E. Hoffman Price
Encyclopedia
Edgar Hoffmann Trooper Price (July 3, 1898 – June 18, 1988) was an American writer of popular fiction for the pulp magazine
marketplace. He collaborated with H. P. Lovecraft
on "Through the Gates of the Silver Key
".
.
Originally intending to be a career soldier, Price graduated from the United States Military Academy
at West Point; he served in the American Expeditionary Force
in World War I
, and with the American military in Mexico
and the Philippines
. He was a champion fencer and boxer, an amateur Orientalist
, and a student of the Arabic language
; science-fiction author Jack Williamson
, in his 1984 autobiography Wonder's Child, called E. Hoffmann Price a "real live soldier of fortune."
In his literary career, Hoffmann Price produced fiction for a wide range of publications, from Argosy
to Terror Tales
, from Speed Detective to Spicy Mystery Stories. Yet he was most readily identified as a Weird Tales
writer, one of the group who wrote regularly for editor Farnsworth Wright
, a group that included Lovecraft, Robert E. Howard
, and Clark Ashton Smith
. Price published 24 solo stories in "the Unique Magazine" between 1925 and 1950, plus three collaborations with Otis Adelbert Kline
, and his works with Lovecraft, noted above.
Some of Price's stories aroused controversy; "The Stranger from Kurdistan" (1925), a story which featured a dialogue between Christ
and Satan
, was criticised by some readers as blasphemous,but proved popular with Weird Tales readers. "The Infidel's Daughter" (1927), a satire
on the Ku Klux Klan
, also angered some Southern readers, but Wright defended the story.
Price worked in a range of popular genres, including science fiction, horror, crime, and fantasy; but he was best known for adventure stories with Oriental settings and atmosphere. Unsurprisingly, Price also contributed to Farnsworth Wright's short-lived but fondly-remembered The Magic Carpet
(1930–34), along with Kline, Howard, Smith, and other Weird Tales regulars.
Like many other pulp-fiction writers, Price could not support himself and his family on his income from literature; living in New Orleans in the 1930s, he worked for a time for the Union Carbide Corporation
. Nonetheless he managed to travel widely and maintain friendships with many other pulp writers, including Kline and Edmond Hamilton
. On a trip to Texas in the mid-1930s, Price was the only pulp writer to meet Robert E. Howard
face to face. He was also the only man known to have met Howard and also H.P. Lovecraft and Clark Ashton Smith
(the great 'Triumvirate' of Weird Tales writers in person). Over the course of his long life, Price left significant reminiscences of many significant figures in pulp fiction, Howard, Lovecraft, and Hamilton among them.
Late in life, Price experienced a major literary resurgence; in the 1970s and '80s he issued a series of SF, fantasy, and adventure novels, published in paperback; The Devil Wives of Li Fong (1979) is one noteworthy example. He also had published two anthologies of his pulp stories during hs lifetime--Strange Gateways
and Far Lands, Other Days
.
Price was one of the first speakers at San Francisco's Maltese Falcon Society
in 1981.
He received the World Fantasy Lifetime Achievement Award
in 1984. A collection of his literary memoirs, Book of the Dead: Friends of Yesteryear, Fictioneers & Others, was published posthumously in 2001. His writing friends and colleagues included Richard L. Tierney
, H.P. Lovecraft, August Derleth
, Jack Williamson
, Edmond Hamilton
, Robert E. Howard
, Clark Ashton Smith
, Henry Kuttner
, Seabury Quinn
, Otis Adelbert Kline
, Ralph Milne Farley, Robert Spencer Carr
, and Farnsworth Wright
among others.
Price was a Buddhist and a supporter of the Republican Party
.
He died at Redwood City, California
, in 1988.
" was, after "grave consultation with E. Hoffman Price", rejected by Weird Tales Wright "as not sufficiently clear for the acute minds of his highly intelligent readers".
But when Lovecraft visited New Orleans in June 1932, Howard telegraphed Price to alert him to the visitor's presence, and the two writers spent much of the following week together. The legend is not true that Price took Lovecraft to a New Orleans brothel, where he was amused to find that several of the employees there were fans of his work; the story, apocryphal or not, was first told about Seabury Quinn
.
