18 Tuesday Jun 2013
Posted in Lovecraftian arts
Poster for the H.P. Lovecraft Film Festival in Los Angeles 27th-29th September 2013 at the Warner Grand Theater in San Pedro. Riffing off Lovecraft’s job in a ticket-booth, via Miyazaki’s Spirited Away.
Artist: Jason Thompson. [ Hat-tip to D. Bethel, in regards to identification of the poster artist. The festival really should have allowed him a signature on the poster. ]
18 Tuesday Jun 2013
Posted in Historical context
Lovecaft’s uncle Edward F. Gamwell, describing the weird exotics in the Harvard Botanical Garden, in an article by him on the gardens in the Cambridge Chronicle Magazine 1898…
Slightly more exotic was this farm-landed meteor, described in Edward F. Gamwell’s own newspaper in 1909…
from The Cambridge Tribune 9th October 1909 and 23rd October 1909 respectively.
The meteor was later written up in Science, in a report which called it… “entirely different from any meteor on record”.
There was a later letter to Science, questioning if Prof. Very had been duped by a hoax using a standard glacial erratic stone. In March 1910 Very followed up his description with a further article outlining the probability of fraud — albeit by presenting a hypothesis that the purchasing dime museum had found the rock elsewhere, possibly in a swamp, heated it until red hot, and then transported it to the site, then set off several firework rockets to fall in the correct direction and thus be seen by the locals.
Nevertheless the reports of the meteor would have interested Lovecraft, then deep in his astronomy phase. And his imagination may have been sparked by the idea of it being “entirely different from any meteor on record”.
17 Monday Jun 2013
Posted in Scholarly works
A funded Phd in the UK, which might appeal to some readers here, looking at early and contemporary fan-cultures around Sherlock Holmes.
17 Monday Jun 2013
Posted in Historical context, New discoveries
I’ve found another two appearances of Lovecraft’s elegy for his adored cousin Phillips Gamwell, who died young. Lovecraftian sources have the poem appearing in the Providence Evening News on 5th January 1917. But here it is in The Cambridge Chronicle, 6th January 1917, possibly with new biographical details in the introduction…
The same poem appeared again in The Cambridge Tribune on 13th January 1917, under the simple title “Phillips Gamwell”, this time with a fine photograph of cousin Phillips…
… and the following week there was also an addendum on the photographer.
We’re also informed by The Cambridge Tribune of 2nd January 1904 that Phillips Gamwell was visiting Providence. Lovecraft then age 13, Phillips aged around 6. Here is Phillips Gamwell aged six in 1904 in The Cambridge Chronicle…
Resembles the young Lovecraft, wouldn’t you say?
15 Saturday Jun 2013
Posted in Lovecraftian arts
The New York Review of Science Fiction has published a Web and English-language version of “A photographic exploration of the world of H. P. Lovecraft”, by Lomig Perrotin. The series was displayed in November 2012 at Galerie 154: at 154 rue Oberkampf, 75011, Paris.
“There is resistance, opposition, even rebellion in the author’s inability to testify about the cosmic horrors that seem to watch humanity from beyond. To convey this resistance, I needed to explore the limits of the photographic medium. So I used cliché-verre, a technique of etching photographic material to create a mixed negative, blending the realistic aspect of photography with the graphic effects of drawing. Neither photographs alone nor illustration could reproduce this particular blend of horror and oneirism that characterizes the work of the master of Providence.”
Looks great, even on a digital screen. They must look very fine when printed matt at perhaps 8″ x 8″ and placed in glass-less frames. ‘Photography meets woodcuts, via rough etchings’ seems a very fitting style for illustrating Lovecraft. And I’m pleased to hear a few of the series will be hopping across the pond to showing up at NecronomiCon 2013…
“Mr. Perrotin’s work will be presented at the Providence Art Club from August 13 to September 6 as part of NecronomiCon in Providence, RI. Mr. Perrotin will also be attending the convention in person in late August.”
13 Thursday Jun 2013
Posted in New books
Just released, Lovecraft’s long essay on “Cats and Dogs” — translated into Greek!
Coming soon, the LOLcat edition! 😉
12 Wednesday Jun 2013
Posted in Scholarly works
Lots of additions to the Open Lovecraft page on this blog.
12 Wednesday Jun 2013
Posted in Scholarly works
New long blog post from Jason Colavito on H.P. Lovecraft and Megalithic New England…
“H.P. Lovecraft almost certainly never visited Mystery Hill, which was not a tourist attraction at the time Lovecraft lived. It was private land in those days. The site did not open to the public until 1937, when William Goodwin purchased it, rebuilt it to resemble a European megalithic site, and gave it its longtime name.”
“It should be fairly obvious from their description, usage, and placement that Lovecraft’s stone circles [in “The Dunwich Horror”] were modeled on Old World examples”
11 Tuesday Jun 2013
Posted in Odd scratchings
New Alan Moore interview in the June 2013 The Believer. No new news on the 1919 Lovecraft graphic novel. But he’s writing a 600,000 word…
“noir crime narrative based upon the Northampton pastor James Hervey [1714-1758], whom I believe was the father of the entire Gothic movement”
11 Tuesday Jun 2013
Posted in New books
Hippocampus has dated and priced the collected essays of Steven J. Mariconda, H.P. Lovecraft: Art, Artifact, and Reality. $20, July 2013.
10 Monday Jun 2013
Posted in Historical context, Maps
Map of parks and green spaces in Providence that Lovecraft could have known in his boyhood. Providence magazine. v.28, 1916. Map showing situation on City ownership of parks in 1903. Omits the unofficial spaces such as the remains of Cat Swamp.
10 Monday Jun 2013
Posted in Historical context
Pleasant places in Rhode Island, and how to reach them, a book from the Providence journal, 1893.
