Editing Frank Belknap Long (section)

==Biography==
===Early life===
He was born in [[Manhattan]], New York City on April 27, 1901.<ref>Peter Cannon. "Frank Belknap Long: When Was he Born and Why Was Lovecraft Wrong?" Studies in Weird Fiction 17 (Summer 1995): 33-34.</ref> He grew up in the [[Harlem]] area of Manhattan. His father was a prosperous dentist and his mother was [[May Doty]]. The family resided at 823 [[West End Avenue]] in Manhattan. Long's father was a keen fisher and hunter, and Long accompanied the family on annual summer vacations from the age of six months to 17, usually in the [[Thousand Islands]] region on the Canadian shore, about seven miles from the village of [[Gananoque]]. When he was three years old, on one of these vacations, Long fell into the river at the end of a long pier and contracted pneumonia<ref>Frank Belknap Long, ''Autobiographical Memoir''. West Warwick, RI: Necronomicon Press, 198, pp3-06</ref>

A lifelong resident of New York City, Long was educated in the [[New York City Department of Education|New York City public school system]]. As a boy he was fascinated by [[natural history]], and wrote that he dreamed of running "away from home and explore the great [[rain forest]]s of the [[Amazon Basin|Amazon]]." He developed his interest in the weird by reading the [[The Wonderful Wizard of Oz|Oz]] books, [[Jules Verne]], and [[H.G. Wells]] as well as [[Ambrose Bierce]] and [[Edgar Allan Poe]]. Though writing was to be his life's work, he once commented that as "important as writing is, I could have been completely happy if I had a secure position in a field that has always had a tremendous emotion and an imaginative appeal for me&mdash;that of natural history."

In his late teens, he was active in the United [[Amateur Press Association]] (UAPA) in which he won a prize from ''The Boy's World'' (around 1919) and thus discovered amateur journalism. His first published tale was "Dr Whitlock's Price (''United Amateur'', March 1920). Long's story "The Eye Above the Mantel" (1921), a pastiche of [[Edgar Allan Poe]], in UAPA, caught the eye of [[H. P. Lovecraft]], sparking a friendship and correspondence that would endure until Lovecraft's death in 1937.

Long attended [[New York University]] from 1920 to 1921, studying [[journalism]] but later transferred to Columbia, leaving without a degree. In 1921, he suffered a severe attack of [[appendicitis]], leading to a [[ruptured appendix]] and [[peritonitis]]. He spent a month in New York's [[Roosevelt Hospital]], where he came close to dying. Long's brush with death propelled him into a decision that he would leave college to pursue a [[freelance writing]] career.

===Early career: the 1920s===

In 1924, at the age of 22, he sold his first short story, "The Desert Lich", to ''[[Weird Tales]]'' magazine. Throughout the next four decades, Long was to be a frequent contributor to pulp magazines, including two of the most famous: ''Weird Tales'' (under editor [[Farnsworth Wright]]) and ''[[Astounding Science Fiction]]'' (under editor [[John W. Campbell]]). Long was an active freelance writer, also publishing many non-fiction articles.
[[File:Weird tales 192412.jpg|thumb|Long's second ''[[Weird Tales]]'' story, "Deadly Waters", was featured on the cover of the December 1924 issue.]]

His first book, the scarce volume ''A Man from Genoa and Other Poems'', was published in 1926 by [[W. Paul Cook]]. Two copies are held in the collections of [[John Hay Library]].<ref>{{Cite book|url=https://search.library.brown.edu/catalog/b1568671|title=A man from Genoa and other poems|first=Frank Belknap|last=Long|date=July 21, 1926|publisher=Published by W. Paul Cook, The Recluse Press}}</ref>  The poems in this collection won praise from a great variety of writers, among them [[Arthur Machen]], [[Robinson Jeffers]], [[William Ellery Leonard]], [[John Drinkwater (playwright)|John Drinkwater]], [[John Masefield]] and [[George Sterling]].<ref name="autogenerated1946">Jacket bio, Frank Belknap Long, ''The Hounds of Tindalos'', Sauk City, WI: Arkham House, 1946</ref> [[Samuel Loveman]] declared that Long's poem "The Marriage of Sir John de Mandeville" was worthy of [[Christopher Marlowe]].

