A range of texts drop out of copyright each year. At the start of 2019, for the UK it will be the turn of books whose authors died in 1948. One such will presumably be W. Paul Cook. Cook was an amateur journalist, printer and bookman, and a good friend of H.P. Lovecraft. He was later the author of the important long memoir In Memoriam: Howard Phillips Lovecraft. This text can be found in full in the handsome volume Lovecraft Remembered…

Although it appears that Lovecraft Remembered is now yet another Lovecraft volume being listed at very expensive ‘only for the rich book collector’ prices.

Given that the text appears to be coming out of copyright in the UK and Europe, an abridged version of In Memoriam might make for an interesting graphic novel adaptation project for someone.

Last year (start of 2018) the public domain also welcomed: Alfred North Whitehead (a British philosopher whose 1920s works influenced Lovecraft); M. P. Shiel (Lovecraft thought his “The House of Sounds”… “the most haunting thing I have read in a decade” when he read Shiel circa 1923); and of course Arthur Machen.