Editing Robert Bloch (section)

===''Weird Tales'' magazine and the influence of H. P. Lovecraft===
During the 1930s, Bloch was an avid reader of the pulp magazine ''[[Weird Tales]]'', which he had discovered at the age of ten in 1927. In the Chicago Northwestern Railroad depot with his parents and aunt Lil, his aunt offered to buy him any magazine he wanted and he picked ''Weird Tales'' (Aug 1927 issue) off the newsstand over her shocked protest.<ref name="Graeme Flanagan 1979, pp. 6-12"/><ref>"Robert Bloch's Acceptance Speech" (for Lifetime Achievement) in Gahan Wilson (ed). ''First World Fantasy Awards''. NY: Doubleday, 1977, p. 47</ref><ref>Robert Bloch. ''Once Around the Bloch: An Unauthorised Autobiography'' NY: Tor Books, 1993, pp. 46-47.</ref> He began his readings of the magazine with the first instalment of [[Otis Adelbert Kline]]'s "The Bride of Osiris" which dealt with a secret Egyptian city called Karneter located beneath Bloch's birth city of [[Chicago]].<ref>Robert Bloch, "The Searcher After Horror". ''World Fantasy 1983: Sixty Years of Weird Tales'' (convention program book), p. 15</ref> The Depression came in the early 1930s. He later recalled, in accepting the Lifetime Achievement Award at the First World Fantasy Convention (1975), how "times were very hard. ''Weird Tales'' cost twenty-five cents in a day when most pulp magazines cost a dime. I remember that meant a lot to me." He went on to relate how he would get up very early on the last day of the month, with twenty-five cents saved from his monthly allowance of one dollar, and would run all the way to a combination tobacco/magazine store and buy the new ''Weird Tales'' issue, sometimes smuggling it home under his coat if the cover was particularly risqué.<ref>"Robert Bloch's Acceptance Speech" (for Lifetime Achievement) in Gahan Wilson (ed). ''First World Fantasy Awards''. NY: Doubleday, 1977, pp. 48-49</ref> His parents were not impressed with [[Hugh Doak Rankin]]'s sexy covers for the magazine, and when the Bloch family moved to Milwaukee in 1928 young Bloch gradually abandoned his interest. But by the time he had entered high school, he returned to reading ''Weird Tales'' during convalescence from flu.<ref name="Graeme Flanagan 1979, pp. 6-12"/>

[[File:H. P. Lovecraft in Florida, June 1934.png|thumb|upright|left|alt=R. H. Barlow's photo of H. P. Lovecraft, facing right|H. P. Lovecraft in June 1934]]

[[H. P. Lovecraft]], a frequent contributor to ''Weird Tales'', became one of his favorite writers. The first of Lovecraft's stories he had read was "[[Pickman's Model]]", in ''Weird Tales'' for October 1927.<ref name="Robert Bloch 1993, pp. 49">Robert Bloch. ''Once Around the Bloch: An Unauthorised Autobiography'' NY: Tor Books, 1993, p. 49.</ref> Bloch wrote: "In school I was forced to squirm my way through the works of [[Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr.|Oliver Wendell Holmes]], [[James Russell Lowell|James Lowell]] and [[Henry Wadsworth Longfellow]]. In 'Pickman's Model', the ghouls ate all three. Now that, I decided, was poetic justice."<ref name="Robert Bloch 1993, pp. 49"/> As a teenager, Bloch wrote a fan letter to Lovecraft (1933), asking where he could find copies of earlier stories of Lovecraft's that Bloch had missed.<ref>Robert Bloch. ''Once Around the Bloch: An Unauthorised Autobiography'' NY: Tor Books, 1993, pp. 64-65.</ref> Lovecraft lent them to him. Lovecraft also gave Bloch advice on his early fiction-writing efforts,<ref name=Haining>{{cite book |last=Haining |first=Peter |title=The Fantastic Pulps |year=1975 |publisher=[[Victor Gollancz Ltd]] |isbn=0-575-02000-8}}</ref> asking whether Bloch had written any weird work and, if so, whether he might see samples of it. Bloch took up Lovecraft's offer in late April 1933, sending him two short items, "The Gallows" and another work whose title is unknown.<ref>S. T. Joshi, "A Literary Tutelage: Robert Bloch and H. P. Lovecraft". ''Studies in Weird Fiction'' No 16 (Winter 1995): 13-25; in Joshi's ''The Evolution of the Weird Tale''. NY: Hippocampus Press, 2004, pp. 107-23; in Joshi's ''Lovecraft and a World in Transition: Collected Essays on H. P. Lovecraft''. NY: Hippocampus Press, 2014, 548-565.</ref>

