News of an upcoming academic conference (or perhaps a conference strand?) on Lovecraft, to be held in Vermont — Weird Lovecraft: H.P. Lovecraft, Weird Tales, and the American Horror Canon…

“The College of St. Joseph is actively looking for paper proposals that explore the way that Lovecraft and/or Weird Tales helped construct the American horror canon or the American horrific aesthetic.”

“Papers will be presented at the College of St. Joseph’s popular culture conference, held 26-27th October 2012.”

See the PDF for details. Sadly, I see that the deadline for abstacts has passed — it was 15th May. Better initial publicity needed, next time, methinks.

Open access to The Bookman USA (1895-1933) and The Bookman UK (1891-1934).

Search via Google:

site:http://www.unz.org/Pub/Bookman keyword

Also quite a few pulps from the 1940s and 1950s, including Fantastic Novels and Fantastic Adventures and some later Weird Tales, which have Lovecraft reprints.

You can also search the entire archive via:

site:http://www.unz.org/Pub/ Lovecraft

A new conference on the monstrous. 1st Global Conference on Monstrous Geographies: places and spaces of monstrosity. 18th – 20th July 2012, University of Oxford, UK…

“What is the relationship between the monstrous and the geographic – those places monsters inhabit, but also places that are configured as being monstrous in and of themselves?”

Interesting. Sadly the deadline for papers has long passed, or I might have submitted something cut from my most recent book on Lovecraft and New York City. It looks like it would cost me about £500 to attend. If a kind benefactor would care to donate that amount, I can guarantee a substantial plain English 6,000+ word report soon after the event.

Chris Fitter (1997). “The Poetic Nocturne: From Ancient Motif to Renaissance Genre“, Early Modern Literary Studies 3.2 (September, 1997). Available in full, for free. An interesting scholarly academic survey of the history of night walk in literature, from classical times to the early modern period (1600s). Possibly relevant to understanding Lovecraft’s attraction to, and his understand of, the night walk as a literary practice. It may also be of interest to historical/horror novelists researching the practice.