The two writers did seem to hit it off, beginning a correspondence that continued until Lovecraft's death. They even proposed at one time forming a writing team whose output would, "conservatively estimated, run to a million words a month", in Lovecraft's whimsical prediction. The joint pseudonym proposed for this ambitious collaboration—Etienne Marmaduke de Marigny—was used in slightly altered form for the name of a character in the one story that Lovecraft and Price did collaborate on, "Through the Gates of the Silver Key".
That story had its origins in Price's enthusiasm for an earlier Lovecraft tale. "One of my favorite HPL stories was, and still is, 'The Silver Key
'," Price wrote in a 1944 memoir. "In telling him of the pleasure I had had in rereading it, I suggested a sequel to account for protagonist
Randolph Carter
's doings after his disappearance." After convincing an apparently reluctant Lovecraft to agree to collaborate on such a sequel, Price wrote a 6,000-word draft in August 1932; in April 1933, Lovecraft produced a 14,000-word version that left unchanged, by Price's estimate, "fewer than fifty of my original words," though An H. P. Lovecraft Encyclopedia
reports that Lovecraft "kept as many of Price's conceptions as possible, as well as some of his language."
In any case, Price was pleased with the result, writing that Lovecraft "was right of course in discarding all but the basic outline. I could only marvel that he had made so much of my inadequate and bungling start." The story appeared under both authors' bylines in the July 1934 issue of Weird Tales; Price's draft was published as "The Lord of Illusion" in Crypt of Cthulhu
No. 10 in 1982.
Price visited Lovecraft in Providence in the summer of 1933; when he and a mutual friend showed up at Lovecraft's house with a six-pack of beer, the teetotaling Lovecraft is said to have remarked, "And what are you going to do with so much of it?"
Pulp magazine
Pulp magazines , also collectively known as pulp fiction, refers to inexpensive fiction magazines published from 1896 through the 1950s. The typical pulp magazine was seven inches wide by ten inches high, half an inch thick, and 128 pages long...
marketplace. He collaborated with H. P. Lovecraft
H. P. Lovecraft
Howard Phillips Lovecraft --often credited as H.P. Lovecraft — was an American author of horror, fantasy and science fiction, especially the subgenre known as weird fiction....
on "Through the Gates of the Silver Key
Through the Gates of the Silver Key
"Through the Gates of the Silver Key" is a short story co-written by H. P. Lovecraft and E. Hoffmann Price between October 1932 and April 1933. A sequel to Lovecraft's "The Silver Key", and part of a sequence of stories focusing on Randolph Carter, it was first published in the July 1934 issue of...
".
Biography
Price was born at Fowler, CaliforniaFowler, California
Fowler is a city in Fresno County, California, United States. It is located within the San Joaquin Valley. It has a strong agricultural community, with lush grape vineyards and expansive farmland. Fowler is located southeast of downtown Fresno, at an elevation of 308 feet...
.
Originally intending to be a career soldier, Price graduated from the United States Military Academy
United States Military Academy
The United States Military Academy at West Point is a four-year coeducational federal service academy located at West Point, New York. The academy sits on scenic high ground overlooking the Hudson River, north of New York City...
at West Point; he served in the American Expeditionary Force
American Expeditionary Force
The American Expeditionary Forces or AEF were the United States Armed Forces sent to Europe in World War I. During the United States campaigns in World War I the AEF fought in France alongside British and French allied forces in the last year of the war, against Imperial German forces...
in World War I
World War I
World War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...
, and with the American military in Mexico
Mexico
The United Mexican States , commonly known as Mexico , is a federal constitutional republic in North America. It is bordered on the north by the United States; on the south and west by the Pacific Ocean; on the southeast by Guatemala, Belize, and the Caribbean Sea; and on the east by the Gulf of...
and the Philippines
Philippines
The Philippines , officially known as the Republic of the Philippines , is a country in Southeast Asia in the western Pacific Ocean. To its north across the Luzon Strait lies Taiwan. West across the South China Sea sits Vietnam...
