02 Tuesday Jul 2013
Posted in New books
A new doorstopper $40 art book from Taschen, Magic: 1400s-1950s
“the history of magic as a performing art from the 1400s to the 1950s” seen in “1,000 rarely seen vintage posters, photographs, handbills, and engravings as well as paintings.
01 Monday Jul 2013
Posted in Historical context, Lovecraftian arts, New books, Scholarly works, Summer School
Available now in paperback… my latest book collection of essays:
Lovecraft in Historical Context: fourth collection.
A book of essays is now an annual tradition with me, and this year’s volume weighs in at 304 pages, 76,000 words. Contains many expanded and footnoted versions of blog posts which first appeared here — for instance the essay “The terribly nice old ladies” zooms up to 12,000 words as I delve into the source landscape of “The Dunwich Horror”. Long-time Lovecraft researchers may be especially interested in 4,000 words of highly detailed scholarship which lays out the complete circus/theatrical and movie executive career of Arthur Leeds prior to the Kalem Club, accompanied by the first known photograph of him and a newly discovered Leeds short story that is an obvious inspiration for “Cool Air”.
Enjoy!
PART ONE: General essays
1. Typhon as a source for Cthulhu.
2. Arthur Leeds : the early biography, photographic portraits, and a story.
3. The terribly nice old ladies : Miniter and Beebe at Wilbraham.
4. A source for Rev. Abijah Hoadley in “The Dunwich Horror”.
5. An unknown H.P. Lovecraft correspondent?
6. Shards from H.P. Lovecraft’s quarry.
7. Of Rats and Legions : H.P. Lovecraft in Northumbria.
8. Looking into the Shining Trapezohedron.
9. Notes made after reading R.E. Howard’s key ‘Lovecraftian’ stories.
10. H.P. Lovecraft’s cinema ticket booth job, circa 1930.
11. Garrett P. Serviss (1851—1929) : a major influence on H.P. Lovecraft.
12. John Howard Appleton (1844—1930).
13. Tsan-Chan in Tibet : Tibetan Bon devils and Lovecraft’s future empire.
14. The locations of Sonia’s two hat shops.
15. In the hollows of memory : H.P. Lovecraft’s Seekonk and Cat Swamp.
16. A note on “The Paxton”.
17. Rabid! A note on H.P. Lovecraft and the disease rabies.
18. Pictures of some members of the Providence Amateur Press Club.
19. H.P. Lovecraft and his Young Men’s Club.
20. A few additions for Anna Helen Crofts (1889-1975).
21. An annotated “The History of the Necronomicon”. — sample
PART TWO: Finding Lovecraft’s most elusive correspondents
1. Wesley and Stetson : Providence models for Wilcox in “Cthulhu”?
2. Geo. FitzPatrick of Sydney : the Australian correspondent.
3. A likely candidate for the H.P. Lovecraft correspondent C.L. Stuart.
4. Curtis F. Myers (1897-?)
5. Sounding the Bell : finding a long ‘lost’ Lovecraft correspondent.
6. The fannish activity of Louis C. Smith.
7. Fred Anger after H.P. Lovecraft.
8. Reds and pinks : the politics of Woodburn Prescott Harris.
9. A note on H.P. Lovecraft’s British correspondent, Arthur Harris.
10. On Poe : Horatio Elwin Smith (1886-1946).
11. Gardens of delight? Thomas Stuart Evans (1885-1940).
12. The Hatter : Dudley Charles Newton (1864-1954).
Thanks for the cover art to Cotton Valent and Apolonis Aphrodisia.
29 Saturday Jun 2013
Posted in New books, Scholarly works
Newly announced from Scarecrow Press… Lord Dunsany, H.P. Lovecraft, and Ray Bradbury: Spectral Journeys by William F. Touponce.
“examines what these three masters of weird fiction reveal about modernity and the condition of being modern in their tales. In this study, Touponce confirms that these three authors viewed storytelling as a kind of journey into the spectral.”
