{"id":21709,"date":"2026-03-02T10:00:46","date_gmt":"2026-03-02T15:00:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thepulp.net\/pulpsuperfan\/?p=21709"},"modified":"2026-01-16T09:37:16","modified_gmt":"2026-01-16T14:37:16","slug":"h-p-lovecraft-a-fine-friend","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thepulp.net\/pulpsuperfan\/2026\/03\/02\/h-p-lovecraft-a-fine-friend\/","title":{"rendered":"‘H.P. Lovecraft, A Fine Friend’"},"content":{"rendered":"

When I was reading the recent work by Marcos Legaria<\/a><\/strong> on Robert Barlow<\/a><\/strong>, The Man Who Collected Lovecraft<\/a><\/em>, I read of an incident when the young Barlow had a dealing with another young fan that went sour.\u00a0 And I learned that a book about this fan\u2019s life had been published by one of his sons, as he had been active in early SF fandom, gone into amateur journalism and publishing, and become a correspondent of H.P. Lovecraft<\/a><\/strong> who even published some of his work. So I had to check this out.<\/p>\n

\"H.P.<\/a>H.P. Lovecraft, A Fine Friend: Wilson Shepherd Remembered, 1932\u20131938<\/em> was written by John Camack Shepherd<\/a><\/strong> and published in 2024. It covers about a 10-year period of the life of Wilson Hassell Shepherd Sr.<\/a><\/strong> (1917\u201385), who was born in Alabama and lived there most of his life. We learn about the area he was raised in and a little about his early life. He was an early SF fan, mainly reading it via pulp magazines, and seems to have had an early interest in publishing.<\/p>\n

The \u201cBarlow\u2013Shepherd\u201d affair is covered early on. In this, the two connected via fan letters in pulp magazines, and Barlow was to trade a bound set of Amazing Stories<\/a><\/em> for a complete three-year set of Weird Tales<\/a><\/em>. At the time, the two were about 14 and 15 years old. But it appears that while Barlow upheld his end of the deal, Shepherd didn\u2019t. I have no idea why, nor the reason for the bizarre correspondence. Read and judge for yourself.\u00a0 I was bothered by what is clear to me that Shepherd was in the wrong.<\/p>\n

Around the same time, having obtained his own printing press, Shepherd began publishing his own fanzine<\/a>, soon in partnership with Donald A. Wollheim<\/a><\/strong>, better known as a longtime editor at Ace Books and the founder of DAW Books. The two embarked on a partnership that ran over several years, culminating in the publication of Fanciful Tales of Time and Space<\/em> in 1936, which contained Lovecraft\u2019s \u201cThe Nameless City.\u201d After that, Wollheim continued to publish The Phantagraph<\/em> without Shepherd for several years.<\/p>\n

Shepherd was notable enough in this work to be mentioned in Sam Moskowitz<\/a><\/strong>\u2019s The Immortal Storm<\/em>, a history of SF fandom before 1939. The passage is excerpted in the book.<\/p>\n

Prior to this, Shepherd had started to correspond with Lovecraft (and others) in 1936\u201337. There were a total of 12 letters he received from Lovecraft. These have been included in the Hippocampus Press<\/a> volume H.P. Lovecraft: Letters to Robert Bloch and Others<\/em>, part of their \u201cComplete Letters\u201d series, but they are also all included in this volume, along with a couple of letters from Wilson. He would publish other works by Lovecraft, most notably the first printing of \u201cA History of the Necronomicon\u201d through his own Rebel Press in 1937 or so.<\/p>\n

Also around this time, Shepherd got involved in amateur journalism<\/a>. While I\u2019m not sure if he joined National Amateur Press Association<\/a>, he did join the United<\/a>, but quickly left it to become a charter member (No. 9) of the American Amateur Press Association<\/a> that split off in 1936. While part of AAPA, he published a series of three journals, got a short story published that won an award (included here as well), and had an unsuccessful run for president of the group in 1937.<\/p>\n

