Dear A. W.:—
Your novelette The Early Years [the initial draft of the novel which was to become Evening in Spring] duly came, and I have read it with the closest attention. Truly, it is a splendid piece of work…. I knew from your isolated fragments that you had the real stuff of literature at your command; but now that I see some of these arranged in a proper organic relationship, my opinion takes an additional upward soaring! There is profound and subtle beauty, splendidly modulated, in this sequence of dream-glamourous pictures. You have a keen and sensitively selective eye for details and sensations and images, as indeed I realised before. Now I see that you are equally felicitous in arranging these things in a significant, revelatory, and aesthetically satisfying form. It seems to me that you are coming to handle words and sentences more and more skilfully and adequately—you will recall my mentioning, in years past, that carelessness in this field … was one result of your over-voluminous writing which ought to be corrected a bit. Time, I imagine, is supplying this correction—for this novelette has passages of beautiful and musical language as well as of poignant imagery and convincing emotion. There is no mistaking the right of this piece to be considered as serious literary expression. (pp. 141-42)
This is a free excerpt of 219 words. There are 543 words (approx.
2 pages at 300 words per page) in the full critical essay.
Read the rest of this Criticism with our Derleth, August (William) 1909–1971: Critical Essay by H P [h. P. Lovecraft] Access Pass.