. He was a champion fencer and boxer, an amateur Orientalist
Oriental studies
Oriental studies is the academic field of study that embraces Near Eastern and Far Eastern societies and cultures, languages, peoples, history and archaeology; in recent years the subject has often been turned into the newer terms of Asian studies and Middle Eastern studies...
, and a student of the Arabic language
Arabic language
Arabic is a name applied to the descendants of the Classical Arabic language of the 6th century AD, used most prominently in the Quran, the Islamic Holy Book...
; science-fiction author Jack Williamson
Jack Williamson
John Stewart Williamson , who wrote as Jack Williamson was a U.S. writer often referred to as the "Dean of Science Fiction" following the death in 1988 of Robert A...
, in his 1984 autobiography Wonder's Child, called E. Hoffmann Price a "real live soldier of fortune."
In his literary career, Hoffmann Price produced fiction for a wide range of publications, from Argosy
Argosy (magazine)
Argosy was an American pulp magazine, published by Frank Munsey. It is generally considered to be the first American pulp magazine. The magazine began as a general information periodical entitled The Golden Argosy, targeted at the boys adventure market.-Launch of Argosy:In late September 1882,...
to Terror Tales
Terror Tales
Terror Tales was a long-running American pulp magazine of the horror comics and weird menace genres. It was originally published by Popular Publications. The first issue was published in September 1934...
, from Speed Detective to Spicy Mystery Stories. Yet he was most readily identified as a Weird Tales
Weird Tales
Weird Tales is an American fantasy and horror fiction pulp magazine first published in March 1923. It ceased its original run in September 1954, after 279 issues, but has since been revived. The magazine was set up in Chicago by J. C. Henneberger, an ex-journalist with a taste for the macabre....
writer, one of the group who wrote regularly for editor Farnsworth Wright
Farnsworth Wright
Farnsworth Wright was the editor of the pulp magazine Weird Tales during the magazine's heyday.He was born in California, and educated in the University of Nevada and the University of Washington....
, a group that included Lovecraft, Robert E. Howard
Robert E. Howard
Robert Ervin Howard was an American author who wrote pulp fiction in a diverse range of genres. Best known for his character Conan the Barbarian, he is regarded as the father of the sword and sorcery subgenre....
, and Clark Ashton Smith
Clark Ashton Smith
Clark Ashton Smith was a self-educated American poet, sculptor, painter and author of fantasy, horror and science fiction short stories. He achieved early local recognition, largely through the enthusiasm of George Sterling, for traditional verse in the vein of Swinburne...
. Price published 24 solo stories in "the Unique Magazine" between 1925 and 1950, plus three collaborations with Otis Adelbert Kline
Otis Adelbert Kline
Otis Adelbert Kline born in Chicago, Illinois, USA, was an adventure novelist and literary agent during the pulp era. Much of his work first appeared in the magazine Weird Tales. Kline was an amateur orientalist and a student of Arabic, like his friend and sometime collaborator, E...
, and his works with Lovecraft, noted above.
Some of Price's stories aroused controversy; "The Stranger from Kurdistan" (1925), a story which featured a dialogue between Christ
Christ
Christ is the English term for the Greek meaning "the anointed one". It is a translation of the Hebrew , usually transliterated into English as Messiah or Mashiach...
and Satan
Satan
Satan , "the opposer", is the title of various entities, both human and divine, who challenge the faith of humans in the Hebrew Bible...
, was criticised by some readers as blasphemous,but proved popular with Weird Tales readers. "The Infidel's Daughter" (1927), a satire
Satire
Satire is primarily a literary genre or form, although in practice it can also be found in the graphic and performing arts. In satire, vices, follies, abuses, and shortcomings are held up to ridicule, ideally with the intent of shaming individuals, and society itself, into improvement...
on the Ku Klux Klan
Ku Klux Klan
Ku Klux Klan, often abbreviated KKK and informally known as the Klan, is the name of three distinct past and present far-right organizations in the United States, which have advocated extremist reactionary currents such as white supremacy, white nationalism, and anti-immigration, historically...
, also angered some Southern readers, but Wright defended the story.