Long's closest friends (apart from H. P. Lovecraft) in this period included Samuel Loveman, [[H. Warner Munn]], and [[James F. Morton]]. He had several encounters with [[Hart Crane]], who lived one flight above Loveman in Brooklyn Heights.<ref>Frank Belknap Long. ''Autobiographical Memoir''. West Warwick, RI: Necronomicon Press, 198, pp. 10-12.</ref>

===1930s===

"The Horror from the Hills", a story serialised in 1931 in ''[[Weird Tales]]'', incorporated almost verbatim a dream H. P. Lovecraft related to him (among other correspondents) in a letter. The short novel was published many years later in separate book form by Arkham House in 1963, as'' [[The Horror from the Hills]]''.

In the late 1930s, Long turned his hand to science fiction, writing for ''Astounding Science Fiction''. He also contributed horror stories to ''[[Unknown (magazine)|Unknown]]'' (later called ''Unknown Worlds''). Long contributed an episode (along with [[C.L. Moore]], [[Robert E. Howard]] and H. P. Lovecraft) to the round-robin story "The Challenge from Beyond" (1935).

Like ''The Man from Genoa and Other Poems'', his second book is a volume of fantastic verse: ''The Goblin Tower'' (1935), published jointly by H. P. Lovecraft and [[Robert H. Barlow]] under Barlow's The Dragonfly Press imprint. (A variant edition of this volume was published in 1945 by New Collectors Group - see Bibliography). Published in an edition of only 100 copies, this volume is exceedingly scarce; two copies are held at the collections of the [[John Hay Library]].<ref>{{Cite book|url=https://search.library.brown.edu/catalog/b1568668|title=The goblin tower|first=Frank Belknap|last=Long|date=July 21, 1935|publisher=Dragon-Fly Press}}</ref>

=== 1940s===

In pulps such as ''Thrilling Wonder Stories'' and ''Startling Stories'' during the 1940s, Long sometimes wrote using the pseudonym "Leslie Northern". What Long characterized as a "minor disability" kept him out of [[World War II]] and writing full-time during the early 1940s.

Long reportedly ghost-wrote two, possibly three, of the [[Ellery Queen]] Jr novels (mentioned in correspondence with [[August Derleth]]) but did not identify the titles. It is believed that the two are ''The Black Dog Mystery'' (1941) and ''The Golden Eagle Mystery'' (1942). The third may have been ''The Mystery of the Golden Butterfly'', which was never published. (This volume is mentioned as Long's on the rear panel of'' [[The Horror from the Hills]]'' and on the rear flap of'' [[The Rim of the Unknown]]'').<ref>{{Cite web |title=Queen's Bureau of Investigation: the Casebook - page 16 |url=http://queen.spaceports.com/QBI_16.html |access-date=2023-09-24 |website=queen.spaceports.com}}</ref>

He wrote [[comic book]]s in the 1940s, including horror stories for ''[[Adventures Into the Unknown]]'' (ACG).<ref>{{cite web |title=Adventures into the Unknown – Worlds of Weird |url=https://worldsofweird.com/tag/adventures-into-the-unknown/ |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160923015306/https://worldsofweird.com/tag/adventures-into-the-unknown/ |archive-date=September 23, 2016 |access-date=September 22, 2016}}, [http://www.comics.org/issue/7014/]</ref> Long contributed several original scripts to this comic's early issues, as well as an adaptation of Walpole's ''[[The Castle of Otranto]]''. He authored scripts for ''[[Planet Comics]]'', ''[[Superman]]'', ''[[Congo Bill]]'', [[DC Comics|DC]]'s [[Golden Age (comics)|Golden Age]] ''[[Green Lantern]]'', and the [[Fawcett Comics]] ''[[Captain Marvel (DC Comics)|Captain Marvel]]''. He worked in the 1940s as a script-reader for  [[Twentieth Century Fox]]<ref name="autogenerated1946"/> Long wrote crime and [[weird menace]] stories for ''Ten Gang Mystery'' and other magazines.

During the 1940s, Long lived for a period in California{{where|date=September 2023}}.

