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Tentaclii

~ News and scholarship on H.P. Lovecraft (1890–1937)

Tentaclii

Category Archives: Scholarly works

Street & Smith proto-pulps to 1930, now online

08 Friday Dec 2023

Posted by asdjfdlkf in Historical context, Odd scratchings, Picture postals, Scholarly works

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Northern Illinois University has reportedly completed its scanning project for much of the output of the Street & Smith publishing company to 1930. At the Nickels and Dimes website one can now find, freely online, 113,342 well-scanned pages from 4,790 ‘dime’ novels and proto-pulp ‘story papers’. The work began as “a local initiative in 2013”, but grew over the years and then landed “a grant of $338,630 from the National Endowment for the Humanities” to ensure completion.

The site doesn’t yet have the new press-release about the project’s completion, but a sort-by-date shows it runs to 1930. Note that their U.S. public domain status only extends to 1928, and that only from 1st January 2024.

And there are enough pictures here, and since I have a snuffling cold, I feel can class this post as one of my weekly ‘Picture Postals’ posts. Especially since some of the serials are known to have been enjoyed by Lovecraft in his youth. Such as the ‘Nick Carter’ adventure-mysteries. For instance, one can imagine him being intrigued enough to at least pick this combo of kitties and Egypt off the news-stands for a thumb-through even at age 19…

Though if he read them that late appears to be unknown. Possibly not. Lovecraft recalled them in a letter for the musical and philosophical Galpin, suggesting they were intended for “small boys”…

“Nick Carter and Old Sleuth, dear to the small boys of other generations, and studied almost invariably without knowledge or consent of the reader’s parents!”

Though that would be small boys of the early 1900s, apparently able to read page after page of small text. Something that would likely be deemed beyond the capabilities of the screen-boggled boys of 2023.

Lovecraft read a lot of them…

“If I had kept all the nickel novels — Pluck & Luck, Brave & Bold, Frank Reade, Jesse James, Nick Carter, Old King Brady, &c. — which I surreptitiously read 35 years ago… I could probably get a young fortune for ’em today”.

As to dates, Joshi has him as reading…

“Street & Smith’s Popular Magazine around 1905–10; read the entirety of the Railroad Man’s Magazine (1906–13); he began reading the Black Cat around 1904.”

We also know he gave up on following Conan Doyle’s new Sherlock Holmes tales in 1908.

For ‘prime dime’ Street & Smith juvenile reading we’re probably more likely talking about Lovecraft at between the ages 9 – 16, the years 1899 – 1905. So those would probably be the years to look at first, on the now-completed Nickels and Dimes website. That said, his interest in occasional issues as late as 1913 can’t be ruled out. And, newly interested in the industry trends and markets for fiction, he would have at least glanced at Street & Smith’s covers on the news-stands during the mid 1920s.

He was likely drawn to Popular Magazine by the sequel to the famous She in February 1905.

Note that at Nickels and Dimes you need to enlarge the view before you go to fullscreen. You can’t enlarge once in fullscreen, it seems. Also note that key S&S magazines such as Popular Magazine appear to be missing. Evidently it’s the complete collection, but not complete in terms of the entire S&S output. If you can offer them a complete run of missing titles, or fill-in issues, I guess they’d be quite interested.

Raymond Chandler as a writer of the fantastic

07 Thursday Dec 2023

Posted by asdjfdlkf in Scholarly works

≈ 1 Comment

Who knew? Wormwoodiana digs out Raymond Chandler’s Fantasies.

I for one want to know more about “The Four Gods of Bloon” and “The Rubies of Marmelon”, both of which sound almost like Dunsany titles.

Seemingly uncollected in one volume, suggesting an opportunity for a publisher. I assume they were actually written, and that they may still exist somewhere in an archive. Alternatively an opportunity for an anthology of noted writers, each asked to ‘write to one of his unwritten titles’ and in a somewhat Chandler-esque style.

Sexy monsters

05 Tuesday Dec 2023

Posted by asdjfdlkf in Scholarly works

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El erotismo en los monstruos de Howard P. Lovecraft. Estudio de lo ominoso y lo erótico en los monstruos de” Los mitos de Cthulhu” de Lovecraft. In Spanish, but in English translation ‘A study of the ominous and the erotic in the monsters of Lovecraft’s Cthulhu Mythos’. New and freely available online.

New book: Ancient Egypt and Popular Culture (open access)

04 Monday Dec 2023

Posted by asdjfdlkf in New books, Scholarly works

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Of possible interest to Tentaclii readers, the new multi-author volume titled How Pharaohs Became Media Stars: Ancient Egypt and Popular Culture. Not a MacFarland book. This one’s from Archaeopress, as Archaeopress Egyptology #48. Only on Amazon as a paperback, but I see that the publisher has a free open-access PDF version for no-hassle download. The book leads with a useful overview of “Theories on Pop Culture and Egyptology”.

The otherwise £170 Megaliths of the World Vol. 1 may also interest some Tentaclii readers. Also open-access, it’s free in PDF.

New Book: Tolkien e Lovecraft

03 Sunday Dec 2023

Posted by asdjfdlkf in New books, Scholarly works

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My ideal book, and… it’s in Italian and I can’t read Italian. Urg. Tolkien e Lovecraft: Alle origini del fantastico is newly published in the Historica Edizioni series.

