Strauch, Carl Ferdinand

   (1908–1989)

   Literary scholar and brief correspondent of HPL (1931–33). Strauch received a B.A. from Muhlenberg College in Allentown, Pa., and was put in touch with HPL by his friend Harry K.Brobst, who at the time also lived in Allentown. Strauch visited HPL in Providence in September 1932, not long after he published a book of poetry, Twenty-nine Poems (1932). He conveyed to HPL much of the “hex” legendry of the Pennsylvania Dutch region. HPL reports in a letter to Robert Bloch ([c. late June 1933]) that Strauch was working on a “realistic novel,” but this evidently came to nothing. Although cordial, the correspondence came to an abrupt end in the summer of 1933: it appears that Strauch was discouraged at the sharp criticism that HPL, Brobst, and E.Hoffmann Price delivered upon a story of Strauch’s during a session in Providence in August 1933. Strauch went on to receive a Ph.D. from Yale (1946) and to become a leading scholar on Ralph Waldo Emerson. He was on the editorial board of the Collected Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson(Harvard University Press, 1971f.) and wrote Characteristics of Emerson, Transcendental Poet(1975) and other monographs, as well as many articles in scholarly journals. He taught at Lehigh University from 1934 to 1974.