Long credited [[Theodore Sturgeon]], whom he met several times in the mid-1940s, as being instrumental in getting one of his middle-period stories, "A Guest in the House", produced on CBS-TV in 1954.<ref>''The Early Long'', Doubleday, 1975, p.xxviii</ref>

In 1946, Arkham House published Long's first collection of supernatural fiction,'' [[The Hounds of Tindalos]]'', which collected 21 of his best tales from the previous twenty years of magazine publication. It featured works which had appeared in such pulps as ''[[Weird Tales]]'', ''[[Astounding Stories]]'', ''[[Super Science Stories]]'', [[Unknown (magazine)|Unknown]], ''[[Thrilling Wonder Stories]]'', ''[[Dynamic Science Fiction]]'', ''[[Startling Stories]]'',  and others. In "The Man from Time", a time-traveller from the future has an encounter with writer [[F. Scott Fitzgerald]].

His later science fiction works include the story collection ''John Carstairs, Space Detective'' (1949) about a 'botanical detective', and the novels ''Space Station 1'' (1957), ''Mars is My Destination'' (1962) and ''It Was the Day of the Robot'' (1963).
[[File:Avon Fantasy Reader 13.jpg|thumb|right|Long's 1935 ''[[Weird Tales]]'' story "The Body-Masters" was reprinted in 1950 as "The Love-Slave and the Scientists".]]

=== 1950s===

In the 1950s he was involved with editing five different magazines. He was uncredited associate editor on ''The Saint Mystery Magazine'' and ''[[Fantastic Universe]]''. He was associate editor on ''[[Satellite Science Fiction]]'', 1959; on ''[[Short Stories (magazine)|Short Stories]]'', 1959–60; and on ''Mike Shayne Mystery Magazine'' until 1966.{{citation needed|date=September 2023}}

Long several times met fellow ''[[Weird Tales]]'' writer and poet [[Joseph Payne Brennan]], and later provided the foreword for Brennan's ''The Chronicles of Lucius Leffing'' (1977).

=== 1960s===

After the decline of the pulps, Long moved into the prolific production of  science fiction and [[gothic romance]] novels during the 1960s and 1970s. He even wrote a ''[[Man from UNCLE]]'' story, "The Electronic Frankenstein Affair",  which appeared under the pen name Robert Hart Davis in the ''Man from UNCLE Magazine''.

In 1960, he married Lyda Arco, an artists' representative and aficionado of drama. She was a Russian descended from a line of actors in the Yiddish theatre who ran a salon in Chelsea, NY. They stayed together till Long's death in 1994, but had no children. Long described himself as an "agnostic." Referring to Lovecraft, Long wrote that he "always shared HPL's skepticism . . . concerning the entire range of alleged supernatural occurrences and what is commonly defined as 'the occult.'"

In 1963 Arkham House published Long's novel'' [[The Horror from the Hills]]'', a work partly incorporating Lovecraft's account of a dream Lovecraft had experienced. This work introduced Long's alien entity [[Chaugnar Faugn]] into the [[Cthulhu Mythos]] cycle.

===1970s===
In 1972 Arkham House published'' [[The Rim of the Unknown]]'', their second hardcover collection of Long's work - a volume focusing primarily on his science fiction short stories.

Long wrote nine modern Gothic novels, starting with ''So Dark a Heritage'' in 1966 (published under his own name), eight of which were published as by "Lyda Belknap Long", a combination of his wife (Lyda Arco Long)'s first name and his middle name and surname. Seven of these appeared during the 1970s; all were entirely his own work and were workmanlike products intended to support him and his wife rather than to be of high literary quality.

Illumination on Long's own life and work is provided by his extensive introduction to ''[[The Early Long]]'' (1975), a collection of his best early stories which essentially duplicates the contents of ''[[The Hounds of Tindalos (book)|The Hounds of Tindalos]]'' but to which Long adds detailed headnotes to each story. Further writing on his own life is found in his ''Autobiographical Memoir'' (Necronomicon Press, 1986).

Long's book-length memoir of H. P. Lovecraft, ''[[Howard Phillips Lovecraft: Dreamer on the Nightside]]'', was issued by Arkham House in 1975. It was written in haste as a result of Long's reading of [[L. Sprague de Camp]]'s'' [[Lovecraft: A Biography]]'' (1975), which Long felt to be biased against Lovecraft. [[File:Frank Belknap Long Tower 2009.JPG|thumb|The grave of Frank Belknap Long in [[Woodlawn Cemetery (Bronx, New York)|Woodlawn Cemetery]].]]

