Found, a new biographical peice from Everett McNeil of the Lovecraft Circle. It was published in The Trestle Board, 1887. We might imagine that this anecdote of childhood tobacco poisoning was one that the Lovecraft Circle heard at least once, during their long coffee and tobacco-fuelled meetings in McNeil’s rooms in the mid 1920s. From it we can glean just a few more biographical details. We already knew his father was an accomplished prize-winning farmer, but here McNeil confirms that his father David McNeil grew significant amounts of tobacco, and that there was a hired farm-hand ‘living in’ with the family.

And another new article by McNeil is found in Moving Picture News in 1912. At this point he is still part of the movie industry (then still largely in New York City) where he works as a highly experienced scenarist (in modern terms, a screenwriter). 1912 was a couple of years before his move to the Edison studio to work under Arthur Leeds. Here he complains about cinemas that run the film ‘fast’, in order to put on extra showings, and hints at industry prosecutions of the exhibitors.

Again, one imagines that in the mid 1920s the Lovecraft Circle heard McNeil’s memories of encountering his own movies being shown at high-speed, back during his movie-making years. Possibly (with the bitterness erased by the years in between) such memories were recounted by him in a rather more comic manner than previously, focussing on the laughably speeded-up antics?

The above are in addition to my book on McNeil and his career, Good Old Mac.