — Nothng is lacking. […] Also took sightseeing ’bus trip over entire island, with a stop permitting a good stroll through the flower-sown lanes of ancient Siasconset — a fishing village now forming a summer resort […]

Lovecraft loved the architecture of colonial America wherever he glimpsed it, in his native Providence, elsewhere in New England, its vestiges in New York, and in South Carolina. “Nantucket is an utterly marvellous place.” The week in late August and early September was the first time he visited the island. He wrote a brief memoir, “The Unknown City in the Ocean” (published in an amareur journal, The Perspective Review, for Winter 1934). Joshi notes he wrote several of his correspondents from the island and cites similar phrases from a note to E. Hoffman Price.

Howard Wandrei (1909-1956) was an American artist, chiefly illustration art, younger brother of Donald Wandrei, and a fellow Weird Tales author whom Lovecraft befriended in late 1933; they exchanged a regular correspondence for the remainder of Lovecraft’s life.

AN EXUBERANT LOVECRAFT POSTCARD. S.T. Joshi, I Am Providence, 2:886-7. Provenance: Peter H. Cannon (Inventory #: 369362)