HPLinks #88.

* Due soon from Hippocampus Press, as a limited hardcover, Joshi’s new biography The Star-Treader: A Life of Clark Ashton Smith.

* Also forthcoming from Hippocampus Press, the Schultz H.P. Lovecraft’s Commonplace Book and Other Notes: An Annotated Edition, also as a limited edition hardcover.

This exhaustively annotated edition, based upon decades of study of both the text and sources of the commonplace book, illuminates the origins of many entries—from events in Lovecraft’s life, books or stories he read, and other sources—while also indicating their use in his fiction, even in cases where the use of the entries is by no means obvious. Other lists and notes relating to the commonplace book, including such works as “Weird Story Plots” and “Notes on Writing Weird Fiction,” are also presented, thoroughly annotated.

* S.T. Joshi’s blog brings news that…

I have nearly finished my monograph on Poe and Lovecraft, tentatively titled ‘Solitary Victims of Fate: Lovecraft’s Interactions with Poe’. The work is only about 35,000 words and not likely to get much bigger; it will be issued by Hippocampus Press next year. I have had great fun writing it, and I think I have found some Poe influences on Lovecraft’s tales that have not been cited before.

* The new McFarland multi-author book Literary Floridas: Essays on a Wild Peninsula Imagined (2026) has the chapter “Horror in the Sunshine State: H.P. Lovecraft, Tourist”. Judging by the preview pages from Google Books, the chapter appears to be a well-researched but lively introduction to the topic.

* The Complete Acolyte: A Historic 1940s Fanzine Reprint, available now in print. A key and quality early Lovecraft fanzine, now in print. I believe it’s also available as good page-scans elsewhere, for free.

* Now available in Italian, the complete run of H.P. Lovecraft’s amateur magazine The Conservative (2026)…

For the first time ever in the Italian language, this volume collects The Conservative in its entirety.

* Also new in Italian, a translation of the Joshi & Schultz Lovecraft’s Library (2026). Translating the fifth English edition, 2024.

* Feuilleton surveys The Art of Helmut Wenske. Scroll right down to the bottom to see two Lovecraft covers, indiscriminately used by the publisher Moewig for other books.

* An online conference set for later in June, Afterlives of World Building: The World of Robert E. Howard. Booking now.

Saturday 20th June 2026. The event is sponsored by The Dark Man: The Journal of Robert E. Howard and Pulp Studies, and will include pre-recorded interviews, two scholarly panels, and a keynote address by Sara Frazetta. Registration is required to receive the Zoom link and password.

* Sculptorium of Madness has a range of 3D printable figures for sale as downloadable 3D files. You can then print them yourself, paint them up as you like. I imagine one might also put them into home-made dioramas…

* David Thrussell & Shinjuku Thief Present: The Call of Cthulhu on two vinyl LPs, a reading with soundscape and soundtrack. Due 19th June 2026.

* Dark Worlds Quarterly exclaims “What?! More Plant Monsters!”, as more vegetable variants sprout from the old pulp magazines.

* Locus magazine reports “Subterranean Press to Close” at the end of 2027. The catalogue currently features Thomas Ligotti, Brian Lumley, Ramsey Campbell, T.E.D. Klein, and they have also published the nine-volume Collected Stories of Robert Silverberg.

* The editor of a planned Pop Culture Fandoms survey-book, apparently set for publication by Bloomsbury Press in 2028, is calling for short contributions…

I’m wide open to other suggestions. I’m particularly interested in non-US/UK fandoms and historical fandoms.

Send 200-300 word abstracts of your topic(s) by 30th August 2026. The aim is obviously not to be comprehensive with the book, as there will only be “100 short (1,000-word)” entries, when there could easily be 500 or more. So, you should probably also say why the fandom you’ve chosen is important to include. More important than, say, Elvis or Tolkien.

* New on Archive.org, the illustrated catalogue for Comic & Illustration Art Auction 114, December 12, 2019. Including Jack Kirby Eternals original b&w artwork, Mike Ploog’s Conan/Kull, and some Berni Wrightson pencil concept-sketches for a long-ago possible movie of “The Shadow over Innsmouth”…

* Popping up on eBay, and of possible use as a RPG prop, a local magazine ad for the Moses Brown school in Providence. “In the autumn of 1918, and with a considerable show of zest in the military training of the period, he [Charles Dexter Ward] had begun his junior year at the Moses Brown School” (The Case of Charles Dexter Ward).

