C. M. Eddy, Jr. - Muriel E. Eddy

Muriel E. Eddy

Eddy's wife Muriel E(lizabeth)(Gammons) Eddy (1896–1978) was born in Taunton, Massachusetts, and educated in Attleboro Falls, Massachusetts; Redlands, California; and at the Horace Mann School in San Jose, California. She spent some parts of her early life living in California before returning to New England and living the rest of her life in Rhode Island, primarily in Providence. She married Clifford Eddy in 1918 following a correspondence which developed from their common interest in creative writing. They both continued their writing careers after marriage and raised three children.

Muriel E. Eddy wrote numerous memoirs of H.P. Lovecraft. See, for instance, her 1945 piece "Howard Phillips Lovecraft" in Rhode Island on Lovecraft.

The range of Muriel's memoirs of Lovecraft includes letters published in The Providence Journal in 1944, 1948, and 1958, and in Magazine of Horror (May 1970), as well as uncollected pieces such as "Memories of H.P.L." (Magazine of Horror 2, No 6 (Winter 1965-66) and "Lovecraft's Marriage and Divorce" (Haunted 1, No 3 (June 1968). The late essay "H.P. Lovecraft Among the Demons" (The Rhode Islander (the Providence Sunday Journal Magazine) 8 March 1970) has been reprinted in the Fenham Publishing edition of The Gentleman from Angell Street(see below).

Some of Muriel's memoirs were privately printed in Providence as booklets, including The Howard Phillips Lovecraft We Knew (undated but published prior to 1969); H.P. Lovecraft Esquire: Gentleman (no date); the substantial The Gentleman from Angell Street (with Clifford M. Eddy) (an expansion of her essay from Rhode Island on Lovecraft) (1961, 1977), also reprinted by Fenham Publishing (see below) and in Lovecraft Remembered); and Howard Phillips Lovecraft: The Man and the Image (: Muriel E. Eddy (Studio Guild Press), 1969. The Gentleman from Angell Street is one of Muriel Eddy's most significantly lengthy memoirs on Lovecraft.

Lovecraft's mother and Eddy's mother (Mrs. Grace Eddy) became friends by meeting at a women's suffrage meeting, and they discovered that their sons were both enthusiasts of the weird. Lovecraft and the Eddys corresponded extensively until Lovecraft's mother Susie was taken to the hospital in spring 1919. Lovecraft sent the Eddys application blanks for the United Amateur Press Association along with a letter regarding Eddy's amateur standing dated September 21, 1918.

Apart from her work on Lovecraft, Mrs. Eddy wrote in many genres including romance, occult, biography and poetry. Stories by her appeared in various magazines, including numerous appearances in The Tryout between 1918 and 1925, as well as stories in Complete Novel, Scarlet Adventuress, and Personal Adventure Stories. She had letters published in Weird Tales, Strange Tales, Strange Stories, Oriental Stories and Golden Fleece: Part 5. A letter which serves as an obituary for her husband was published in Magazine of Horror (July 1968).

She served as president of the Rhode Island Writers' Guild for more than twenty years, and also taught creative writing. She was an avid letter writer, sometimes writing and sending ten notes a day. Some of her many correspondents included H.P. Lovecraft, August Derleth, L. Sprague de Camp, Sonia Greene, Joseph Payne Brennan, Robert Bloch, and Princess Red Wing. She died aged 82 on January 30, 1978, and is interred at Swan Point Cemetery.