The Spectral Arctic: A Cultural History of Ghosts and Dreams in Polar Exploration (2018). Complete and free in open access, as a PDF download.

Brown University Library News has announced that the Sonia H. and Nathaniel A. Davis papers (MS.2012.003) are now available for research at the John Hay Library. Perhaps this is actually a re-announcement, I’m not sure, but it seems worth noting. There’s a PDF guide to the collection.

Sonia and Nathaniel circa 1936.

Interestingly, Sonia’s new husband (after Lovecraft)…

“Nathaniel [A. Davis] founded Planetaryan, a humanitarian organization devoted to world peace, for which Sonia was the chief administrator.”

Planetaryan was incorporated 14th June 1938, a little over a year after Lovecraft’s death, and its formal incorporated name was the “American Defense Society, of The United States”.

Co-founded with a Luther Burbank apparently. Could this be the ‘plant wizard’ Burbank, who so usefully genetically modified over 800 useful plants including our now-standard potato, and thus saved the world from hunger? Perhaps not, since he had died in 1926 shortly after being hounded by a national firestorm of hatred whipped up by evangelical Christians. Though I’d guess that it is possible that Planetaryan might have been founded a little before Burbank’s 1926 death, and only incorporated in 1938? Neither Google, Google Books nor Hathi can provide a quick answer to that question. One item that did turn up was a 1st Nov. 1937 letter from M.H. McIntyre, Secretary to the U.S. President, referring to Planetaryan as “a world-wide inter-racial organization”, which suggests it existed before its 1938 incorporation. Much later the Enciclopedia Judaica Resumida refers to it as “pacifist” organisation. The Jewish Yearbook 1945-46 calls it a “peace society”.

Researchers should note that Planetaryan appears to have been different from its namesake the American Defense Society, which had been founded in 1915. This namesake appears to have been a sort of ultra-patriotic anti-socialist organisation involved in lobbying and pamphleteering — I wouldn’t be surprised if we eventually discover the ultra-conservative Lovecraft to have once been a member of that one. So I wonder why Planetaryan was so named? Calling an organisation Planetaryan (which in the 1930s might be mis-understood as implying “Planet-Aryan”) and the American Defense Society could certainly have led to unfortunate political confusions in an era of rabid communism and socialism. Perhaps it was simply a political tactic, meant to forestall any possible re-use of the American Defense Society name for conservative purposes? Or had Nathaniel A. Davis perhaps been involved as an officer in the American Defense Society c.1915-, and then found himself in effective possession of the name at its demise — but with his political views changed? In this respect it is suggestive to find that the Brown guide to the Sonia H. and Nathaniel A. Davis papers states that he wrote unpublished patriotic poetry, poetry that was only published (by Sonia) after his death.

Update:

I’ve found out why Burbank might have been keen to promote a campaign group based around inter-racial marriage. He theoretically extended his very successful plant-breeding principles to hybridisation between races. In his child-rearing book The Training of the Human Plant (1907)…

“he argues for an extensive crossing of different races [in the hope that evolution and environment will eventually act to] combine the best traits in a single individual.” — Chris White, “Eugenics in the 20th Century”.

So we can probably assume that the group was indeed co-founded by the Luther Burbank.

Interesting new scholarly thesis by Stephanie Brimson, “Seabury Quinn: a Weird Tales view of gender and sexuality”. Sadly the full-text is not available. This an example of a regrettable recent development among open access repositories, which publicise the thesis as if it were open access but in reality add an embargo of around 12 to 18 months. Anyway, Brimson suggests that…

… a unique male characterization was born in Seabury Quinn’s protagonist Jules de Grandin. Unlike other interwar characters, Quinn’s Jules de Grandin rejected the figure of American bodybuilder in favor of one that emphasized male effeminacy. The sexuality of these effeminate male characters was often unclear, and it is difficult to discern whether this was a serious attempt by Quinn to circulate literature with homosexual elements in the public sphere or just an attempt to lure readers with mentions of social taboos.”

As the “star” author of Weird Tales in Lovecraft’s time, could Quinn’s choice of a lead character — that apparently “emphasized male effeminacy” — have primed the Weird Tales audience for similar characters? Specifically, to more readily accept Lovecraft’s own presentation of his unmanly lead characters?

Or is Brimson just reading too much into the character? Difficult to say, since there’s no full-text for the thesis and I’ve not read the Jules de Grandin stories. Certainly the book Uranian worlds: a guide to alternative sexuality in science fiction, fantasy, and horror (1990) seems to have failed to have noticed this aspect of Jules de Grandin, although it did spot some overt lesbian themes in a late 1947 Jules de Grandin story.

Cowboy-Lucas‘s fan-intepretation of Jules de Grandin.

* Gro Oskarson Kindstrand (2014), “Lovecrafts kvinnor: en undersokning av kvinnlig monstrositet i Howard Phillips Lovecrafts litteratur”. (Seems to be a Masters dissertation, for Sodertorn University. “Lovecraft’s inability to [develop his female] monsters forces him to literally put them away – in attics, cellars, or boxes. … these women [then] elaborate a monstrous form that transcends the boundaries of sex, gender, class and race.” In Swedish, with English abstract).

* Gavin Parkinson (2015), “Surrealism and Everyday Magic in the 1950s: between the paranormal and ‘fantastic realism’”, Papers of Surrealism, Issue 11, Spring 2015. (On the ‘return of the fantastic’ in France in the late 1950s and 60s. Touches on the reception of Lovecraft in France, and his probable influence on Morning of the Magicians which was the precursor for a wave of ‘ancient astronauts’ books in the 1970s).

* Tanya Krzywinska (2012), “The Secret World as weird tale”, Well Played journal, Vol.3, No.2, 2012. (On the partly Lovecraft-inspired MMO PC videogame The Secret World)

* James Steintrager (2015), “The Eldritch Voice: H.P. Lovecraft’s weird phonography”, Sounding Out!, 6th August 2015.

I once owned an Edison [phonograph] machine of the primitive type, with recorder and blanks; and I made many vocal records in imitation of the renowned vocalists of the wax cylinder. My colleagues would smile to hear some of the plaintive tenor solos which I perpetrated in the days of my youth!! But sad to say, I gave the old machine away about a year ago to a deserving and not too musical youth who occasionally performs useful labour about the place. I wish now that I had retained it! / … a decade ago [circa 1907, Lovecraft aged 16 or 17], when my phonograph was in constant use … I remember one record — a song called “Starlight”, which was truly Western in its cadences: “Good Nity, my Starrrrlight, hearrrt of my hearrt” … etc. etc.” — Lovecraft letter to Rheinhart Kleiner, April 1917.

An Edison Home Phonograph c.1904. Into which the young Lovecraft may once have crooned a cowboy song or two (the device could record, as well as play). Sadly there is no known surviving recording of Lovecraft’s voice.