Toldridge, Elizabeth [Anne]

   (1861–1940)

   Poet and correspondent of HPL (1928–37). Toldridge published two collections of verse, The Soul of Love (New York: Broadway Publishing Co., 1910) and Mother’s Love Songs (Boston: R.G. Badger, 1911), long before she ever came in touch with HPL. She was also widely published in amateur and semi-professional magazines and anthologies. She got in touch with HPL in 1928, some years after HPL had served as a judge for a poetry contest (otherwise unknown) in which Toldridge had participated. She was disabled in some unknown manner and was unable to leave her apartment in Washington, D.C. HPL visited her there on May 6, 1929; in 1936 R.H. Barlow visited her while traveling from Florida to Providence. Her discussions of poetry with HPL may have been instrumental in HPL’s shift away from archaistic verse in theory and practice.