Category Archives: Scholarly works

New book: The H. P. Lovecraft Cat Book

28 Sunday Apr 2019

Posted by in Lovecraftian arts, New books, Scholarly works

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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

Posted by in Historical context, New books, REH, Scholarly works

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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

Posted by in New books, REH, Scholarly works

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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but the highlight is a large and exclusive Dossier that takes stock of the writer Ambrose Bierce, of which five unpublished weird stories are also presented in Italian, as well as bibliographic guides and essays on this author and his stories.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.

Stellarium – new release

12 Friday Apr 2019

Posted by in 3D, Scholarly works, Unnamable

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A new version of the 3D heavens Stellarium software is now available, including a “paleolithic sky culture and landscape”, two new ancient Babylonian ones, and medieval and modern Chinese sky zodiacs. It’s the leading free / open source software for such things, that’s also easy for clueless newbs like myself to use.

You can also zoom back in time with Stellarium, making it rather useful for historians trying to date and geographically locate a text that has astronomical / sunrise-sunset time statements in it. My latest use of it in that way was for my Sir Gawain book. It doesn’t yet include comet positions.

Fear, Loathing, and Victorian Xenophobia

12 Friday Apr 2019

Posted by in Historical context, Scholarly works

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Fear, Loathing, and Victorian Xenophobia, Ohio State University Press, 2013. Now out of embargo, and in public open access as an OCR-d PDF. Amazon wants $47 for the paper edition, but it’s free here. The Introduction and Afterword might be useful for offering some pointers and frameworks for those writing on the historical context of Lovecraft’s upbringing, in terms of New England’s fears of disease and immigration and how these fears might have mirrored those of Great Britain.

Blockquote me, baby!

10 Wednesday Apr 2019

Posted by in Odd scratchings, Scholarly works

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A handy tip for wrangling an old book in Microsoft Word, to port it over into an Amazon ebook for the Kindle with re-flowable text. After many years when it was impossible-to-difficult to get clean HTML from Word, there’s now a relatively easy solution for MS Word -> clean HTML, including linked footnotes. But it has one stumbling block… it un-indents your quotation paragraphs. The link above takes you to the fix.

Published: Studi Lovecraftiani 16

04 Thursday Apr 2019

Posted by in New books, Scholarly works

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Published in January 2019, Studi Lovecraftiani 16, the Italian journal of Lovecraft scholarship. Now available via Lulu.com.

Since I no longer use Flash (which is still used by Lulu for previews), and the Studi Lovecraftiani blog is not updated with #16, the only source for the contents appears to be a review in Italian at Ver Sacrum. From this I can sift a contents list, via a hazy auto-translation…

* Leni Remedios on the phenomenological horror of H.P. Lovecraft (possible connection with Husserl’s phenomenology).

* Andrea Scarabelli on the alien cults of H.P. Lovecraft (possible links with esoteric notions).

* Angelo Cerchi on the myths of Cthulhu and the end of time (the apocalyptic in H.P. Lovecraft).

* Renzo Giorgetti on the futurist architect Virgilio Marchi (and “his possible connections with certain Lovecraftian suggestions”).

* Claudio Foti on Aristeas and Lovecraft (“the enigmatic figure of Aristea of ​​Proconnese” and his Arimaspeia).

* Robert M. Price on Lovecraft’s concept of blasphemy.

* Translated letters from Lovecraft to Robert H. Barlow.