Given that HPL was a bundle of issues himself, with the self-awareness of a mushroom, and was writing in a time when you didn't have explicitly gay characters, it's hard to say if Carter was canonically gay. However, several of HPL's characters certainly acted like gay men in clandestine relationships--the two goth idiots in "The Hound" come to mind.
Randolph Carter, HPL's recurring character who may or may not have been a self-insert, had a relationship of some kind with Harvey Warren. I've seen an analysis by someone who knows a lot more about LGBTQ+ relationships than I do claim that it was a classic "older gay man/younger gay man" dynamic. I'd love to see someone write about this, or the more fanon-ish relationship between Carter and Richard Upton Pickman. (Canonically, they were just very good friends. We think.)
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Letter: https://dragoness-e.dreamwidth.org/143928.html
Given that HPL was a bundle of issues himself, with the self-awareness of a mushroom, and was writing in a time when you didn't have explicitly gay characters, it's hard to say if Carter was canonically gay. However, several of HPL's characters certainly acted like gay men in clandestine relationships--the two goth idiots in "The Hound" come to mind.
Randolph Carter, HPL's recurring character who may or may not have been a self-insert, had a relationship of some kind with Harvey Warren. I've seen an analysis by someone who knows a lot more about LGBTQ+ relationships than I do claim that it was a classic "older gay man/younger gay man" dynamic. I'd love to see someone write about this, or the more fanon-ish relationship between Carter and Richard Upton Pickman. (Canonically, they were just very good friends. We think.)