Samuel Loveman

Samuel E. Loveman (January 14, 1887 – May 14, 1976) was an American poet, critic, and dramatist probably best known for his connections with writers H. P. Lovecraft and Hart Crane.

[1] In the early 1920s he translated Charles Baudelaire and Paul Verlaine from the French, publishing them in his little magazine The Saturnian (June–July [1920]; Aug-Sept [1920]; March 1922).

as "a long, gorgeously evocative poem that flawlessly recreates the atmosphere of classical antiquity" and The Sphinx (a prose drama begun as early as 1918, finished by around April 1922 and published in 1926 by W. Paul Cook in the second number of his journal The Ghost.).

[1] Around 1923, Loveman secured employment at Eglin's, a Cleveland bookstore, but lost the position by November that year.

[1] In 1932 Loveman helped establish the literary magazine Trend and published various poems, essays and reviews there.

His friends included Ambrose Bierce (who made protracted attempts to secure publication for Loveman's poem "In Pierrot's Garden").

[3] H. P. Lovecraft had written the poem "To Samuel Loveman, Esquire, on His Poetry and Drama, Writ in the Elizabethan Style" (Dowdell's Bearcat, Dec 1915).

Lovecraft was hugely impressed by Loveman's personal collection of rare first editions and early books including incunabula.

He dealt in old books and pre-Columbian antiquities and lived on 52nd Street, across from the popular night club Leon and Eddie's.

Under the imprint of the Bodley Press he published three books including Brom Weber's Hart Crane: A Biographical and Critical Study (1948).

Though he claimed to have been rejected by a woman during a youthful romance, he reportedly lived with a male dancer from the Metropolitan Opera for many years.