J.R..R. Tolkien and H.P. Lovecraft: the gods of fantastic writing, co-founders of a genre that is both deeply ancestral and very modern. The conventional view would place them at opposite ends of the fantastic ecosystem: light and shadow, black and white, Tolkien synonymous with airy fantasy and Lovecraft with deep horror. Yet in the epic of Tolkien’s Middle-earth there is no shortage of flashes of darkness and terror, just as in the dark Lovecraftian cosmos, populated by unspeakable entities, fairy-tale horizons of enchantment and wonder are also found. By analysing their masterpieces, and the reading that inspired both men, this book aims to read the two great architects of the imagination from a more flexible perspective, one which attempts to frame and understand them within their authentic complexity.

Soon to be available via Amazon Italy, which has a 28th November 2023 publication date though the book is not currently listed as shipping. Amazon UK “knows ‘a nurthing” about the book.

The Scientist in Popular Culture

20 Monday Nov 2023

Posted by asdjfdlkf in New books, Scholarly works

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New to me, a 2015 McFarland study I’d missed, The Literary Haunted House: Lovecraft, Matheson, King and the Horror in Between. Finding this led me to note that the same author also put together a Haunted House Short Stories anthology in 2021, and (more in my line) edited a new essay collection book The Scientist in Popular Culture: Playing God and Working Wonders (2022). Amazon has no TOCs for the latter, but Google Books has a basic list of chapters:

Frankenstein Goes West;
“Pay Attention, 007”;
A Space Odyssey;
The Scientist as Sixties Icon;
Why Is Everything So Heavy in the Future?;
Through Heroism and Science, Woman Inherits the Earth;
A Scientific Method to Muppet Madness;
All of It Madness;
A Feeling for the Clone;
Dexter;
Its My Time Now, The Time of Science;
I Suggest You Don’t Worry about Those Things and Just Enjoy Yourself.

Monstrously big in Japan

16 Thursday Nov 2023

Posted by asdjfdlkf in Lovecraftian arts, Scholarly works

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New in the Japanese Journal of Analog Role-Playing Game Studies, an academic article offering “An Exploration of the Appeal of the Cosmic Horror Series of Gamebooks for Call of Cthulhu TRPG | RPG”. This considers, partly via online surveys, some of the reasons for the sustained popularity of the Call of Cthulhu RPGs in Japan.

The Call of Cthulhu series is said to be bigger than D&D in Japan, and synonymous with ‘tabletop RPG’. The success is apparently aided by the relatively simple rules, adaptability to different time-frames and sub-genres, and a strong player base among female fans (meaning male fans can ‘play with my waifu’).

Recognition reviewed

08 Wednesday Nov 2023

Posted by asdjfdlkf in Scholarly works

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At the SFRA, a new review of S.T. Joshi’s book The Recognition of H.P. Lovecraft…

Joshi does not hesitate in calling out cynical personalities who profited from Lovecraft’s legacy only to trample on his reputation later. [But] controversy has had little effect on the sales of his fiction around the world. The Recognition of H.P. Lovecraft is ultimately a testament to the power of the stories, which have proved resistant to many different crises, and will certainly survive many more.

Work ongoing in Texas…

05 Sunday Nov 2023

Posted by asdjfdlkf in Scholarly works

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Texas Woman’s University has a long and thorough profile of “PhD candidate Cerliano” who is exploring the weird and Lovecraft in particular.

Theology and H.P. Lovecraft

31 Tuesday Oct 2023

Posted by asdjfdlkf in Scholarly works

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A review of the multi-author book Theology and H.P. Lovecraft (2022). Paywalled at Project MUSE, but a substantial chunk of the review is available free. Useful and detailed, even with ‘what there is’ of the review. The reviewer makes me want to take a look at the book, bouncing off my very slightly deeper understanding of theological points which I’ve glimpsed due to my interest in Tolkien. The books TOCs also look quite enticing…

Moore Lovecraft

28 Saturday Oct 2023

Posted by asdjfdlkf in Lovecraft as character, Lovecraftian arts, Scholarly works

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New on Archive.org, an academic book on Alan Moore: Out from the Underground (2018), one of the Palgrave series which discussed comics and graphic novels.

Has little to say about Lovecraft, but does show that the Lovecraft influence was strongly present as early as 1969…

Having met the young Dave Womack at the second British comics convention in 1969, he [Moore] sent him some illustrations and an article on Lovecraft, the latter of which featured in the first issue of his dual comics fanzine/adzine Utopia/Valhalla in February 1970.

And adds one more item to the list of early Lovecraft as character appearances…

Moore’s “Breakdown” in Embryo 4 [circa 1971?] had similar Orwellian themes (‘Cold terminal eyes in the control chamber fingerbutton proseflash’) and ends with a conversation between Orwell, Lovecraft, and Ray Bradbury.

Embryo #4 is a zine that doesn’t appear to be on Archive.org.

Lovecraft’s internal mythos networks

25 Wednesday Oct 2023

Posted by asdjfdlkf in Scholarly works

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In the latest Journal of Popular Culture, one of those single-author corpus text-mining / digital humanities papers, “The ‘Cthulhu network’: The process by which the popular myth was made”. This only examines Lovecraft’s works. The many cross-references and allusions found in works by members of the Lovecraft Circle, and also ideas and names shared by letters, are also mentioned. But that aspect of the growth of the Mythos is suggested as needing “further research”.

Freely available, under full Creative Commons Attribution.

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