Lovecraft also suggested Bloch write to other members of the Lovecraft Circle, including [[August Derleth]], [[R. H. Barlow]], [[Clark Ashton Smith]], [[Donald Wandrei]], [[Frank Belknap Long]], [[Henry S. Whitehead]], [[E. Hoffmann Price]], [[Bernard Austin Dwyer]] and [[J. Vernon Shea]]. Bloch's first completed tales were "Lilies", "The Laughter of a Young Ghoul" and "The Black Lotus". Bloch submitted these to ''Weird Tales''; editor Farnsworth Wright summarily rejected them all. However Bloch successfully placed "Lilies" in the semi-professional magazine ''Marvel Tales'' (Winter 1934) and "Black Lotus" in ''[[Unusual Stories]]'' (1935). Bloch later commented, "I figured I'd better do something different or I'd end up as a florist."<ref>"Robert Bloch's Acceptance Speech" (for Lifetime Achievement) in Gahan Wilson (ed). ''First World Fantasy Awards.'' NY: Doubleday, 1977, p. 50</ref>

Bloch graduated from high school in June 1934. He then wrote a story which promptly (six weeks later) sold to ''Weird Tales.'' Bloch's first publication in ''Weird Tales'' was a letter criticising the [[Conan the Barbarian|Conan]] stories of [[Robert E. Howard]]. His first professional sales, at the age of 17 (July 1934), to ''Weird Tales,'' were the short stories "The Feast in the Abbey" and "The Secret in the Tomb". "Feast ..." appeared first, in the January 1935 issue,<ref>{{cite web |url= http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?59533 |author= Von Ruff, Al |title= Bibliography: The Feast in the Abbey |website= isfdb.org |publisher= [[Internet Speculative Fiction Database]] |access-date= October 8, 2013}}</ref> which actually went on sale November 1, 1934; "The Secret in the Tomb" appeared in the May 1935 ''Weird Tales''.<ref>{{cite web |url= http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?63765 |author= Von Ruff, Al |title= Bibliography: The Secret in the Tomb |website= isfdb.org |publisher= [[Internet Speculative Fiction Database]] |access-date= October 8, 2013}}</ref>

Bloch's correspondence with Derleth led to a visit to Derleth's home in Sauk City, Wisconsin (the headquarters of [[Arkham House]]).<ref>Robert Bloch. ''Once Around the Bloch: An Unauthorised Autobiography'' NY: Tor Books, 1993, p. 80.</ref> Bloch was impressed by Derleth who "fulfilled my expectations as a writer by wearing this purple velvet smoking jacket. That impressed me even more because Derleth didn't even smoke."<ref>"Robert Bloch's Acceptance Speech" (for Lifetime Achievement) in Gahan Wilson (ed). ''First World Fantasy Awards.'' NY: Doubleday, 1977, pp. 48-49</ref> Following this, and continued correspondence with Lovecraft, Bloch went to Chicago and met [[Farnsworth Wright]], the then editor of ''Weird Tales''. He also met the first ''Weird Tales'' writer outside of Derleth he had encountered - [[Otto Binder]].<ref>"Robert Bloch's Acceptance Speech" (for Lifetime Achievement) in Gahan Wilson (ed). ''First World Fantasy Awards.'' NY: Doubleday, 1977, p. 49</ref>

