Open access to The Bookman USA (1895-1933) and The Bookman UK (1891-1934).

Search via Google:

site:http://www.unz.org/Pub/Bookman keyword

Also quite a few pulps from the 1940s and 1950s, including Fantastic Novels and Fantastic Adventures and some later Weird Tales, which have Lovecraft reprints.

You can also search the entire archive via:

site:http://www.unz.org/Pub/ Lovecraft

A new conference on the monstrous. 1st Global Conference on Monstrous Geographies: places and spaces of monstrosity. 18th – 20th July 2012, University of Oxford, UK…

“What is the relationship between the monstrous and the geographic – those places monsters inhabit, but also places that are configured as being monstrous in and of themselves?”

Interesting. Sadly the deadline for papers has long passed, or I might have submitted something cut from my most recent book on Lovecraft and New York City. It looks like it would cost me about £500 to attend. If a kind benefactor would care to donate that amount, I can guarantee a substantial plain English 6,000+ word report soon after the event.

Chris Fitter (1997). “The Poetic Nocturne: From Ancient Motif to Renaissance Genre“, Early Modern Literary Studies 3.2 (September, 1997). Available in full, for free. An interesting scholarly academic survey of the history of night walk in literature, from classical times to the early modern period (1600s). Possibly relevant to understanding Lovecraft’s attraction to, and his understand of, the night walk as a literary practice. It may also be of interest to historical/horror novelists researching the practice.

It’s behind a paywall, but this new academic article might interest…

Robinson, Christopher L. (2012)   “The Stuff of Which Names are Made: A Look at the Colorful and Eclectic Namecraft of Lord Dunsany”.   Names: A Journal of Onomastics.  Volume 60, Number 1, March 2012, pages 26-35.

“Lord Dunsany’s prolific namecraft provides a rich field for study, but poses difficulties for traditional approaches to names in literature, which typically seek out the hidden meanings or symbolisms of isolated names. An alternative approach is to look for trends in the forms and substances of the author’s inventions as a whole. To this end, Emile Souriau’s threefold typology of neologisms proves useful. In the first category, Dunsany camouflages pre-existing vocables of diverse origins. In the second, he employs anglicized versions of forms identified with foreign languages and nomenclatures, though he does not introduce actual foreign sounds. In the third, he constructs names from morphological building blocks. Whether English or foreign, Dunsany divests his source materials of their original referents, yet retains traces of their idiomatic provenance. Colorful and eclectic, his inventions resonate within a mythopoetic encyclopedia of diverse literary, historical, and cultural traditions.”

A seemingly new (Nov 2011) short scholarly paper, in French. Reflets de villes dans le désert : de Lovecraft a Borges (“Reflections of cities in the desert: Lovecraft to Borges”)…

“There is a traditional conception of the fantastic city. It rises in the Gothic novel, and has been perpetuated in the modern horror, imposing an urban topography across two or three levels — articulated as a social reality, a visceral fear, and as a symbolic expression.”

I found an essay on “Debunking the Lovecraftian Occult” by Thomas Jude Barclay Morrison.

Above: Do not worship the Cthulhu bubbles. Photomontage by David Chance Fragale.

Lynnette Jemneck has delivered her thesis on Decoding language in Edgar Allan Poe and H.P. Lovecraft. And we may get to read it, too, eventually…

“The Lovecraft Annual wants to potentially publish a 10,00 word extract of the thesis”

The Heinlein Society Scholarship Program is offering a nice little travel grant for someone. Fancy looking at the biological science of the Providence shoreline, and relating it to Lovecraft’s depiction of aliens?

“The Heinlein Society is pleased to announce that for the 2012-2013 academic year we will be offering the first of many scholarships. There will be two $500 scholarships awarded to undergraduate students of accredited 4-year [USA] colleges and universities majoring in engineering, math, or physical sciences (e.g. physics, chemistry), or in Science Fiction as Literature. Applicants will need to submit a 500 to 1,000 word essay on one of several available topics. To apply, fill out the form below and print or email. Deadline is 15th May 2012.”

A new book, Leper Creativity: Cyclonopedia Symposium…

“Essays, articles, artworks, and documents taken from and inspired by the symposium on Reza Negarestani’s Cyclonopedia: Complicity with Anonymous Materials, which took place on 11th March 2011 at The New School. Cyclonopedia is a key work in the emerging domains of speculative realism and theory-fiction.”

The volume includes “Symptomatic Horror: Lovecraft’s ‘The Colour Out of Space’” by Kate Marshall.

Above: gratuitious-but-great illustration of the crossing scene in “Innsmouth” by Alberto Vazquez.