Category Archives: New books

New book: Io Sono Providence, vol. 2

30 Wednesday Sep 2020

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The second volume of Io Sono Providence: la biografia di H.P. Lovecraft is now marked as “Arriving”. This being the ongoing translation of the S.T. Joshi’s famous biography of Lovecraft. The first volume shipped this time last year. Note that Volume 2 of the Italian translation is “1920-1928”, and there will be one more next year for a three-volume set. Congratulations to all concerned, and also for sticking to the release schedule despite the difficulties of the lockdowns in the last six months.

Three more books of Letters in progress

27 Sunday Sep 2020

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S.T. Joshi’s Blog has updated, and the new post makes me aware of a new two volume Czech translation I hadn’t heard about…

I have received a most distinctive item—nothing less than a Czech translation of my edition of The Annotated Revisions and Collaborations of H.P. Lovecraft.

He also gives titles of three forthcoming Letters volumes, presumably set for 2021-22…

Letters to Hyman Bradofsky and Others; Letters to Woodburn Harris and Others; Letters to Richard F. Searight and E. Hoffmann Price.

Studi Lovecraftiani catch-up

24 Thursday Sep 2020

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An item of news I missed in summer 2020, the release of a new issue of Studi Lovecraftiani, the leading Italian Lovecraft journal.

studi

No. 18 has…

* Cover painting by Matteo Bocci.

* A homage to the writer and friend Elvezio Sciallis, a narrator and story writer.

* Renzo Giorgetti looks at the symbolic and mythological basis of R’lyeh.

* Fabio Calabrese proposes a “fourth genre” of the fantastic: Lovecraftian fiction. Thus widening the field of fantastic literature.

* Sandro Mezzetto on “some sources of Lovecraft’s fiction”.

* Christian Lamberti on the Randolph Carter cycle.

* Davide Rossato surveys John Carpenter’s Lovecraftian cinema.

* A translation of an early “evaluation” on Lovecraft by Joseph Payne Brennan, being one of the first items of literary criticism of the fiction

* A translation of “HPL and the myths of scientific materialism” by John A. Buettner.

* Lovecraft on Poe’s places… “a full-bodied unpublished work by Lovecraft himself, translated here for the first time, where the Dreamer talks to us about the homes and places of Poe.”

And there’s more. No. 17, too. Since somehow it appears that Tentaclii also missed Studi Lovecraftiani in June 2019.  Following hot on the heels of a (perhaps late) January 2019 issue, which may be why I wasn’t looking for a summer issue in 2019.

No. 17 seems to have been about two-thirds a Ramsey Campbell / fiction / poetry issue by the look of it. But it also had unspecified… “essays and articles by Stefano Lazzarin, Renzo Giorgetti, Miranda Gurzo, Riccardo Rosati and others.”

A little further digging reveals some details on these items of non-fiction…

* Riccardo Rosati on HPL’s political thought, apparently comparing him with Evola.

* Stefano Lazzarin on ‘The Veiled Face: hyperbole and reticence in Howard Phillips Lovecraft’.

* Renzo Giorgetti on the importance of dreams as one of HPL’s sources of inspiration.

* Miranda Gurzo who sees “the mythology of Cthulhu as the symbol of the crisis of the modern world”, and suggests HPL’s possible sources in biblical Apocalypse imagery, re: The Book of Job.

* An examination of “Beyond The Wall Of Sleep”, which sounds like an English essay translated to Italian?

* A newly-translated 1937 poem by Lovecraft.

New Book: Letters To Rheinhart Kleiner and Others

21 Monday Sep 2020

Posted by in Historical context, New books, Scholarly works

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Hippocampus has announced and has a page for the new and greatly-expanded edition of H.P. Lovecraft: Letters To Rheinhart Kleiner and Others. The “and Others” section includes, among others, “a small batch of letters and postcards to Arthur Leeds”. Although these still fill 100 pages. In all, there are over 200 pages of additional annotated letters to correspondents other than Kleiner. I suspect most have been published before, but they won’t have been annotated before. Shipping in October, apparently.

From The Photodramatist, December 1921. Kleiner’s light poem on ‘seeing the world’ via cinema news-reel and travel-short, which only a century ago was a relatively new media form and a new audience experience for much of America. The poem is not listed in the first Letters To Rheinhart Kleiner.

