Frost furrs the ground around Tentaclii Towers, crows flap calmly through brisk blue skies, and the floods freeze into wide icy pools. Feral London media pundits hunt in packs across the wastelands, as Stoke-on-Trent is purportedly ground-zero in the coming General Election. Daily posting has continued here, but for the time being the following features are in abeyance: the ‘Picture Postals from Lovecraft’ posts, ‘Kittee Tuesday’ posts; and posts resulting from my many hours spent on deep research into Lovecraft’s life and places.

Thanks to my Patreon patrons it’s been a purchasing month, though not a reading month.

I finally bagged O Fortunate Floridian: H. P. Lovecraft’s Letters to R. H. Barlow at $30 inc. transatlantic shipping. It was sold by Amazon and turned out to be a slightly imperfect Amazon Warehouse-type deal, with a printing-machine burr lightly scratched across a quarter of the back cover. Probably a print-on-demand reject or a collector’s return, but otherwise perfectly fine.

I also bagged the first hardback volume of the Selected Letters from eBay for just $29 inc. shipping. This then took a bit of wresting away from the seller, who became reluctant once I’d purchased and paid. I had to pay a bit more in the end, which took some of the shine off getting such a bargain. But it finally arrived yesterday and is fine. It has slight hinge glue-marks on the first inner page, where a removed Library lending control-sheet had once been held in at some cloistered and rarefied library. But otherwise it’s fresh, un-dusty, tight, un-scribbled in by yahoos, and the dustjacket is fine in mylar.

So these two books will help to ease me back into Lovecraft in the springtime, along with two Lovecraft Annual copies that also need to be read. Please help me add to ‘the springtime pile’ by becoming my Patron on Patreon. This month the Patreon again remains stubbornly stuck at $58 a month.

Spoken-word audio fared well on the blog this month, with The H.P. Lovecraft Historical Society posting selected Lovecraft letters as audio readings. Their new public “Voluminous” podcast is weekly, so I’m not going to try to note every single episode here. That would become tiresome both for them and for me. If you’re interested, subscribe to the “Voluminous” feeds. I spotted that Librivox are nearing completion on free recordings of “Lovecraft’s Influences and Favorites”. I also updated and fixed the dead links on my old posting on free Conan audiobook readings.

Lovecraft items included the Falvey Memorial Library at Villanova University putting scans of Lovecraft’s astronomical notebooks online; an Italian blog showing photos from inside 10 Barnes Street as it is today; and the free ebook Challenging Moskowitz which usefully adds to the easily-available source material on the proto-fandom of the 1930s. I also looked briefly into Bloch’s 1937 story “A Visit with H. P. Lovecraft”, re: its publication history and where one might find it today. It’s another item to add to the eventual “Encyclopedia of Lovecraft as a Character”.

Much Lovecraft activity in Europe was noted here, from conferences to journal special issues and more. My Open Lovecraft listing of free online scholarship had several updates. I noted several relevant scholarly ‘calls’ including one for The Pulpster, and another on archaeology and popular culture. Also the new possibly-a-journal Pulpourri.

That’s it for November, onward to Christmas and New Year!