A look at the cover that Greenwood gave The H.P. Lovecraft Companion in 1977, a first ‘high pass’ over Lovecraft’s work, written by a Sherlock Holmes fan and newspaper book-critic. The book is usually presented for sale without the dust-jacket, and when it is a nice copy it’s usually for sale at silly prices.
The first section surveys Lovecraft’s style and opinions of other authors. Then follows a section with brief summaries of nearly 60 stories. There’s an A-Z of key places, characters and monsters found in the fiction. Then a survey of the pantheonic monsters. The final part briefly outlines Lovecraft’s pantheon and surveys what he was known to have read re: the occult and witchcraft.
It’s long since been superseded and the book is probably most interesting today for the choice of the cover picture which taps into “Witch House”, rather than into “Cthulhu” and tentacles as would be the case today. Thus the subject matter and 17th century woodcut style would have framed Lovecraft’s ‘first glance’ academic library reception within the mid-70s interest in the New England witch trials. The smiling wizard and the frowning witch also implicitly make an appeal to the then-emerging gender studies crowd in academia, which again links to “Witch House”.