* Those making RPG props and book designs may be interested in an excellent free Photoshop script to jitter the baseline for your text, thus making the lettering for a handwriting or calligraphic font more believable. Tested and working.

* And finally, Talkie: an LLM from 1930 (online test page) and talkie-1930-13b-it-GGUF (for local use in desktop software such as Jan.ai etc). Trained only on material from before 1931. The online version of the AI is censored, but the local GGUF is not. I can run the Q4_K_M variant GGUF on a 12Gb graphics card.

As you can see, of obvious use for 1920s Mythos writers and RPG makers. Seems best on topics related to the USA, though verifying its absolute accuracy could be a problem. It could not run much the same query re: detailing a Birmingham – Southampton rail route in the UK (the ill Tolkien being brought home from the Somme), seemingly having no knowledge of the westerly route and insisting on going aroundabout via London.

— End-quotes —

“I am glad you found my modification of your story interesting. I may use that plot — divested of any element connecting it with your tale — in supplying one of my amateur proteges with something to write about. It does not quite conform to the general idea of my own tales, so I shall not use it myself. I have lately — by the way — been collecting ideas & images for subsequent use in fiction. For the first time in my life, I am keeping a ‘commonplace-book’ — if that term can be applied to a repository of gruesome & fantastick thoughts.” — Lovecraft to Rheinhart Kleiner, January 1920.

“I was afraid those disjointed things bored you, but since they seem not to have done so, I will give you a few more, as I have recorded them for future fictional development in my commonplace-book. Remember, gents, that these crude sketches are the mere dreams themselves, not the stories. I relate only exactly what I dreamed, not what I am going to build up around the dreams.   I was walking or rather wading through a seemingly interminable and treeless marsh, under a leaden sky. My companion was an old man — a man so old that he frightened me…” — Lovecraft, ‘To the Gallomo’, April 1920.

“I think I have two kinds of moods in writing weird tales — one when I feel the need of scientific realism, & try to achieve a convincing air of objective sobriety against which the marvel itself stands out by contrast, (Colour Out of Space, Cthulhu, Whisperer, &c.) & the other when I feel myself half involved in the nebulous uncertainty of the pictured dream, & try to convey a hint of the febrile doubt & apprehension inherent in an imperfectly glimpsed vista, (Randolph Carter, Erich Zann, &c.). Of late the objective side has been uppermost, but that is because I have recently been writing from actual visual impressions gained in the New England countryside. When I get to a period of more fecund composition, & begin developing some of the odd items & subjective mood-jottings in my commonplace-book, I fancy the Erich Zann method will be called upon now & then.” — Lovecraft to C.A. Smith, November 1930.

“Glad you found the commonplace-book and cuttings of interest. […] Cosmic phantasy of some sort is as assured of possible permanence (its status subject to caprices of fashion) [however, in the future] its later & less irresponsible forms will doubtless differ vastly from most of the weird literature we have had so far. Like the lighter forms of dream-phantasy & Yog-Sothothery, it will require a delicate & precise technique; so that a crude old-timer like myself would never be likely to excel in it. Nevertheless, if I live much longer, I may try my hand at something of the sort — for it is really closer to my serious psychology than anything else on or off the earth. [… In thus] using up the ideas in my commonplace-book, I shall doubtless perpetrate a great deal more childish hokum, (gratifying to me only through personal association with the past) yet the time may come when I shall at least try something approximately serious.” — Lovecraft to F.B. Long, February 1927. Long had been sent the commonplace-book as it then stood, for perusal and return.

HPLinks #68.

* Just released, the long-awaited new book Adventurous Liberation: H.P. Lovecraft in Florida. Available in hardback or paperback, and I see the book is already on Amazon UK.

* New on Archive.org, a scan of the British fanzine Dagon 17 (April 1987). Among other items, there’s an article by Robert M. Price on Lovecraft’s uses of Theosophy, and another by Will Murray asking “Was there a real Brown Jenkin?”.

* In the latest edition of the journal Revista Helice, Vol. 11, No. 1 (Fall-Winter 2025-2026), “Que opinaba Borges de Lovecraft?: nueva revision de argumentos” (‘What did Borges think of Lovecraft?: A new review of the arguments’). Freely available online.

* Feuilleton has a long article on “Illustrating Hyperborea”, which surveys the illustrations for the tales of Clark Ashton Smith.

