Category Archives: Scholarly works

New book: Post Oaks and Sand Roughs

14 Tuesday May 2019

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The Robert E. Howard Foundation has a new book due to ship. Post Oaks and Sand Roughs collects the most autobiographical material from Howard’s work. Shipping in June 2019. It has a selection of Costigan tales, where relevant, and…

“also contains other items that reveal details about the people and places in Howard’s life, including the “Lost Plains” stories, items from The Junto, personal essays, and more, all restored to the original text, where available.”

There’s a full contents-list and it looks fascinating. Sadly it’s only 200 numbered copies, in print, and would thus cost me a whopping $100 to get to the UK. Hopefully there will be a $10 Kindle ebook, in due course, but that’s just my guess.

It could be interesting to do something similar for H.P. Lovecraft. A life-story collection of the most pertinent fiction and poetry that is also firmly autobiographical, with explications of exactly what aspect or event in his life each extract draws on or depicts.

Added to Open Lovecraft

08 Wednesday May 2019

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Added to Open Lovecraft, my page of public open access scholarly works. I don’t add all undergraduate dissertations I find, as some are obviously rather basic or flawed. But these two seem worthy and will be useful to others writing in the Game Studies field…

* V. Gergo, Representing the “Unnameable” in Lovecraftian Video Games (2018 undergraduate dissertation for SZTE in Hungary. In English).

* M. Simicevic, Lovecraftian Horrors: Space and Literature in Silent Hill (2018 undergraduate dissertation for Sveuciliste u Zadru in Hungary. In English).

Lovecraft Archive updates

07 Tuesday May 2019

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The H.P. Lovecraft Archive has had an update…

5th April 2019: Overhauled the “Periodicals” section of the site, adding all tables of contents of all issues of Lovecraft Annual to the database; consolidating the search engines for Lovecraft Studies, Crypt of Cthulhu, and Lovecraft Annual; and adding the table of contents for Crypt of Cthulhu issue 112 to the database. These were some significant changes, so please contact us if you notice any problems.

A trip into history

30 Tuesday Apr 2019

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An interesting, if rather preliminary, article in Scientific American this week, on new research which asks Do Microdoses of LSD Change Your Mind?…

“So what’s riding on these studies? For those that are already convinced of microdosing’s powers, probably not much. But quite a lot is at stake for our broader understanding of the brain and the potential for drugs — LSD or otherwise — to enhance cognitive abilities.”

This is potentially also of interest to historians of the supernatural, in relation to the debate among scientists and historians about the possible role of natural hallucinogens present in food during the historic ‘witchcraft’ outbreaks, re: the impact on the general population and their susceptibility to such wild claims.

Event: Walking in Providence

28 Sunday Apr 2019

Posted by in Lovecraftian arts, Odd scratchings, Scholarly works

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Walking in Providence. Booking now. Free.

On 4th and 5th May 2019, staff and students at the John Nicholas Brown Center for Public Humanities and Cultural Heritage at Brown University will lead an arduous, 2-day, 20-mile collaborative walk through all 25 of Providence’s neighborhoods, in which the “route” is mapped by strangers in the street.

How does it work? The walkers will meet once on 1st May, to pick the locations throughout the city that they would like to hit over the two days. On Saturday, 4th May, the group will set out and will ask passers-by for the best route to their location based on specific questions, like “What is the route that bypasses particular places that have meaning to you or your community?” or “What is the ugliest route we can take and why is it so ugly?” The walk will be shaped by people in the streets — some may even join in for part or all of the day. The route, generative questions and some information about each route-giver will be recorded, and a map will be produced at the end of the weekend.

New book: The H. P. Lovecraft Cat Book

28 Sunday Apr 2019

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The H. P. Lovecraft Cat Book now has a Necronomicon Press pre-order page, a cover and TOC, and a release-date of 20th May 2019 for the paper editions. The hardback first edition is limited to 100 copies.

“assembled by S. T. Joshi … lavishly illustrated by Jason C. Eckhardt” in pen and ink.

I’m assuming that “The Cats of New York”, listed in the TOC, might be something drawn from the letters? Or perhaps a scholarly essay from Joshi on the cat-encounters? We also get an “Extracts from Letters” section, although at present it’s unknown how completist this is.

New: The Dark Man, Vol 9

20 Saturday Apr 2019

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A new edition of The Dark Man: The Journal of Robert E. Howard and Pulp Fiction Studies Vol. 9 (Feb 2019), now in Kindle on Amazon.

Of interest to Lovecraftian scholars is…

* “The Outside Scholar: Robert E. Howard, H. P. Lovecraft, and Scholarly Identity. Part Two: A Complex and Baffling Question”, by Karen Joan Kohoutek.

This follows Part One in The Dark Man Vol. 8, No. 1 (2015), also in Kindle ebook format.

I also note an article in The Dark Man that I had overlooked, an article to be found in the Vol 7. No. 1 (December 2012) issue. This volume is not on Amazon in ebook, so far as I can tell, but is in ebook as an ePub from Lulu.com. The article is…

* “I ‘n’ I a-Liberate Zimbabwe: Motifs of Africa and Freedom in Howard’s The Grisly Horror”, by Patrick R. Burger.

This seems likely to be of interest to those writing about Lovecraft’s interest in and use of Zimbabwe (the remarkable hilltop fortification, not the nation).

New: Zothique #2

18 Thursday Apr 2019

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Zothique #2 from Italy. 192 pages in Italian. Here’s the translated gist re: the non-fiction and new translations…

This second issue of Zothique begins with a theoretical essay on the horror fiction, but the highlight is a large and exclusive Dossier that takes stock of the writer Ambrose Bierce, of which five unpublished weird stories are also presented in Italian, as well as bibliographic guides and essays on this author and his stories.

We then move on to the Belgian Thomas Owen, one of ‘the fathers of the fantastic’, and after an introductory essay we present four of his stories which step between the surreal and the fantastic, also in first Italian translation.

Also the first part of a long essay dedicated to the poetry of Robert E. Howard.