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This month in ‘Picture Postals’, the Providence farmers’ market at the foot of College Hill, a post which became a discovery and colorising of two new pictures of the Old Brick Row that was so beloved of Lovecraft; a tour of Lovecraft’s Public Library again with newly colorised pictures; I finally got around to looking at the Shepley Library in Providence, and found a good photo of Mr. Shepley along the way. For one of my Patreon patrons’ I looked again at the Brooklyn Museum and Lovecraft. My April Fools Day ‘Picture Postal’ sadly appears to have fallen completely flat, but can now be seen as a screenshot on the 1st April post.
Also found in the new-found cache of pictures from Boston Public Library, a new vintage picture looking up College Street, and two good pictures of Blackstone Park though not Lovecraft’s favourite York Pond section. I still have one more, but can’t re-find the letter to go with it — at the end of his life Lovecraft boards and tours a super-deluxe new modern train. If anyone can point me to the location of this I’d be grateful please.
I managed to recover a picture of Lovecraft’s Hope Street High School, which I thought I had lost. Also coming due course, a photo on the interior of the Opera House (a “second home” for the young Lovecraft, and from whose boards he once slung great slabs of Shakespeare at the audience). And an excellent vintage photo of the foot of College Street which I’ve never seen before.
I started on the new and enlarged book of Lovecraft-Galpin letters and, though I had perused it many years ago in early form, found much new data and useful snippets of information. In my ‘Ripped and torn’ post I moved a little closer to solving the mystery of the ‘torn off pulp covers’ in Lovecraft’s magazine collection.
The TOCs appeared for the third book in The Robert H. Waugh Library of Lovecraftian Criticism along with a review; S.T. Joshi’s Miscellaneous Writings and his 1980s Journals have been published. Several useful reviews appeared online in March, not least for Fungi From Yuggoth — An Annotated Edition. A review of the latest book in the Robert H. Waugh Library led me to take a look at Lovecraft and Ulysses (the modernist novel) which raises the interesting possibility that Dream-quest was partly inspired by occult ideas.
In journals I noted the Italian journals Studi Lovecraftiani #20, and Zothique #9 and #10, and discovered something about what’s in them. Lovecraftian Proceedings #4 was published, and there were also TOCs online for that. An essay of my own was accepted for the forthcoming Lovecraft Annual, and another for Joshi’s Penumbra.
In comics and illustration, I noted a Blue Fox comics adaptation of “The Shadow Over Innsmouth” and got samples of the art. In France, the Lovecraft paperbacks edition from Points had pleasing new BD-style Moebius-alike covers. Eerie Magazine scans arrived, or at least were collected as a collection, on Archive.org. The HPLHS released a massive prop set for RPG gamers, including much printed material.
In podcasts I spotted a new podcast interview with John L. Steadman (H.P. Lovecraft & the Black Magickal Tradition: the master of horror’s influence on modern occultism); and of course noted the latest Voluminous reading of a letter from Lovecraft. SSFAudio’s podcast pampered “The Cats Of Ulthar”. Librivox had a bumper Lovecraft month and threw in tales from his friends Whitehead and Eddy for good measure.