And then, around 1939 or so, he dropped out of all of this. Why is not clear. From what I know, he joined the Army and, due to his intelligence, was tapped for intelligence work, but what he did in that area is unclear.<\/p>\n

Coming back after the war, he got into the printing business, which he even did after retiring, but he only briefly rejoined AAPA for a year. He didn\u2019t get reinvolved in science fiction or SF fandom.<\/p>\n

In the late \u201940s, he teamed up with Ray Zorn<\/strong> and put out a handful of zines and talked about doing a book on HPL, but that never happened. In fact, we are told that when he was invited to a local SF convention years later, as he was a notable local figure in early fandom, he went but seemed to view it all as just stuff he did as a kid. This is recounted in the first chapter. He didn\u2019t even keep a complete set of his fanzine and amateur publications.<\/p>\n

Overall, I thought it was an interesting look at this man and what he had done. It\u2019s too bad no one asked him about the \u201cBarlow affair\u201d to get his side of it all.<\/p>\n

This work also includes a lot of other material. In addition to the letters from Lovecraft and reproductions of a couple of Shepherd\u2019s, we get some reprints of his fanzine work (International Science Fiction Guilds Bulletin<\/em>, Vol. 1, #3; Phantagraph<\/em> Vol. 4, #1; Fanciful Tales<\/em>), his amateur work (Rebel<\/em> #1, 2, 3; and The American Free Press<\/em> #1, 2, 3, 4), and the Rebel Press edition of \u201cA History of the Necronomicon.\u201d<\/p>\n

For completists, you can also check out an earlier article by John Shepherd that appeared in the April 2019 issue of The Fossil<\/em>, along with some sidebar articles by Dave Tribby<\/strong> and a follow-up in the following issue.\u00a0 A further article appeared in the January 2025 issue on his war service.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When I was reading the recent work by Marcos Legaria on Robert Barlow, The Man Who Collected Lovecraft, I read of an incident when the young Barlow had a dealing with another young fan that went sour.\u00a0 And I learned that a book about this fan\u2019s life had been published by one of his sons, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":21922,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_has_post_settings":[],"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"The Pulp Super-Fan looks at 'H.P. Lovecraft, A Fine Friend: Wilson Shepherd Remembered, 1932\u20131938.'","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_wp_rev_ctl_limit":""},"categories":[39,135,14],"tags":[1094,426,2390,2491,201,1090,2494,1820,1819,1790,304,2493],"hashtags":[],"class_list":["post-21709","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-non-fiction","category-reprints","category-review","tag-amateur-press-association","tag-amazing-stories","tag-american-amateur-press-association","tag-donald-a-wollheim","tag-h-p-lovecraft","tag-hippocampus-press","tag-john-camack-shepherd","tag-marcos-legaria","tag-robert-barlow","tag-sam-moskowitz","tag-weird-tales","tag-wilson-shepherd"],"pp_statuses_selecting_workflow":false,"pp_workflow_action":"current","pp_status_selection":"publish","jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/thepulp.net\/pulpsuperfan\/files\/2025\/12\/h-p-lovecraft-a-fine-friend-featured.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3eLo8-5E9","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepulp.net\/pulpsuperfan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21709","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepulp.net\/pulpsuperfan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepulp.net\/pulpsuperfan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepulp.net\/pulpsuperfan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepulp.net\/pulpsuperfan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21709"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/thepulp.net\/pulpsuperfan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21709\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":22138,"href":"https:\/\/thepulp.net\/pulpsuperfan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21709\/revisions\/22138"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepulp.net\/pulpsuperfan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/21922"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepulp.net\/pulpsuperfan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21709"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepulp.net\/pulpsuperfan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21709"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepulp.net\/pulpsuperfan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21709"},{"taxonomy":"hashtags","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepulp.net\/pulpsuperfan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/hashtags?post=21709"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}