In 1977, Arkham House issued Long's hardcover poetry collection ''[[In Mayan Splendor]]'', containing all the poems from ''A Man from Genoa and Other Poems'' (1924) and ''The Goblin Tower'' (1926). The same year he won the First Fandom Hall of Fame award (1977). In 1978 he won the [[World Fantasy Award]] for Life Achievement (at the 1978 4th World Fantasy Convention).

===Later career: 1980s–1990s===

Long's literary output slowed down after 1977, with his gothic ''The Lemoyne Heritage''. He published several scattered stories in the 1980s including the story chapbook "Rehearsal Night" (Pub: Thomas L. Owen,1981) and one episode in the round-robin sequence ''Ghor Kin-Slayer'' (Necronomicon Press, 1997). He and his wife lived in extreme poverty during the 1980s and 1990s in an apartment in [[Chelsea, Manhattan]] - a period documented in Peter Cannon's memoir ''Long Memories'' (1997){{citation needed|date=September 2023}}.

[[File:Frank Belknap Long at the Craft of the Horror Writer Panel, 18 August 1990.jpg|left|thumb|Frank Belknap Long speaking at the H. P. Lovecraft Centennial Conference]]

In 1987, Long was awarded the [[Bram Stoker Award]] for Lifetime Achievement (from the Horror Writers Association).

Long, though confined to a wheelchair, was a Guest of Honour at the [[H. P. Lovecraft]] Centennial Conference in [[Providence, Rhode Island]], in 1990, where he spoke on panels regarding his memories of his great friend and literary mentor.

Long died of pneumonia on January 3, 1994, at the age of 92 at [[Saint Vincent's Catholic Medical Center]] in Manhattan, after a seven-decade career as a writer and editor.<ref name=long>{{cite news |first=William |last=Grimes |title=Frank Belknap Long, an Author Of Science Fiction, Is Dead at 90 |url=https://www.nytimes.com/1994/01/05/obituaries/frank-belknap-long-an-author-of-science-fiction-is-dead-at-90.html |quote=Frank Belknap Long, the author of "The Hounds of Tindalos," "The Horror From the Hills" and other works of fantasy, the supernatural and science fiction, died on Sunday at St. Vincent's Hospital in Manhattan. He was 90 and lived in Manhattan. ... |newspaper=[[The New York Times]] |date=January 5, 1994 |access-date=December 23, 2014 }}</ref><ref>{{Cite journal |last=Indick |first=Ben P. |date=Spring 1994 |title=In Memoriam: Frank Belknap Long |journal=Lovecraft Studies |issue=30 |pages=3–4 |issn=0899-8361}}</ref> He was briefly survived by his wife, Lyda.

Due to his poverty, he was interred in a potter's field. Friends and colleagues had his remains reinterred at New York City's [[Woodlawn Cemetery (Bronx, New York)|Woodlawn Cemetery]], in a family plot near that of Lovecraft's grandparents. A graveside ceremony on November 3, 1995, was attended by such figures as Scott D. Briggs, Peter Cannon, Stefan Dziemianowicz, Ben P. Indick, S. T. Joshi, T.E.D. Klein and others and with a homily delivered by the Rev. Robert M. Price. On November 17, 1995, the actual interment of Long's body took place, an event witnessed by Peter Cannon, Ben P. Indick and S. T. Joshi.  Long's fans contributed over $3,000 to have his name engraved upon the central shaft of his burial plot.<ref name="The New Lovecraft Collector 9 1995">''The New Lovecraft Collector'' 9 (Winter 1995), 3</ref> Lyda died shortly after Frank;<ref name="The New Lovecraft Collector 9 1995"/> her ashes were scattered on his grave.

In 2015, Wildside Press acquired the rights to Long's copyrights from Long's cousins.<ref>wildsidepress.com/estates</ref> Since that time, all Wildside Press reprints of Long's work carry the acknowledgment "Reprinted with the kind permission and assistance of Lily Doty, Mansfield M. Doty, and the family of Frank Belknap Long."