I stumbled on a rare book listing, which made me aware of a book of possible interest. Romances of the Archive in Contemporary British Fiction (2001) was claimed to have something on Lovecraft…
Authors addressed in this collection of academic papers extend beyond the British canon despite the subtitle, among them H.P. Lovecraft, Umberto Eco.
I then found the TOCs for the book, which revealed more. The book is a general survey written by a single author, and obviously written from the American academic left as it was at the end of the 90s (expect Foucault, et al). Several of the fiction authors are slotted into themed chapters, and I imagine there must be quite a few plot-spoilers. The author knows enough to consider that Lovecraft can effectively qualify as British, which is encouraging.
There’s since been an explosion in ‘critical archival studies’ in academia, focused on institutional gate-keeping, erasure and memory, the making of art-chives by artists, technological impacts on presenting the past, etc. But I can’t say I’ve ever heard of this early book on the topic.
The first half of the book looks interesting as a set of informative surveys useful for anyone writing on the theme of archives and libraries in the weird. Specifically tales featuring archival access and deep research as a key feature of the plot. Here are the main items in that part of the contents-list…
Romances of the archive, identifying characteristics : A.S. Byatt and Julian Barnes.
Wellsprings : Edmund Spenser, Henry James, H.P. Lovecraft, Josephine Tey, Umberto Eco.
History or heritage? : Penelope Lively, Barry Unsworth, Peter Ackroyd.
Time magic and the counterfactual imagination : Kingsley Amis, Lindsay Clarke, Lawrence Norfolk, Nigel Williams.
The book is not on Archive.org, as yet.
The Reading Room, Boston Public Library. The room opened in 1895, and was likely visited by Lovecraft when he encountered the city some 25 years later.