Category Archives: Maps

HPLinks #47 – vitalist Lovecraft, Lovecraft in the Po Delta, re-evaluating CAS, a new Lovecraft Atlas, and more…

24 Thursday Jul 2025

Posted by in AI, HPLinks, Lovecraftian arts, Maps, Podcasts etc., Scholarly works

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HPLinks #47.

* More Lovecraft + philosophy. New from Hungary, “Lovecraft, antimodernism and new vitalisms” (2025)… “H.P. Lovecraft’s oeuvre is considered as a specific genre iteration of antimodernist themes, but also as a formative influence on the philosophy of speculative realism.” In Hungarian from the Dept. of Philosophy at Zagreb, and freely available for download.

* Overthink podcast Episode 134: Weirdness with Eric Schwitzgebel, interviewing Eric about his philosophy book Weirdness of the World (Princeton University Press, 2024). With a substantial discussion of the book Weird Realism: Lovecraft and Philosophy.

* Aetherium Arcana blog has a new short article on “Lovecraft and the Unconscious Structure of Empire”, followed by the new longer essay “Self-devouring Racism: Subversion and Collapse in Lovecraft’s Mythos”.

* New from Spain in English and open-access, “Development of Expert Systems by means of Large Language Models”. The authors feed Lovecraft’s fiction to a leading AI LLM, and have it try to find and map connections. Freely available online, those the images are rubbish quality and partly unreadable even in the source zip. This is as good as they get…

* Strange Aeons has a Catalog and Contacts link-list for the Italian Lovecraftians. Seems to have first appeared in 2023, and was last updated on 23rd July 2025.

* Also in Italy, Wu Ming 1 on Lovecraft, appearing at the Lunatico Festival. On 25th July 2025 he presents his new novel featuring Lovecraft-as-character, and then… “the geographer Francesco Visentin and Andrea Olivieri will dialogue with the author”. Followed by a presentation of…

The graphic-musical project [that depicts] the imaginary journey of H.P. Lovecraft in the Po Delta in 1926, between hallucinated visions, esoteric confraternities and monstrous water creatures. Designed by the Italian-English musician Jet Set Roger and the Serbian cartoonist Aleksandar Zograph, preseting a concert event that merges music and literature in a game of cross-media references with the Wu Ming novel.

* Decadent Serpent considers “The Reevaluations of Clark Ashton Smith”. Part of the discussion is of “The Quest of Iranon” by Lovecraft, compared to “Xeethra” by CAS.

* Black Gate has a long event-report with excellent photographs, “Post Oaks and Sand Roughs: A first trek to Howard Days” 2025.

* A useful new survey article of all the “Biographies of Robert E. Howard”, issued prior to the new and well-reviewed biography from the University of North Texas Press.

* Forthcoming in French, Atlas Lovecraft, a 180-page book that sounds like a cartographic atlas for Lovecaft. Due in October 2025 from reputable publisher Bragelonne.

A completely unprecedented atlas offering tangible geographic and cartographic representations of the emblematic places of Howard Phillips Lovecraft. An illustrated work in colour presenting plans of Providence, the State of Massachussetts, Arkham, Innsmouth, Kingsport, Dunwich and its region, a map of the Antarctic Expedition and a cartographic statement of mountain areas… [etc]

* And finally, a LoRA add-on for Flux, meant for generating images of whimsical toon Happy Shoggoths. Not on CivitAi, thankfully — since (as of today) the go-to site for creative AI is effectively banned here in the UK. I’m happy now that I nipped in just in time with my Windows 11 Superlite upgrade, and thus I now have the SD 1.5 turbo LoRAs, SDXL, Flux Kontext and Wan2.1 all downloaded and set up with workflows and ComfyUI to run them.

— End-quotes —

“I have always been fond of maps & geographical details (I’ve drawn a map of “Arkham’ to keep my local references straight), & my lifelong antiquarianism has caused me to lay zestful stress on historic backgrounds & traditional architectural minutiae.” — Lovecraft to Fritz Leiber, Jr., February 1936.

“I used to row [in a boat] considerably on the [River] Seekonk, which you’ll find on your city map … and also on general maps of R.I. Often I would land on one or both of the Twin Islands — for islands (associated with remote secrets, pirate treasure, and all that) always fascinated me.” — Lovecraft to Duane Rimel, April 1934.

[Lovecraft is delighted to find that he can circumnavigate the city of Charleston entirely via its many graveyards …] “the President of the Charleston Garden Club some time ago form’d the notion of mapping out an idyllic cross-town walk which might include as many as possible of these with a fair degree of continuity.” — Lovecraft, “An Account of Charleston”.