* Grognardia considers Lovecraft’s “What the Moon Brings” (1922).

* An unusual self-published pamphlet in Italian, newly published on Amazon, Tolkien vs Lovecraft: Confronto sul concetto di Morte (‘Tolkien vs Lovecraft: A comparison of their concepts of death’).

* The 2026 Robert E. Howard Awards are open for nominations.

* The Thorgal artist is to have a major new exhibition, opening in France in June 2026. Thorgal is a long-running Norse adventurer character who stars in a series of Belgian BD’s (short graphic-novels in the form of finely-produced oversized books).

* “The Magic Lantern Call Of Cthulhu”, to be presented at the Drayton Arms Theatre in February 2026. On other dates in that month, also a staging of “From Beyond”, and a new “Dunwich Horror Opera”. All part of the London Lovecraft Festival, 6th-22nd February 2026 in London, UK. Tickets on sale 1st January.

* And finally, new on YouTube is All the Lovecraftian references in DOOM: The Dark Ages. Which is the latest blockbuster entry into the DOOM series of videogames, and a game which is said to be very indebted to Lovecraft.

— End-quote —

from “BELLS” (Lovecraft, December 1919).

I hear the bells from yon imposing tower;
The bells of Yuletide o’er a troubled night;
Pealing with mock’ry in a dismal hour
Upon a world upheav’d with greed and fright.
[…]
In fancy yet I view the modest spire;
The peaked roof, cast dark against the moon;
The Gothic windows, glowing with a fire
That lent enchantment to the brazen tune.
Lovely each snow-drap’d hedge beneath the beams
That added silver to the silver there;
Graceful each cot, each lane, and all the streams,
And glad the spirit of the pine-ting’d air.
[…]
But on the scene a hideous blight intrudes;
A lurid nimbus hovers o’er the land;
Demoniac shapes low’r black above the woods,
And by each door malignant shadows stand.
The jester Time stalks darkly thro’ the mead;
Beneath his tread contentment dies away.
Hearts that were light with causeless anguish bleed,
And restless souls proclaim his evil sway.
Conflict and change beset the tott’ring world;
Wild thoughts and fancies fill the common mind;
Confusion on a senile race is hurl’d,
And crime and folly wander unconfin’d.

mead = a field of thick moist meadow-grass

HPLinks #67.

* In the new 2025 edition of the journal Synergies, “”There’s something those fellows catch — beyond life”: Visual Suggestions in Lovecraft’s Narrative” ($ paywall). From Italy, in English, the article is on Lovecraft and fine art and…

highlight[s] the visual roots of Lovecraftian aesthetics, [defining] its main characteristics, tracing them in the works of artists explicitly referenced by Lovecraft, such as Johann Heinrich Fussli, Francisco Goya, Anthony Angarola, Sidney Sime, Gustave Dore, John Martin, his friend Clark Ashton Smith and Nikolaj Roerich. Furthermore, by adopting a reversed perspective, the essay also aims to suggest that Lovecraft’s literary universe can influence the interpretation of the artworks he admired.

Yes, that can be true. When one looks at what happened to the people of the region Roerich so ably painted, it’s a real-life horror-story on a vast scale.

* An interesting obscurity I discovered via Archive.org. Lovecraft’s “Erich Zann” as published in the China Mail newspaper (English-language, Hong Kong under British rule), in time for Christmas 1932.

* It’s reported that South America’s 7th H.P. Literary Festival (2025) has been successfully held simultanously in Mexico and in Argentina. The organisers have a Linktree page at Avalon Club de Rol, but unfortunately it appears their Festival information is only online at Instagram. Though perhaps the Argentine wing of the event is that mentioned by S.T. Joshi in his latest blog post (9th December 2025).

* Now available, the contents-list for the sumptuous new ‘Icons of the Fantastic’ exhibition catalogue…

Plate 1. is Hannes Bok’s “Pickman’s Model” (1950). The font and formatting of the online contents-list does not reflect the fine design of the book’s interior.

* From Spain’s Diabolo Ediciones, what looks like a fan-book titled Siempre nos quedara Lovecraft. La influencia del horror cosmico en la cultura popular. Volumen 1. (2025)…

In this first volume of We Will Always Have Lovecraft, Fernando Lopez Guisado explores the magnitude of his influence on popular culture, from music to board-games.

