amuel Loveman (1887-1976), a great-grandson of Jakob Liebman, progenitor of the Cleveland Lovemans, was an American poet, critic, dramatist and book dealer known less for his own work than for his literary associations. He numbered among his close friends Hart Crane, Ambrose Bierce, H. P. Lovecraft and Clark Ashton Smith.

Born in Cleveland, Sam became, at age 21, a protégé of Ambrose Bierce, to whom he sent some poetry for criticism. The latter predicted Sam would have “more than a fighting chance of eventual recognition.” Sam soon found employment as a clerk at a Cleveland bookstore, and it was probably through this job that he met Hart Crane. By the early 1920s he had become a member of Crane's Cleveland "salon," and he followed the author to New York in 1923, taking  a room in the same Brooklyn Heights building in which Crane was living.

In 1924, he edited A Round-Table in Poictesme: A Symposium, a tribute to James Branch Cabell. Contributors to the book included H. L. Mencken and Christopher Morley. In 1926, he published The Hermaphrodite, a poem praised as possessing “a magic as authentic as Keats.” He also edited the magazines The Saturnian and Trend, and published many other poems, translations, dramas, stories and essays.

Edited by S. T. Joshi and David E. Schultz, Out of the Immortal Night is a collection of Sam's works, published in 2004. Click to enlarge.

In partnership with David Mann, Sam owned and operated the Bodley Press and Book Shop in Greenwich Village. He dealt in old books and pre-Columbian antiquities and lived on 52nd Street, across from the popular night club Leon and Eddie's.

He never married. Though he claimed to have been rejected by a woman during a youthful romance, he was almost assuredly gay, and he reportedly lived with a male dancer from the Metropolitan Opera for many years. He left his entire estate to a friend, Ernest Wayne Cunningham.

The Hermaphrodite, a poem Sam first published in 1926, was mentioned by Hart Crane in his letters and is thought to have influenced his writing. Click to enlarge.

eonora Loveman (1871-1924), granddaughter of Morris and Eva Esther through their son Emanuel (ca. 1836-1900) and Theresa Black (1845-1874), was a lesser light than her other literary cousins. She is remembered primarily for “salons” held at her home in Cambridge, Massachusetts, which she shared with a Miss Caroline Norcross in a lifelong partnership that has been likened to a “Stein-Toklas” relationship.

According to Albert H. Morehead (1909-1966) in a 1957 letter written to Mary Mitchell Crutchfield (1895-1990) – both of them were Loveman cousins – Leonora “was quite rich and spent most of her adult years globetrotting and living among the highest intellectual classes on both sides of the Atlantic." Indeed, her name appears on transatlantic ship passenger manifests from 1903, 1905, 1911, 1912, 1914 and 1922. She often vacationed with relatives.

Leonora Loveman. Photo courtesy of Philip Morehead.

"Leonora represented herself as a writer," Morehead wrote, "so as not to be at a disadvantage in her chosen circle, and she wrote at least two books. No publisher accepted them so she had them privately printed."

"One was a terrible historical novel about the Hungarian revolution of 1848, in which the Loveman family took part. The other was a history of the family, for which she did much traveling and research,” he added. 

Her two books were Revolt and The Snow Queen. According to Morehead, Thomas Wolfe based a character on Leonora in his 1935 book, Of Time and The River, sequel to Look Homeward Angel.

Leonora published Revolt, a fictional account of the 1848 Hungarian revolution. Click to enlarge.