The latest issue of The Fossil is out now July 2014, #360. Including a detailed round-up of snippets of news on the status of various collections of amateur journalism items from the Lovecraft period, which are very slowly starting to get some basic indexing work done on them…

Joseph Ditta, Reference Librarian at The New York Historical Society’s Patricia D. Klingenstein Library, replied to an inquiry about their collections. “Our collection of amateur periodicals is fairly sizable, filling 28 boxes on 12 shelves. It is not cataloged, unfortunately, but in 2010 an intern went through most of the collection and created a spreadsheet listing the titles found in each box. Her list does not include holdings information, or dates, and she stopped at the second box of ‘S’ titles. Still, this partial list includes over 1,500 titles, which gives some sense of the extent of the collection.”

Library of Congress’s [amateur journalism] collection … After viewing Excel spreadsheets that Ivan Snyder and Tom Parson are in the process of creating to track their collections, I created one that lists the 6,804 publications held by the LoC. Although it is preliminary, I would be glad to share a copy upon request”

It seems the LoC’s ‘X Collection’ PDFs (on archive.org) were created simply as an initial index to their boxed collections of pamphlets and emphemera, to aid physical retrieval for scanning when an item is requested by a scholar. Presumably as individual items are scanned on request, the scans will then start to pop up on Archive.org. Inklings is perhaps one of the journals runs it would be most interesting to have in full.

Also included in The Fossil issue #360 is “A Visit to Haverhill” by David Goudsward, which covers almost the same ground as Goudsward’s recent book. And David M. Tribby on the “United APA: Gone But Not Forgotten”, the United Amateur Press Association being Lovecraft’s amateur alma mater.

An interesting and carefully crafted new undergraduate dissertation, “A Density of Meaning”: Literary Representations of the British Museum, 1818-1929, which may interest some readers and Mythos writers seeking background research…

Since its establishment in 1753, The British Museum has become one of the iconic museums of the world. It is the home of countless treasures of the ancient world, including the Elgin Marbles, the Rosetta Stone, and the Assyrian Lamassu. Due to the large shadow it casts, the British Museum appears in unexpected places, including literature. Various authors and poets have interacted with the British Museum in their writing, both upholding and reworking its different meanings and processes.”

Sadly the author didn’t unearth that Lovecraft placed a copy of The Necronomicon in the British Museum Library (later known as the British Library). Lovecraft implies its presence there in “The Case of Charles Dexter Ward”…

Letters soon told of his safe arrival, and of his securing good quarters in Great Russell Street, London; where he proposed to stay, shunning all family friends, till he had exhausted the resources of the British Museum in a certain direction. [then followed] his departure for Paris, to which he had before made one or two flying trips for material in the Bibliotheque Nationale.” (“The Case of Charles Dexter Ward”, 1927)

In his “The History of the Necronomicon” he was privately more explicit…

Of the Latin texts [of The Necronomicon] now existing one (15th cent.) is known to be in the British Museum under lock and key” (“The History of the Necronomicon”, 1927)

Then he was more publicly explicit in “The Dunwich Horror”…

Correspondence with the Widener Library at Harvard, the Bibliotheque Nationale in Paris, the British Museum, the University of Buenos Ayres, and the Library of Miskatonic University at Arkham had failed to get him the loan of a book he desperately wanted” (“The Dunwich Horror”, 1928)

Lovecraft never had the funds to visit London for himself, but he heard from others as they passed through. Galpin, for instance…

The card from antique Londinium duly came, & filled me with envy at your opportunity to behold civilisation’s capital, if only for a single full day. If I were in Europe, I would devote not less than 2 or 3 weeks to London — & might not get outside of Britain at all. The British Museum card surely reveals one of my (or Klarkash-Ton’s or Sonny Belknap’s) extra-human monsters in disguise — indeed, I am positive that this entity reached Java as a relique of sunken Mu, or of the still more monstrous & fabulous R’lyeh! Thanks!” (Lovecraft, on receiving a postcard from the British Museum, 1932. Letter to Alfred Galpin, 28th August 1932)

Above: Javanese shadow puppet at the British Museum, possibly the sort of art Lovecraft was referring to.