06 Thursday Jan 2022
Posted in Podcasts etc., Scholarly works
New on Librivox are audio readings of George MacDonald’s long essays “The Imagination: Its Functions and Its Culture” and “The Fantastic Imagination”. The essays foreshadowed the later concerns of Tolkien, and can best be found as text in an enlarged book edition of 1895.
06 Thursday Jan 2022
Posted in Lovecraftian arts, Odd scratchings
Eldritch-con 2022: A Horror and Fantasy Game Writers’ Convention. In November 2022, including the possibility of…
a unique, luxury pre-convention travel package – a rail journey from Paris, France to Bucharest, Romania upon the Venice Simplon Orient Express [including] a live-action role-playing experience created by Sean Branney / the H.P. Lovecraft Historical Society
05 Wednesday Jan 2022
Posted in Historical context
I’ve found a little more evidence that Lovecraft’s friend Everett McNeil was rather a good cameraman, at least with still subjects. I spotted that he won $5 in a Leslie’s Illustrated Weekly photography contest for August 1909. $5 was a healthy amount in 1909. This was about the time he was successfully entering the movie-making business, then located in New York City. He was a few years into having ‘made it’ in New York City, and to be able to make good pictures like this one imagines he might have then invested in a better camera and developing equipment. He appears to have often entered prize contests in writing, probably influenced by his farming father David McNeil who had been a regular winner of most of his district’s agricultural produce prizes. Now we know that his son also entered photographic contests.
The Lovecraft circle knew that McNeil had ‘walked to New York’ circa 1894, and I rather suspect he earned his way as a travelling photographic portraitist. Possibly going from his home in Wisconsin to Quebec and then down the Hudson Valley to reach New York. In a letter Lovecraft indicates that McNeil had known the city of Quebec well at some point, and the life of a young itinerant photographer was realistically depicted in his story “The Photographing of Billy Oreamnos” (1909). In this a young man travels in rural Canada with his camera and gear…
… in search of Canadian dollars and dimes in exchange for more or less artistic photographs of the natives.
In 1912 a magazine published McNeil’s professional-quality architectural pictures of General Knox’s headquarters. McNeil’s later fine self-portrait with his New York City room as surrounding background (see my book on him) also shows a professional’s skill in composition and lighting.
I can’t be more certain than that about a possible early career in photography. But these fragments of evidence do seem to point that way. He was around age 32 when he left for his long walk to New York, and it was likely a ‘now or never’ try at reaching and ‘sticking’ in the big city. A photographic skill would be a natural method by which to pay one’s way, and the civilised English-speaking parts of what is now eastern Ontario might have offered good prospects — better than the stolid monotony of the Ohio farmlands and then the hillybilly backroads of the Pennsylvania mountains.
A likely route to New York
05 Wednesday Jan 2022
Posted in Historical context, Scholarly works
Newly liberated into the public domain, the Encyclopaedia Britannica 1926 supplement in three chunky volumes. They form “an entirely new survey of the march of events”, as the Preface has it.
These became the latest supplement to the 11th edition, and they provide a useful updating and snapshot of various emerging fields as they were understood in the ‘prime Lovecraft years’ of 1910-1926 (the dates given in the Preface). Lovecraft owned the 9th edition (1875-89), and its “A Guide to Systematic Reading In…”, the 9th edition being especially revered for its very high standards of scholarship. The dates of the 9th may seen antediluvian to us, but on most matters he was only about 20-25 years behind the current volumes… until 1926. Presumably for more modern topics he was able to consult the latest edition, and its most recent supplements, at the Public Library in Providence or New York City.
04 Tuesday Jan 2022
Posted in Kittee Tuesday, Lovecraftian arts, New books
Michael Hutter’s finely printed and made book Dark Dreamlands III. 100 copies, pre-ordering now. III includes “The Cats of Ulthar” and “Hypnos”.
04 Tuesday Jan 2022
Posted in Historical context, REH, Scholarly works
At DMR Brian Murphy offers a useful new article “Things That Are Undone and Ought Not To Be: A Sword-and-Sorcery Studies Wish List”.
A good ‘Not Conan or R.E. Howard’ critical survey of the genre in pre-PC comics would certainly be welcome, ideally including British (Karl the Viking etc) and European titles (e.g. in editor Toutain’s Heavy-Metal-alike magazines). And a lavish coffee-table book of related pinball-table art, perhaps with a DVD slotted in the back with the playable pinball table ROMs on it.
To his list I’d add:
* a survey-study of vintage paperback cover-art (as published) and its artists, though if the permissions could be obtained is perhaps doubtful now and one would have to rely on ‘fair use’ for covers;
* a close study of the curiously tepid cultural receptions and contexts of The Lord of the Rings in its ‘fallow period’ between publication and mass take-up. Say 1952-72, to add two years of run-up and take-off at either end;
* perhaps a study of the uses / re-workings sword-and-sorcery authors made of traditional works which were (by their time) effectively in the public domain (folklore, semi-fictional history, Arthur, Norse tales, Arabian Nights, the Northern fairy-tales, Ovid and ancient myth etc). They too had a ‘public domain’, though it was different than ours.
03 Monday Jan 2022
Posted in Lovecraftian arts, New books
New from Sentinel Hill Press, Miskatonic Country Scenarios: A Keeper’s Guide. Meant for RPG game-masters, but also of likely interest to Mythos and graphic novel writers seeking references and inspiration…
An explanation of … the region … A short bibliography … a discussion of all the books from Chaosium’s “Lovecraft Country” series as well as Miskatonic Country-focused scenario collections … a detailed description of more than 60 published scenarios … Concordances for places, entities and tomes encountered.