Bloch's early stories were strongly influenced by Lovecraft. Indeed, a number of his stories were set in, and extended, the world of Lovecraft's [[Cthulhu Mythos]]. These include "The Dark Demon", in which the character Gordon is a figuration of Lovecraft, and which features [[Nyarlathotep]]; "The Faceless God" (features Nyarlathotep); "The Grinning Ghoul" (written after the manner of Lovecraft) and "The Unspeakable Betrothal" (vaguely attached to the Cthulhu Mythos). It was Bloch who invented, for example, the oft-cited Mythos texts ''[[De Vermis Mysteriis]]'' and ''[[Cthulhu Mythos arcane literature#Cultes des Goules|Cultes des Goules]]''. Many other stories influenced by Lovecraft were later collected in Bloch's volume ''Mysteries of the Worm'' (now in its third, expanded edition). In 1935, Bloch wrote the tale "Satan's Servants", on which Lovecraft lent much advice, but none of the prose was by Lovecraft; this tale did not appear in print until 1949, in ''[[Something About Cats and Other Pieces]]''.

The young Bloch appears, thinly disguised, as the character [[Robert Harrison Blake|Robert Blake]] in Lovecraft's story "[[The Haunter of the Dark]]" (1936), which is dedicated to Bloch. Bloch was the only individual to whom Lovecraft ever dedicated a story.{{Citation needed|date=January 2012}} In this story, Lovecraft kills off Robert Blake, the Bloch-based character, repaying a "courtesy" Bloch earlier paid Lovecraft with his 1935 tale "[[The Shambler from the Stars (Short Story)|The Shambler from the Stars]]", in which the Lovecraft-inspired figure dies; the story goes so far as to use Bloch's then-current address (620 East Knapp Street) in Milwaukee.<ref>{{cite web |url= http://blog.loa.org/2010/09/what-robert-bloch-owes-to-h-p-lovecraft.html |author= [[Library of America]] |date= September 23, 2010 |title= What Robert Bloch owes to H. P. Lovecraft |publisher= Reader's Almanac: The Official Blog of the [[Library of America]] |access-date= October 8, 2013}}</ref> (Bloch even had a signed certificate from Lovecraft [and some of his creations] giving Bloch permission to kill Lovecraft off in a story.) Bloch later recalled "believe me, beyond all doubt, I don't know anyone else I'd rather be killed by."<ref name="Robert Bloch 1977, p. 51">"Robert Bloch's Acceptance Speech" (for Lifetime Achievement) in Gahan Wilson (ed). ''First World Fantasy Awards.'' NY: Doubleday, 1977, p. 51</ref> Bloch later wrote a third tale, "The Shadow From the Steeple", picking up where "The Haunter of the Dark" finished (''Weird Tales'' Sept 1950).

Lovecraft's death in 1937 deeply affected Bloch, who was then aged only 20. He recalled "Part of me died with him, I guess, not only because he was not a god, he was mortal, that is true, but because he had so little recognition in his own lifetime. There were no novels or collections published, no great realization, even here in Providence, of what was lost."<ref name="Robert Bloch 1977, p. 51"/> Elsewhere he wrote, "the news of his fate came to me as a shattering blow; all the more so because the world at large ignored his passing. Only my parents and a few correspondents seemed to sense my shock, and my feeling that a part of me had died with him."

After Lovecraft's death in 1937, Bloch continued writing for ''Weird Tales'', where he became one of its most popular authors. He also began contributing to other pulps, such as the science fiction magazine ''[[Amazing Stories]]''. Bloch broadened the scope of his fiction. His horror themes included [[Haitian Vodou|voodoo]] ("Mother of Serpents"), the [[conte cruel]] ("The Mandarin's Canaries"), [[demonic possession]] ("Fiddler's Fee"), and [[black magic]] ("Return to the Sabbat"). Bloch visited [[Henry Kuttner]] in California in 1937. Bloch's first science fiction story, "Secret of the Observatory", was published in ''Amazing Stories'' (August 1938).