* S.T. Joshi’s latest blog post reveals he has collected the work of a regular British contributor to the early Weird Tales magazine, which will appear in early 2026 as The Nameless Mummy and Others.

Arlton Eadie (1886–1935) was one of the relatively few English writers to appear regularly in the American pulp magazines. Some of the stories in my volume first appeared in Hutchinson’s Mystery Story Magazine in Great Britain. Many of his stories have a distinctively English feel to them (one of them, “The Immortal Hand,” involves the resurrection of the hand of William Shakespeare) — which makes me wonder why the devout Anglophile H.P. Lovecraft didn’t find them worthy of note. But I find almost no mentions of Eadie in his surviving correspondence.

I see Eadie’s Weird Tales stories are also available in French translation in three volumes. A little searching just now reveals some outlines of his biography. Real name, Leopold Leonard Eady. Born in the military barracks town of Woolich, Kent, he came of age at the height of the British Empire in 1904. Found working as a men’s tailor in the city of Newcastle, Northumberland in 1914 (Kelly’s Directory of Northumberland, 1914), then Army records show he served in the Northumberland Fusiliers during the First World War. Married an Anna Frances [Eady]. He was a mystery novelist published in hardbacks, as well as a short-story writer. He died in the English seaside resort of Lancing, Sussex in 1935, leaving a modest estate valued at approx. £15,000 (in today’s money), and presumably also his book rights.

* Also due soon is S.T. Joshi’s collection of August Derleth on writing, titled When Imagination Ends: Essays on Speculative Fiction. This will include… “My Twenty Years with Ghosts” (1959), an [unpublished] essay dealing with his publication of weird writers with Arkham House”. Joshi also notes, from a French writer, a forthcoming “profound monograph on R.H. Barlow”.

* Geoliminal has a long illustrated article on “The Death of Robert E. Howard in the Pages of Weird Tales”, with many clippings.

* New on Archive.org, H.P. Lovecraft’s coat of arms & bookplate as good scans.

* And finally, Dark Worlds Quarterly surveys the “Idols of the Cthulhu Mythos” to 1948.

— End-quotes —

“With the insatiable curiosity of early childhood, I used to spend hours poring over the pictures in the back of Webster’s Unabridged Dictionary — absorbing a miscellaneous variety of ideas. After familiarising myself with antiquities, mediaeval dress and armour, birds, animals, reptiles, fishes, flags of all nations, heraldry, etc. etc., I lit upon the section devoted to ‘Philosophical and Scientific Instruments’, and was veritably hypnotised with it.” — Lovecraft to Galpin, August 1918.

“A coat of arms won in a crusade is worth a thousand slavering compliments bandied about amongst rabble.” — Lovecraft to Morton, 1923.

“Wilfred Blanch Talman of Spring Valley, New-Netherlands. He blowed in Friday morning, & has since been engaged in the noble task of getting Grandpa interested in heraldry. Never before was I so conscious of my humiliating ignorance of a subject of which every armigerous gentleman ought to possess at least a smattering; & I have now resolved to make a study of the subject, employing the famous & standard treatise of Fox-Davies. Friday afternoon Talman took me to the genealogical department of the publick library & shewed me how to look up the arms of various lines which converge in me, & he also was kind enough to draw several different coats of which I have possessed verbal descriptions only. This is a late date at which to rectify my ignorance, but better late than never. […] I’ve always had the [family] description, which I was too ignorant to interpret”. — Lovecraft to Morton, October 1927 (?).

“These damn things [family heraldic shields] seem to vary so much that a guy can never be sure of what’s right. Suppose one had one’s coach-panels and silver plate all fixed up one way, and then along came some evidence that it ought to be t’other way ! It’s a tense and exacting game, kid!” — Lovecraft to Talman, June 1928.

It was indeed an amusing game, and one which in 1927/28 no doubt helped him to recover from the trauma of New York City. But he would later rail against…

“The utter ignorance & sappiness of the snivelling, myth-swallowing, church-going stuffed shirts who go about cackling dead slogans & spreading the heraldic tail-feathers that proclaim them self-conscious members of a close corporation of “best people”! Not that they’re necessarily any more stupid & irrational than the rabble they hate, but that they add to an equal stupidity & irrationality the intolerable assumption of some mystical superiority unbased on personal merit.” — Lovecraft to Catherine L. Moore, October 1936.