[Lovecraft rises to the very top of the highest building in New York City …] “The assembled clan’s first move was up — clean up to the top of N.Y.! It costs half a ducat [dollar] per rube [person], and is worth it. Loveman was dizzy, but your grandpa wasn’t — gawd knows how hard I worked when I was ten years old to conquer my native tendency to dizziness from altitudes! I walked on high railway trestles, and hell knows what not! But I digress. All Manhattan, Brooklyn, and Jersey City lay below, outspread like a map — in fact, I told Mortonius [Morton] that the city-planners had done an excellent job in making the place almost as good as the map in my Hammond Atlas at home.” — Lovecraft to Maurice Moe, May 1922.

On the map

04 Thursday Jul 2024

Posted by in Lovecraftian arts, Maps

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The Lands of Dream wall-map of Lovecraft’s Dreamlands, by Jason Bradley Thompson, makes it into the University of Wisconsin Collection. Via their acquisition of the American Geographical Society Library Digital Map Collection. At their page, ‘open image in new tab’ + zoom, for a larger, readable version of the map.

Useful to have as a wallpaper on your tablet while listening to an audiobook of Dream Quest, and with its muted colours it’s not as a super-gloss as other versions. You can also have this in your own collection in super-gloss though, as I see it’s still available as a 24″ x 36″ wall poster.

In the same American Geo. Soc. collection, I see another imaginary world wall-map, The Land of Make Believe (1930).

Also, on looking at Jason’s website I see he has an update on his RPG, with a post on Dreamland 2024 Plans and an accompanying Dreamland PDFs Update to “version 2.0 of the public PDFs” (Quickstart, Character Sheet, and ‘The Paradise of the Unchanging’). Travel rules for the game “have been significantly revised” after playtesting, and he shows a map of the regions around Ulthar together with travel routes…

Lovecraft at war (or not)

21 Friday Jun 2024

Posted by in Astronomy, Maps, Picture postals

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The U.S. appears to have just passed the legislation to re-introduce ‘the draft’ (military conscription), so far as I can tell without an in-depth dive into American politics (snore…). Though, rather curiously in this age of supposed gender-equality everywhere, it’s reported to be only for men aged 18-26. But no doubt young women are at this moment clamouring for equality here, as elsewhere (sound of crickets chirping). There is no actual draft or registration currently in place, I should add, lest I be accused of ‘misinformation’.

This news, and a recent mini-debate here in the UK about the need for conscription into and rapid training of a “Citizen’s Army” in the event of real hostilities (due to a run-down of the military over many decades), made me think about Lovecraft’s attempts at enlistment in the armed forces during wartime…

I presented myself at the recruiting station of the R.I. National Guard & applied for entry into whichever unit should first proceed to the front [i.e. the front-line of battle, in France]. On account of my lack of technical or special training, I was told that I could not enter the Field Artillery, which leaves first; but was given a blank of application for the Coast Artillery [Corps], which will go after a short preliminary period of defence service at one of the forts of Narragansett Bay.

Thus Lovecraft would have been initially defending against German submarine and (via cliff-top / island patrols) spy/saboteur encroachment on the American coastline. In principle, the type of large emplacement gun seems not altogether unlike a telescope, and perhaps involving some of the same maths and aiming. Possibly his astronomical training at the Ladd Observatory would actually have come in useful?

He made several attempts, I recall. To the extent that, whenever he left the house, his mother was fearful he would try to enlist. But it was not to be, and he was rejected.

Had not my mother disturbed my ambitious effort of last May [1917], in which I utilised my absurdly robust-looking exterior as a passport to martial glory […] I should now be digging trenches, drilling, & pounding a typewriter at Fort Standish in Boston Harbour, where the 9th Co. R.I. Coast Artillery is placed at present.” (Lovecraft, in Letters to Rheinhart Kleiner).

This was on an island, which has a 1914/1921 war-map which may interest those looking for fresh 1920s RPG material / settings relating to Lovecraft. One might devise a “what if” scenario in which a successfully enlisted Lovecraft encounters mysterious and maddening Mythos doings in Boston harbour. He might even get to blast the heck out of the monster with a BIG gun, before going mad… thus especially pleasing the ‘blast Cthulhu with a machine-gun’ RPG crowd.

1925 NYC map

07 Friday Jun 2024

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This week on ‘Picture Postals’, another map and also a departure from the Providence theme. New York City’s subway and ‘elevated’ railway system in 1925, drawn by E.R. Trott and given away to customers by a large hotel. In Red Hook Lovecraft was living in the bottom-right corner of the map. See “CLINTON” written in capitals at an angle, and then find “Atlantic” and intersect the two… and you’re about there.

2988 pixels on the longest side, and thus readable if downloaded at full size. A very useful map if reading Lovecraft’s 1925 Diary and letters from New York, since it also has many of the street names, parks, ferry lines, museums, libraries, and even the dock numbers. All for 1925.