Sadly out of my reach at a whopping $75 🙁
25 Tuesday Jun 2013
Coming soon, a new book: Good old Mac: Henry Everett McNeil, 1862-1929. A Collection and Biographical Essay.
It opens with my new 10,000-word biographical essay on the core member of the Kalem Club and Lovecraft’s good friend in New York. Followed by a selection of his previously uncollected articles and stories. Judging from Joshi’s Lovecraft bibliography, this will be the first ever scholarly essay/book on McNeil’s life and career.
If anyone has unpublished information on him, that’s perhaps been sitting in a drawer for years, I’d welcome seeing it.
21 Friday Jun 2013
The limited hardcover of Blood and Thunder: The Life and Art of Robert E. Howard is about to make the transition to a Lulu.com paperback. The main R.E.H. blog reports today…
“It will be available for purchase any day now, both at the Lulu storefront and Amazon.com.”
21 Friday Jun 2013
S.T. Joshi reviews the new volume of Lovecraft stories from Oxford University Press.
13 Thursday Jun 2013
Posted in New books
Just released, Lovecraft’s long essay on “Cats and Dogs” — translated into Greek!
Coming soon, the LOLcat edition! 😉
11 Tuesday Jun 2013
Posted in New books
Hippocampus has dated and priced the collected essays of Steven J. Mariconda, H.P. Lovecraft: Art, Artifact, and Reality. $20, July 2013.
03 Monday Jun 2013
Posted in New books
Due in a week or so from Wermod and Wermod, a new hardback of Lovecraft’s Supernatural Horror in Literature, annotated by the right-wing intellectual and novelist Alex Kurtagic. The UK Amazon listing states…
“This annotated edition comes extensively footnoted, with the text in a big readable font [does he meant the footnotes or Lovecraft’s text?], plus a comprehensive index, a bibliography of all the works cited by Lovecraft, and attractive cover artwork and design.”
03 Monday Jun 2013
Posted in Historical context, New books, Scholarly works
Hippocamus has dated and priced an interesting sounding bit of book-length Lovecraft geographia. David Goudsward’s book H.P. Lovecraft in the Merrimack Valley. It ship out in July at $15. The book looks at a…
“fascinating aspect of Lovecraft’s life which has been explored only lightly in the past—his association with the Merrimack Valley and fellow amateur journalists Charles W. “Tryout” Smith (1852–1948), Myrta Alice (Little) Davies (1888–1967), and Edgar J. Davis (1908–1949), who lived there or nearby for most of their lives.”
Don Gorvett, “Mill on the Merrimack”.
“by the 1930s […] entire regions like north-eastern Connecticut and the Merrimack Valley of New Hampshire and Massachusetts appeared to be left behind by history, and the sight of abandoned factories was as common as that of deserted farms” […] “the rural hinterlands seemed to be largely populated with inbred, degenerated retards” [and newspapers pictured] “them as a bunch of mutated dwarfs, giants, and idiots.” (Bernd Steiner, “The Decline of a Region”, H.P. Lovecraft and the Literature of the Fantastic, 2007, p.33).
02 Sunday Jun 2013
Posted in New books, Scholarly works
Table of contents for the new book of essays H.P. Lovecraft’s Dark Arcadia: The Satire, Symbology and Contradiction
The book argues against the myths that Lovecraft: i) shunned the depiction of females and female sexuality; ii) did not use the usual hackneyed and time-worn gothic and supernatural beings in his fiction; iii) preferred the cosmic and the utterly-alien to the mundane; iv) that his ideas became those of a left-leaning socialist as he grew older. Also has some interesting-sounding looks at Lovecraft’s engagements with classical antiquity.
31 Friday May 2013
Posted in Lovecraftian arts, New books
Hippocampus has announced the new S.T. Joshi novel starring H.P. Lovecraft, in an imagined plot set in 1914. The Assaults of Chaos: a novel about H.P. Lovecraft is initially in a limited edition of only 500 in hardcover. Let’s hope there’s a later paperback, and even a affordable Kindle edition, to keep it available.
