22 Tuesday Oct 2019
Posted in Kittee Tuesday, New books
A weekly blog post, celebrating H.P. Lovecraft’s interest in our fascinating felines.
I see that the The H.P. Lovecraft Cat Book is now also at the H. P. Lovecraft Historical Society store. It’s also been at Necronomicon Press for a while now. But at the HPLHS you may prefer to combine shipping on it with another HPLHS store item.
15 Tuesday Oct 2019
Posted in Historical context, Kittee Tuesday
A weekly blog post, celebrating H.P. Lovecraft’s interest in our fascinating felines.
The cover illustration and jacket for Something about Cats and other Pieces, ed. August Derleth, Arkham House, 1949. This usefully reprinted an initial set of memoirs including Providence items such as neighbour Clara L. Hess’s memoir-letter to The Providence Journal newspaper, which had appeared 19th September 1948. This appeared in the book as “Addenda to ‘H.P.L.: A Memoir’” with some additions from an interview Derleth had managed to obtain with Hess. The chapter’s title positioned it as an update on Derleth’s own earlier book H.P.L.: A Memoir (1945). Sadly both books are now collectable first editions from Arkham, and thus unobtainable by scholars expect at substantial cost. I’m unsure who the cover artist of Something about Cats was.
Update: the Hess letter + additions from her interview with Derleth, and some further research from, is in the book Lovecraft Remembered and is there listed not under Hess but as ‘August Derleth, “Lovecraft’s Sensitivity” (1949)’. My thanks to magister76se for pointing this out.
08 Tuesday Oct 2019
Posted in Kittee Tuesday
Celebrating H.P. Lovecraft’s interest in our fascinating felines.
The Office Cat at the Brown Daily Herald, the student newspaper of Brown University, Providence. Daily since 1891.
Such newspaper and office cats not only protected the back-files and picture-libraries from destructive mice, but also had other uses… “The office of the famous New York Sun (a great newspaper, now defunct) always had a complement of working cats … ‘the office cat’ made readers laugh when it was blamed for mistakes in the paper.” Also, if the editors did not wish to report a tendentious item or vapid bit of puffery, then “the office cat ate it”.
Thus when Lovecraft ‘borrowed’ cats for his study, he was adding an element that would be common to the editorial experience of the time.
01 Tuesday Oct 2019
Posted in Kittee Tuesday, Lovecraftian arts
24 Tuesday Sep 2019
Posted in Historical context, Kittee Tuesday
Celebrating H.P. Lovecraft’s interest in our fascinating felines.
The cover for The Black Cat magazine, October 1905. H.P. Lovecraft began to read this story-magazine in 1904, when he was aged about 14. The cover of each issue featured the distinctive cat configured within various graphic designs.
The idea of a big reward + a black cat may have been especially poignant to the 15 year-old Lovecraft when he picked this off the news-stands or opened a subscription copy in the morning mail. Because this edition was issued on the first year anniversary of the loss of his own beloved black cat, Trigger-ban, who had run away and been lost during the house-move of fall/autumn 1904.
17 Tuesday Sep 2019
Posted in Kittee Tuesday
Celebrating H.P. Lovecraft’s interest in our fascinating felines.
An example of the work of Peggy Bacon, drawn for the fine and still-useful “cat owner’s manual” book Wholly Cats (1962). Other than the walls in the picture, this evokes something of the congregating cats in Lovecraft’s ‘garden court’ at 66 College Street.
10 Tuesday Sep 2019
Posted in Kittee Tuesday, New books
Celebrating H.P. Lovecraft’s interest in our fascinating felines.
A kittee from Mark A. Nelson’s new Fantasy World-Building book, one of many such. I can very highly recommend this new book, for world-building imaginative writers as well as for makers of comics, storybooks, artnovels and games. Curiously Amazon has the paperback under a different title, Creative World Building and Creature Design. Perhaps publisher Dover found that the word “fantasy” limited the audience?
27 Tuesday Aug 2019
Posted in Kittee Tuesday
Celebrating H.P. Lovecraft’s interest in our fascinating felines.
Chapter heading from The Book of Cats, 1868.
20 Tuesday Aug 2019
Posted in Kittee Tuesday, Lovecraftian arts
Celebrating H.P. Lovecraft’s interest in our fascinating felines.
This week’s “Kittee Tuesday” post is the full-res artwork which fronts my new annotated “The Cats of Ulthar”.
20 Tuesday Aug 2019
As mentioned here a few weeks ago, here is H.P. Lovecraft’s story “The Cats of Ulthar” (1920) with my full annotations. This is being issued for the first time today, to celebrate Lovecraft’s birthday.
“The Cats of Ulthar” annotated as a 20-page PDF.
The Adobe Caslon Pro and Garamond fonts have been embedded in the PDF, so you should have no problems with font substitution. For those who like print, simply use any imposition-capable printer driver to print this as a 5-sheet fold-ready booklet. Fold up, then slip it between card covers… and ideally have your resident kitty make a paw-print on the card cover in the blood of a Zoog.
13 Tuesday Aug 2019
Posted in Kittee Tuesday, Lovecraftian arts
Celebrating H.P. Lovecraft’s interest in our fascinating felines.
This week’s kittee is a change from long-lost illustrations dug out of archives. The Blessed Felines from Minna Sundberg’s impressive Stand Still Stay Silent graphics novels — available free-to-read online or as nice collected paper editions.
It’s set in a future Scandinavia that has returned to a state of Nordic mythology complete with monsters, magic and cats (one of the few creatures to survive the plague…). A bit ‘young adult’-ish but still enjoyable for the settings and superb quality.
06 Tuesday Aug 2019
Posted in Kittee Tuesday
Celebrating H.P. Lovecraft’s interest in our fascinating felines.
Some of the Krazy Kat strips are now in the public domain… which has enabled the Krazy Kat Comics Scan Archive 1916-22. Free, online and public. In mega-zoom-o-vision, and often from the original art boards where possible, by the look of it. Great stuff.
Although the Krazy and Ignatz strip is not, to my knowledge, ever mentioned in letters by Lovecraft, he does seem to allude to it in a letter to Morton of 1924. Lovecraft is telling his friend Morton of the inner goings-on at Weird Tales magazine, and is using the ‘snappy patter’ style learned from his young friend Albert Sandusky (aka “Wisecrack Sandusky”)…
Wot a inside corneal circumnavigation I’m getting on Weird Tales! I want you should tell ’em, Ignatz!
inside corneal circumnavigation = a close-up inside-look. The cornea is part of the human eye.