Price worked in a range of popular genres, including science fiction, horror, crime, and fantasy; but he was best known for adventure stories with Oriental settings and atmosphere. Unsurprisingly, Price also contributed to Farnsworth Wright's short-lived but fondly-remembered The Magic Carpet
Oriental Stories
Oriental Stories, later retitled The Magic Carpet Magazine, was a pulp magazine of 1930-34, an offshoot of the famous Weird Tales....
(1930–34), along with Kline, Howard, Smith, and other Weird Tales regulars.
Like many other pulp-fiction writers, Price could not support himself and his family on his income from literature; living in New Orleans in the 1930s, he worked for a time for the Union Carbide Corporation
Union Carbide
Union Carbide Corporation is a wholly owned subsidiary of The Dow Chemical Company. It currently employs more than 2,400 people. Union Carbide primarily produces chemicals and polymers that undergo one or more further conversions by customers before reaching consumers. Some are high-volume...
. Nonetheless he managed to travel widely and maintain friendships with many other pulp writers, including Kline and Edmond Hamilton
Edmond Hamilton
Edmond Moore Hamilton was an American author of science fiction stories and novels during the mid-twentieth century. Born in Youngstown, Ohio, he was raised there and in nearby New Castle, Pennsylvania...
. On a trip to Texas in the mid-1930s, Price was the only pulp writer to meet Robert E. Howard
Robert E. Howard
Robert Ervin Howard was an American author who wrote pulp fiction in a diverse range of genres. Best known for his character Conan the Barbarian, he is regarded as the father of the sword and sorcery subgenre....
face to face. He was also the only man known to have met Howard and also H.P. Lovecraft and Clark Ashton Smith
Clark Ashton Smith
Clark Ashton Smith was a self-educated American poet, sculptor, painter and author of fantasy, horror and science fiction short stories. He achieved early local recognition, largely through the enthusiasm of George Sterling, for traditional verse in the vein of Swinburne...
(the great 'Triumvirate' of Weird Tales writers in person). Over the course of his long life, Price left significant reminiscences of many significant figures in pulp fiction, Howard, Lovecraft, and Hamilton among them.
Late in life, Price experienced a major literary resurgence; in the 1970s and '80s he issued a series of SF, fantasy, and adventure novels, published in paperback; The Devil Wives of Li Fong (1979) is one noteworthy example. He also had published two anthologies of his pulp stories during hs lifetime--Strange Gateways
Strange Gateways
Strange Gateways is a collection of stories by author E. Hoffmann Price. It was released in 1967 by Arkham House in an edition of 2,007 copies...
and Far Lands, Other Days
Far Lands, Other Days
Far Lands, Other Days is a collection of fantasy, horror and mystery short stories by author E. Hoffmann Price. It was released in 1975 by Carcosa in an edition of 2,593 copies of which 615 copies, that were pre-ordered, were signed by the author and artist...
.
Price was one of the first speakers at San Francisco's Maltese Falcon Society
Maltese Falcon Society
The Maltese Falcon Society is an organization for admirers of Dashiell Hammett, his novel The Maltese Falcon, and hardboiled mystery books and writers in general. Founded in San Francisco in 1981, the organization is no longer active in the United States; however, a chapter in Japan has been active...
in 1981.
He received the World Fantasy Lifetime Achievement Award
World Fantasy Award for Life Achievement
This World Fantasy Award is presented to individuals for their outstanding service to the fantasy field, and decided by a panel of judges at the World Fantasy Convention.-1984:* L. Sprague de Camp* Richard Matheson* E. Hoffmann Price* Jack Vance* Donald Wandrei...
in 1984. A collection of his literary memoirs, Book of the Dead: Friends of Yesteryear, Fictioneers & Others, was published posthumously in 2001. His writing friends and colleagues included Richard L. Tierney
Richard L. Tierney
Richard L. Tierney is an American writer, poet and scholar of H. P. Lovecraft. He is the coauthor of a series of Red Sonja novels, featuring cover art by Boris Vallejo. Some of his standalone novels utilize the mythology of Lovecraft's Cthulhu Mythos.-Youth:Tierney was born in Spencer, Iowa...