02 Sunday Jan 2022
Posted in Housekeeping, Odd scratchings
Here’s a quick round-up for December on Tentaclii, for what it’s worth now. In December my ‘Picture Postals’ posts took a look at Robie Alzada Place (1827–1896) and her home place to the west of Providence, this also having been the home place of Lovecraft’s mother; I followed Lovecraft’s travel trail far up into the White Mountains; and I mused on the Ladd Observatory and its relation to time and time-keeping in Providence.
I wrote a long summary here of the year’s more general Lovecraft-related activity by others, in “Lovecraft in 2021: a summary survey”.
Not much in new books in December, but I was pleased to spot S.T. Joshi’s Phantasmagoria: The Weird Fiction, Poetry, and Criticism of Sir Walter Scott and its fine cover. Also the Lovecraft astronomy book El Astronomicon Y Otros Textes En Defense De La Ciencia down in Spain. The French had shipping dates for the various volumes in the sumptuous Editions Mnemos set of Lovecraft’s work in a new translation.
Not much research by me in December, other than for the ‘Picture Postals’, though I am slowly reading through a new book of letters. I did look at who Chapman Miske was, what he published on Lovecraft, and where to find it. I took another look at Lovecraft’s knowledge of Harlem, after finding some new data.
I spotted that H.P. Lovecraft’s first publication (Scientific American, 25th August 1906) was for sale on eBay. Also on eBay I found a good watercolour of the “Longitude” lane in Charleston, which Lovecraft described and admired on his travels. Over on Abe, a set of “At the Mountains of Madness” in Astounding Stories appeared for sale. More significantly, at the end of the month Abe also landed a big bundle of Lovecraft’s earliest appearances in print.
Popping up on Archive.org for free in December was a comprehensive plot-annotated checklist of ‘Bibliomysteries’ (mystery novels across various genres which centre on rare books, book collectors, old bookshops and suchlike); and I was also pleased to see Clifford D. Simak: a primary and secondary bibliography.
Among the audio, the timely story “The Return of the Undead” by Arthur Leeds saw a welcome free release on YouTube. It’s also just gone into the public domain. A new Voluminous podcast looked at ‘H.P. Lovecraft, Detective’, doggedly solving a dastardly crime at the Haverhill Post Office. A books podcast interviewed the author of the intriguing new novel Providence Blue: A Fantasy Quest.
I was pleased to see that the Robert E. Howard Days in Texas announced their 2022 dates. I was also pleased to find a new lost story by Lovecraft’s friend Everett McNeil, “A Descendant of the Vikings” (1906/07).
In software I noted the new writing software CQuill Writer 1.x, an interesting style-prompting assistant which could be filled (in its full paid version) with the works of Lovecraft. I also see that Scrivener 3.x for Windows was released, at long last, something I had missed earlier in 2021. The latter seems hideously complex, but is said to be the best software for writers on Windows. In 3D software I noted free 3D writing accessories for the free DAZ Studio 3D figure rendering software, which could be used with the 3D Lovecraft figure.
Elsewhere I produced a bumper 108-page ‘Moebius tribute’ issue of Digital Art Live, and also interviewed Simon Ravenhill (Striker, in The Sun newspaper) for VisNews. I comprehensively updated my free “The Folk-lore of North Staffordshire” annotated bibliography, now available online in version 1.7. I released my short book Tolkien and the Lizard: J.R.R. Tolkien in Cornwall, 1914, this being a PDF extract from a much larger book on a far larger and more intellectual topic relating to the young Tolkien. Cornwall has sold only two copies, as a fundraiser for the larger book, but did at least help pay for the meagre Christmas food shopping.
All this while having Omicron. From which I’m now recovered — and I presumably now have the latest and greatest antibodies.
Coming soon on Tentaclii… Lovecraft’s almanacks, Tom Baker’s best, and taking the Trans-Europe Express to vampire-country. Not necessarily in that order.
02 Sunday Jan 2022
Posted in Historical context, Scholarly works
Found while updating my bibliography of North Staffordshire folklore, an item which seems relevant to two of Lovecraft’s abiding interests. In the newly published book of essays on Human-Animal Interactions in the Eighteenth Century ($ paywall), Chapter 12 is “‘For I Will Consider My Cat Jeoffry’: Cats and Creativity in Eighteenth-Century Britain”…
Cats became very popular pets during the eighteenth century, especially in the cities, as Britain gradually moved from being a predominantly agrarian society to an increasingly urbanised world. Yet cats did not lose their magical powers, as many popular folklore tales bore witness. Cats, purring by the fireside, were familiar domestic friends, whilst retaining their relative feline aloofness and ‘strangeness’. Their alliance of opposing characteristics was a source of great literary and intellectual creativity. Thus cats conveyed ‘electric’ messages….
01 Saturday Jan 2022
Posted in Astronomy, Housekeeping
A new post category, with retrospective tagging, ‘Astronomy’ on Tentaclii. I think I’ve got them all.
01 Saturday Jan 2022
Posted in Historical context, Lovecraftian arts, Scholarly works
In 1948 a giant penguin, fifteen feet tall, was haunting the coast of Florida. There were strange tracks on the beach to prove it. Supposedly. Was it a Lovecraftian hoax, a la the giant penguins in At The Mountains of The Madness? The latest edition of Skeptic magazine goes in search of the truth, in a detailed 13 page investigation.
Meanwhile, over on DeviantArt, a delightfully stylised set of new posters for Lovecraft stories by Jared Boyer. With the “Mountains” one visualising the albino penguins.
