An unusual new academic paper in Heliyon, “Sentiment analysis of Lovecraft’s fiction writings” (2023). The open-access paper looks at his fiction from 1905–1935, using software to find “emotion-inducing words” and then clustering these. Finds…

there exists an intimate connection between the emotions of fear and sadness in Lovecraft’s writings

… and that the darker tones deepen over time.

This was, most likely, strongly personal but not purely so. The entire cultural trajectory of the 1929-1935 period appears to have been bending that way. I say “appears” because I recall my old history teacher showing very clearly that this was not actually borne out in most people’s lives, at least for the employed in most of 1930s England. Until the war came, for many the 1930s was mostly a time of ‘getting on’ and moving up. New homes on Betjeman-esque suburban commuter estates, new motor-cars, new labour-saving devices, better health, better self-improvement opportunities, a surprising boom in incomes and pensions, much better shop-clothes for women and girls, and there were also the fine new art-deco cinemas and ice-cream. The weather was iffy due to some strong extremes, but people got through it. In my teacher’s view it was the intellectuals who were the miserable ones, infected by a virulent “we’re doomed!” pessimism and a dislike of the many opportunities for the upstart masses in this new modern world. The key book on the topic is the excellent and darkly amusing The Intellectuals and the Masses.

Also spotted in academia, a McFarland book due in June 2023. Horror and Philosophy: Essays on Their Intersection in Film, Television and Literature. Among other things this is said to have a chapter on Lovecraft, presumably centering around philosophical parallels in the perceived…

relationships between Jorge Luis Borges and H.P. Lovecraft