, H.P. Lovecraft, August Derleth
August Derleth
August William Derleth was an American writer and anthologist. Though best remembered as the first publisher of the writings of H. P...
, Jack Williamson
Jack Williamson
John Stewart Williamson , who wrote as Jack Williamson was a U.S. writer often referred to as the "Dean of Science Fiction" following the death in 1988 of Robert A...
, Edmond Hamilton
Edmond Hamilton
Edmond Moore Hamilton was an American author of science fiction stories and novels during the mid-twentieth century. Born in Youngstown, Ohio, he was raised there and in nearby New Castle, Pennsylvania...
, Robert E. Howard
Robert E. Howard
Robert Ervin Howard was an American author who wrote pulp fiction in a diverse range of genres. Best known for his character Conan the Barbarian, he is regarded as the father of the sword and sorcery subgenre....
, Clark Ashton Smith
Clark Ashton Smith
Clark Ashton Smith was a self-educated American poet, sculptor, painter and author of fantasy, horror and science fiction short stories. He achieved early local recognition, largely through the enthusiasm of George Sterling, for traditional verse in the vein of Swinburne...
, Henry Kuttner
Henry Kuttner
Henry Kuttner was an American author of science fiction, fantasy and horror.-Early life:Henry Kuttner was born in Los Angeles, California in 1915...
, Seabury Quinn
Seabury Quinn
Seabury Grandin Quinn was an American pulp magazine author, most famous for his stories of the occult detective Jules de Grandin, published in Weird Tales.-Biography:...
, Otis Adelbert Kline
Otis Adelbert Kline
Otis Adelbert Kline born in Chicago, Illinois, USA, was an adventure novelist and literary agent during the pulp era. Much of his work first appeared in the magazine Weird Tales. Kline was an amateur orientalist and a student of Arabic, like his friend and sometime collaborator, E...
, Ralph Milne Farley, Robert Spencer Carr
Robert Spencer Carr
Robert Spencer Carr was an American writer of science fiction and fantasy. He sold his first story to Weird Tales at age 15. At age 17 his novel, The Rampant Age, became a bestseller resulting in a movie contract...
, and Farnsworth Wright
Farnsworth Wright
Farnsworth Wright was the editor of the pulp magazine Weird Tales during the magazine's heyday.He was born in California, and educated in the University of Nevada and the University of Washington....
among others.
Price was a Buddhist and a supporter of the Republican Party
Republican Party (United States)
The Republican Party is one of the two major contemporary political parties in the United States, along with the Democratic Party. Founded by anti-slavery expansion activists in 1854, it is often called the GOP . The party's platform generally reflects American conservatism in the U.S...
.
He died at Redwood City, California
Redwood City, California
Redwood City is a California charter city located on the San Francisco Peninsula in Northern California, approximately 27 miles south of San Francisco, and 24 miles north of San Jose. Redwood City's history spans from its earliest inhabitation by the Ohlone people, to its tradition as a port for...
, in 1988.
H.P. Lovecraft
Price's relationship with H. P. Lovecraft did not get off to an auspicious start; in a 1927 letter, Lovecraft remarked that his story "The Strange High House in the MistThe Strange High House in the Mist
"The Strange High House in the Mist" is a short story by H. P. Lovecraft. Written on November 9, 1926, it was first published in the October 1931 issue of Weird Tales.-Inspiration:An H. P...
" was, after "grave consultation with E. Hoffman Price", rejected by Weird Tales Wright "as not sufficiently clear for the acute minds of his highly intelligent readers".
But when Lovecraft visited New Orleans in June 1932, Howard telegraphed Price to alert him to the visitor's presence, and the two writers spent much of the following week together. The legend is not true that Price took Lovecraft to a New Orleans brothel, where he was amused to find that several of the employees there were fans of his work; the story, apocryphal or not, was first told about Seabury Quinn
Seabury Quinn
Seabury Grandin Quinn was an American pulp magazine author, most famous for his stories of the occult detective Jules de Grandin, published in Weird Tales.-Biography:...
.
