W. Paul Cook (1881–1948) had long been a giant in the amateur world. Cook was unmistakably a New Englander: he had been born in Vermont; he was a direct descendant of the colonial governor Benning Wentworth of New Hampshire; and he resided for much of his adult life in Athol, Massachusetts. For years he was the head of the printing department of the Athol Transcript, and his access to printing equipment and his devotion to the amateur cause permitted him to be a remarkable philanthropist in printing amateur journals virtually at cost. He began printing The Conservative in 1917. During his term as President of the UAPA Lovecraft appointed Cook Official Printer, a position he held for three consecutive years (1917–20) and again for three more years in 1922–25. Curiously, at the same time he served as Official Editor of the NAPA (1918–19) and its President (1919–20).

Cook was one of the few amateurs who had a strong taste in weird fiction; Lovecraft would later admit that Cook's ‘library was the most remarkable collection of fantastic & other material that I have ever seen assembled in one place’, and he would frequently borrow many rare books to which he himself did not have access. It is scarcely to be doubted that Cook, during his visit with Lovecraft in September 1917 (for which see further below), discussed this topic of mutual interest. Whether at this time he convinced Lovecraft to let him print his other juvenile tale, ‘The Beast in the Cave’, is not clear; at any rate, that story appeared in Cook's Vagrant (a NAPA paper) for June 1918.

Lovecraft makes it very clear that Cook's encouragement was instrumental in his resumption of weird writing; and this encouragement was both private and public. One instance of the latter is Cook's effusive article entitled ‘Howard P. Lovecraft's Fiction’, prefacing his printing of ‘Dagon’ in the Vagrant for November 1919, a perspicacious piece of work even though it conjectures that Lovecraft may have been influenced by Maupassant, whom he had probably not read by this time.