Miniter, Edith [May Dowe]

   (1869–1934)

   Novelist, poet, and amateur journalist residing in central Massachusetts. She was the daughter of amateur writer Jennie E.T.Dowe (about whom HPL wrote an elegy, “In Memoriam: J.E.T.D.,” Tryout, March 1919). She was the editor of The Muffin Man(April 1921), which contained a parody of HPL, “Falco Ossifracus: By Mr. Goodguile”; also of Aftermath (a paper issued after amateur conventions). She published one novel professionally, Our Natupski Neighbors(Henry Holt, 1916)—about Polish immigrants in Massachusetts—and short stories for professional magazines. HPL claimed that Miniter turned down the job of revising Bram Stoker’s Draculafor publication. Miniter first met HPL at an amateur convention held at her home at 20 Webster Street in Allston (a suburb of Boston) in July 1920, and again at amateur conventions in Allston on March 10, 1921, and in Maiden (another suburb of Boston) on April 12, 1923. She invited HPL to spend two weeks with her and her cousin Evanore Beebe in Wilbraham, Mass., at which time she told HPL about the local legendry (including the story of whippoorwills used in “The Dunwich Horror”). See HPL’s memoir, “Mrs. Miniter— Estimates and Recollections” (1934; first published in the Californian,Spring 1938). HPL also wrote an elegy, “Edith Miniter” ( Tryout,August 1934). In 1934–35 HPL was assembling material for a memorial volume on Miniter to be published by W.Paul Cook, but it never materialized; but he ended up with many of her papers and manuscripts (now at JHL). One, a letter written in 1853 by her great-uncle George Washington Tupper, a forty-niner, inspired the minor character named Tupper in “The Shadow out of Time” (1934–35). Much of Miniter’s work in the amateur press has now been collected in Going Home and Other Amateur Writings (Moshassuck Press, 1995) and The Coast of Bohemia and Other Writings (Moshassuck Press, 2000)