And to bring the map somewhat to life, here we glimpse a typical subway entrance with news-stand, at Columbus Circle in October 1925. On one of the southern corners of Central Park…

Note the news vendor’s baseball bat, ready to hand. Hoodlums got what was coming to them, in those days!

Providence Harbour

10 Friday May 2024

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This week on ‘Picture Postals’, my hand-tinted version of a nautical map of Providence Harbour and the lower Seekonk in 1896. In the Seekonk (here the ‘Pawtucket River’) we see the ‘Twin Islands’ on which the youthful Lovecraft used to land in his rowing-boat. High-res at 4600px and 300dpi.

Brown University at the top, Starvegoat Island at the bottom. This map seems to have some RPG potential, as at that time a lot of infilling had not yet occurred. Lots of coves and marshes and eel-grass meadows in which Things Might Lurk.

And here’s a more poetic surface view, though also work-a-day since there were still tall-masted ships working the harbour in Lovecraft’s early youth…

Welcome to Arkham

27 Wednesday Mar 2024

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Welcome to Arkham…

is a complete guide to the city of Arkham and the neighboring towns of Dunwich, Innsmouth and Kingsport, detailing 115 fabled locations and featuring more than 500 illustrations.

Appears to be new and a companion to the Arkham Horror board-game, but may also be of interest to Mythos writers. There no hint that it’s a politically-tweaked and polished-up reprint of an older book, as often appears to be the case with Chaosium. I assume there must be maps, but they’re not specified in the description.

Free to read online as a flipbook, so you can see what it looks like inside. Though… my browser couldn’t get past the flipbook’s cookies blocking-notice.

Providence, 1896

05 Friday Jan 2024

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I’d not seen this one before, and it gives a pleasing sense of the oceanic nature of Lovecraft’s city. By M.D. Mason, dated and issued in 1896, it shows the layout of central Providence as it was when Lovecraft was about six years old. Lovecraft’s College Hill is just out of sight, off the left hand side of the picture.

Finding it on eBay led me to the same picture plastered with watermarks at the stock-shovel site Alamy. This at least gave me the proper title “View of the city of Providence as seen from the dome of the new State House”. From there I found the inevitable Library of Congress public-domain source. It turns out it was issued as a supplement to the local newspaper, and thus the young Lovecraft almost certainly saw and perused it closely. Thus imbuing an early sense of his city as closely connected to the illimitable ocean.

He may even have seen the same view later, from the State House.

A folksy map of Providence

01 Friday Dec 2023

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This week on ‘Picture Postals’, a folksy hand-draw map postcard which names, and also sometimes sketches, many of the city locations mentioned by Lovecraft in his letters. Possibly 1920s, judging by the design of the back and the existence of the Shepley Library as a possible destination.

As you can see, it can be turned three ways according to whatever direction the holder is walking. As Lovecraft once said…

everything cannot be carry’d in memory; so that it is well always to have a map in one’s pocket.

Rhode Island Hospital

02 Friday Jun 2023

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Continuing yesterday’s medical theme, this week on ‘Picture Postals’ I take a look at the exteriors of the main Rhode Island Hospital, Providence, as it was in Lovecraft’s time.

His uncle Dr. Clark has been an outpatients surgeon here 1876-1883.

However, in the 1930s both Lovecraft and his aunt were at the Jane Brown Memorial Hospital. Faig Jr. has this at the “Jane Brown Memorial Building of Rhode Island Hospital” and Joshi has “Jane Brown Memorial Hospital (now Rhode Island Hospital)”, so I assumed that JB and RIH are the same institution. But were they at the same location?

Today the “Jane Brown” in Providence has the address of “593 Eddy Street”, but Google Street View has some difficulty in getting me close enough. So, back to the 1930s. Where, exactly, was the 1930s Jane Frances Brown Building for Private Patients? I then found a reference to the…

“Jane Frances Brown Building for Private Patients, Rhode Island Hospital, Providence” (building commenced 1919, opened 1922, gift of Jesse H. Metcalf and Jane Frances Brown).

A 1919 article which anticipated the new “Jane Frances Brown” suggests an coherent and elegant interior…

And this led me to a good photo of the block, newly opened in 1922…

This then is where Lovecraft passed away. However, I was still uncertain if this was on the main Rhode Island Hospital campus, or was somewhere else in the city. A little more jumping around on Google Street View finally landed me at a reasonable view. The hospital block is still there, just across from the Eddy Street car-park. I don’t know if one would be able to ghoulishly peer up at Lovecraft’s exact “death window” from below (likely to be frowned on by the hospital, as it would disturb any current patients), and finding that out would take a lot more research.

An old map then pairs the relevant sites together, with the new 1922 Jane Brown block just south of the older Hospital campus. Seen here in relation to Lovecraft’s 66 College Street…

His mad mother was at the Butler Hospital for the Insane, a different place. Butler was also where his father died, also insane.