New Book: Robert E. Howard: A Closer Look (Starmont Guide, update)

18 Friday Sep 2020

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An interesting item, new from Hippocampus. Robert E. Howard: A Closer Look, this being the old Starmont Reader’s Guide for Howard, but overhauled and updated for 2020. Done by the original authors too, which is nice…

“the authors have now prepared a radically expanded and updated version of their monograph, taking account of these new discoveries” [by Howard scholars]

The book is structured by character rather than by date, which makes sense for a Reader Guide. The book also surveys his poetry and other work. So it all looks very useful as an introductory guide. Amazon UK has no listing for it yet, but let’s hope it gets on there and perhaps also has a Kindle ebook edition in due course.

H.P. Lovecraft in Britain / Sterling in Italy

09 Wednesday Sep 2020

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H.P. Lovecraft in Britain (2007), newly republished in summer 2020 as a budget Kindle ebook for £2.28. It’s paired with “The Horror in the Museum” for some reason, though it appears the latter is not annotated or also given an essay.

The long essay untangled Lovecraft’s British publishing history from the 1950s to the 70s, with the help of the Gollancz archives. It was originally published as a limited edition 46-page chapbook from The British Fantasy Society, with a pleasing cover and interior illustrations.

It looks like it may still be possible to get a copy of the original chapbook monograph from the author, for a mere £6 inc. UK postage. As such it may be rather more desirable than the new ebook for many Lovecraftians. Worth a try.

Also new, in a 300-page paperback, is Claudio Foti’s book in Italian on Lovecraft and Kenneth Sterling. This was published at the end of June 2020, and has an essay on the pair, “together with all of Lovecraft’s letters to Kenneth J. Sterling” in translation. It looks like it may also have a translation of “Eryx”, and hints at possibly containing other Sterling story translations in Italian. Foci has been a Lovecraft Annual contributor (2017) and hopefully we’ll get an English translation of his essay in due course.

New graphic novels – “Red Hook”, “Herbert West” and “Mountains”

08 Tuesday Sep 2020

Posted by in Kittee Tuesday, Lovecraftian arts, New books

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There’s a new Italian graphic novel of Lovecraft’s “The Horror at Red Hook”. It’s actually more a Euro-style ‘BD album’ in page-count and large 17″ x 24″ size. The book shipped in July 2020.

The artist is Stefano Cardoselli. The publisher also offer his “Herbert West” (March 2020) and his the Lovecraftian “The Inhabitant of The Lake” by Ramsey Campbell is due in December 2020. Could be an opportunity here for an Anglosphere publisher to translate and bundle all three.

There’s also yet another graphic novel of At The Mountains of Madness, from Adam Fyda. This appeared in July…

British illustrator Dave Shephard has also announced what appears to be a melding of “Dagon” and “The Call of Cthulhu”, which bills itself in the book’s title as a “graphic novel” — but in the blurb as an “illustrated adaptation”. Due Spring 2021.

Also in graphic novels, The View from the Junkyard recently found a neglected Lovecraftian gem in a graphic novel titled Weird Detective…

The story takes detective fiction and merges it sublimely with the Cthulhu Mythos in ways I’ve seen only in such great books as Shadows over Baker Street; a collection of short stories pitting the Great Detective [Holmes] against the Great Old Ones. Finding something similar in graphic novel format is a treat!

A character that looks like Lovecraft, and he has a talking cat. I like it already.

The View from the Junkyard‘s review also notes his disappointment in discovering that this graphic novel was a trade from 2017 (per-issues 2016), and there have been no more in the years since. He wryly points to the huge difficulty involved in simply finding out about completed-story graphics novels of the pulp entertainment type, which get swamped by endless weekly tidal-waves of manga, superhero, and depressive art-school wrist-slashers…

I might need to hire a weird detective to help me find more like this.

Indeed. In the meantime Weird Detective is currently £9.99 for Kindle on Amazon UK, where for some reason it’s been saddled by Dark Horse with a retro Ditko-like cover that really doesn’t reflect the quality of Guiu Villanova’s interior artwork or layouts. It has about 110 pages of story.