Category Archives: New books

New book – Lovecraft in Historical Context: a third collection

30 Monday Jul 2012

Posted by in Historical context, New books, New discoveries, Scholarly works, Summer School

≈ 2 Comments

I’m pleased to say that the print edition of my annual essays collection is now available for purchase!

Lovecraft in Historical Context: a third collection of essays and notes. 25,000 words, and many illustrations. 120 pages, as a 6″ x 9″ paperback. Buy it here.

Contains expanded, polished, and copiously footnoted/referenced versions of my recent draft essays and short notes. Plus new essays that are exclusive to the print edition.

1. Who was “Harley Warren”?
2. Who were the Blatschkas?
3. Lovecraft’s telescope.
4. Lovecraft’s camera.
5. Edison’s virtual ‘visit’ to Providence, 1896, a source for “Nyarlathotep”.
6. Missing : the Sentinel of Lovecraft’s Sentinel Hill.
7. Running down Danforth, at the Paterson Museum.
8. Neutaconkanut : Lovecraft’s last summer walk.
9. What could Lovecraft and his circle have known of Doctor John Dee?
10. Locating “The Mound”.
11. Some covers of The All-Story.
12. Mirrored : reflections on Lovecraft’s reflections.
13. Ten examples of tentacular propaganda, 1881-1910s.
14. A real horror : on the 1918 flu pandemic in Providence.
And more…!

I hope to produced a hand-coded Kindle ebook edition at some point soon.

Enjoy!

Church of Starry Wisdom library catalog

28 Saturday Jul 2012

Posted by in Lovecraftian arts, New books

≈ 1 Comment

An interesting new book project, coming in Fall 2013. A supposed sale-catalogue of books from the private occult library of the Church of Starry Wisdom of Providence, on their disbanding in 1877…

Including short bibliographic and historical essays on the books, by “noted scholars“. You’ll remember of course that Lovecraft’s “The Haunter of the Dark” (1935) had the hero discovering the remains of the library in 1938.

Lovecraft in Weird Tales, the monstrous facsimile!

25 Wednesday Jul 2012

Posted by in Historical context, New books

≈ 5 Comments

Got a spare $200+, and looking for the coolest Xmas present? The H.P. Lovecraft Historical Society has a two-volume set of facsimiles of all Lovecraft’s Weird Tales appearances…

“These two volumes reprint in facsimile all of Lovecraft’s writings in Weird Tales: original tales, collaborations, poems and letters to ye editor. Volume One covers October 1923—July 1924, and is an oversized edition of 52 pages; Volume Two (November 1924—September 1952) is 568 pages!”

   [ Hat-tip: Wimum Pugmire ]

Annals of The Paterson Rambling Club

24 Tuesday Jul 2012

Posted by in Historical context, New books, New discoveries

≈ Leave a comment

Joseph Rydings (1934), Country Walks in Many Fields; Being Certain Choice Annals of The Paterson Rambling Club. Paterson, NJ: Press of the Morning Call.

There seems to have been a modern (POD?) $15 reprint of this 338-page book by the Passiac County Historical Society, but the first edition seems pretty common. The Society website was last updated 2009, and they have blanked the Publications page. The book’s Contents list is available here. The book does not appear in Joshi’s Comprehensive Bibliography, and it’s possible no Lovecraftian has ever looked through it to glean anything that might relate to Morton and the Lovecraft circle.

The Paterson Rambling Club was apparently where several members of the Lovecraft circle took refuge, after Lovecraft had left New York City. Paterson was where James F. Morton was curator of the Paterson Museum.

Antarctica in Fiction

07 Saturday Jul 2012

Posted by in New books

≈ Leave a comment

Just published in hardback from Cambridge University Press: Antarctica in Fiction: Imaginative Narratives of the Far South…

“This comprehensive and engaging analysis of a wide range of Antarctic fiction – from lost-race romances to espionage thrillers to travellers’ tales to horror fantasies – is essential reading for anyone interested in the history, literature and culture of Antarctica”

The Introduction is available free online, with footnotes missing.

And interesting find is George Clarke Simpson’s 1914 story “Fragments of a Manuscript Found by the People of Sirius When They Visited the Earth During the Exploration of the Solar System” (South Polar Times. Vol. 3), which uses the term “climate change” to imagine a dramatically warmed earth, so much so that it causes all the Antarctic ice to melt. The author is not obscure, since he was a famous polar expeditionary of the time and went on to head the Met Office. But the story is so obscure that it seems rather unlikely Lovecraft knew of it.

Robert Nelson (1912-1935)

16 Saturday Jun 2012

Posted by in Historical context, New books

≈ Leave a comment

Nodens Books has published a little edition of the collected works of Robert Nelson, Sable Revery: Poems, Sketches and Letters by Robert Nelson…

“Robert Nelson (1912-1935) was a contributor of verse to Weird Tales magazine in the mid-1930s, and of verse and prose to fan magazines like The Fantasy Fan. He was also a correspondent of H.P. Lovecraft and Clark Ashton Smith. This slim volume collects all of his published poems, prose-sketches and letters, which date from the last four years of his short life. Also included are five letters by H.P. Lovecraft, four to Nelson and one to Nelson’s mother after the young man’s death.”