The two writers did seem to hit it off, beginning a correspondence that continued until Lovecraft's death. They even proposed at one time forming a writing team whose output would, "conservatively estimated, run to a million words a month", in Lovecraft's whimsical prediction. The joint pseudonym proposed for this ambitious collaboration—Etienne Marmaduke de Marigny—was used in slightly altered form for the name of a character in the one story that Lovecraft and Price did collaborate on, "Through the Gates of the Silver Key".
That story had its origins in Price's enthusiasm for an earlier Lovecraft tale. "One of my favorite HPL stories was, and still is, 'The Silver Key
The Silver Key
"The Silver Key" is a short story written by H. P. Lovecraft in 1926, considered part of his Dreamlands series. It was first published in the January 1929 issue of Weird Tales. It was followed by a sequel, "Through the Gates of the Silver Key", co-written with E...
'," Price wrote in a 1944 memoir. "In telling him of the pleasure I had had in rereading it, I suggested a sequel to account for protagonist
Protagonist
A protagonist is the main character of a literary, theatrical, cinematic, or musical narrative, around whom the events of the narrative's plot revolve and with whom the audience is intended to most identify...
Randolph Carter
Randolph Carter
Randolph Carter is a recurring protagonist in H. P. Lovecraft'sfiction and a thinly disguised alter ego of Lovecraft himself. The first tale in which Carter appears--"The Statement of Randolph Carter" --is based on one of Lovecraft's dreams....
's doings after his disappearance." After convincing an apparently reluctant Lovecraft to agree to collaborate on such a sequel, Price wrote a 6,000-word draft in August 1932; in April 1933, Lovecraft produced a 14,000-word version that left unchanged, by Price's estimate, "fewer than fifty of my original words," though An H. P. Lovecraft Encyclopedia
An H. P. Lovecraft Encyclopedia
An H. P. Lovecraft Encyclopedia is a reference work written by S. T. Joshi and David E. Schultz. It covers the life and work of American horror fiction writer H. P...
reports that Lovecraft "kept as many of Price's conceptions as possible, as well as some of his language."
In any case, Price was pleased with the result, writing that Lovecraft "was right of course in discarding all but the basic outline. I could only marvel that he had made so much of my inadequate and bungling start." The story appeared under both authors' bylines in the July 1934 issue of Weird Tales; Price's draft was published as "The Lord of Illusion" in Crypt of Cthulhu
Crypt of Cthulhu
Crypt of Cthulhu was a fanzine devoted to the writings of H. P. Lovecraft and the Cthulhu Mythos. It was published as part of the Esoteric Order of Dagon mailing lists for a short time, and was formally established in 1981 by Robert M...
No. 10 in 1982.
Price visited Lovecraft in Providence in the summer of 1933; when he and a mutual friend showed up at Lovecraft's house with a six-pack of beer, the teetotaling Lovecraft is said to have remarked, "And what are you going to do with so much of it?"
Science fiction
- Operation Misfit (1980)
- Operation Longlife (1983)
- Operation Exile (1985)
- Operation Isis (1986)
Collections
- Strange GatewaysStrange GatewaysStrange Gateways is a collection of stories by author E. Hoffmann Price. It was released in 1967 by Arkham House in an edition of 2,007 copies...
(1967) - Far Lands, Other DaysFar Lands, Other DaysFar Lands, Other Days is a collection of fantasy, horror and mystery short stories by author E. Hoffmann Price. It was released in 1975 by Carcosa in an edition of 2,593 copies of which 615 copies, that were pre-ordered, were signed by the author and artist...
(1975) - Three Cliff Cragin Stories (1987)
- Satan's Daughter and Other Tales from the Pulps (2004)
- Valley of the Tall Gods and Other Tales from the Pulps (2006)
Nonfiction
- The Weird Tales Story (1999)
- Book of the Dead: Friends of Yesteryear, Fictioneers and OthersBook of the Dead (memoir)Book of the Dead: Friends of Yesteryear: Fictioneers & Others is a collection of memoirs by author E. Hoffmann Price. It was published in 2001 by Arkham House in an edition of approximately 4,000 copies. The book contains memoirs of several writers of the pulp magazine era...
(2001)