I Am Providence: The H.P. Lovecraft Thread 3 3

[RedFury]

I figured we could use a Lovecraft thread.

Here's a real rarity, an original photo of Lovecraft signed by himself.  The inscription reads:

To Samuel E. Loveman, Esquire
with the complements & esteem
of H.P. Lovecraft
July 1931

Samuel Loveman was a poet and critic from Cleveland who Lovecraft became close friends with.  Later, when Loveman, who was Jewish, learned the extent of Lovecraft's anti-semitism, he burned all his letters.  Somehow this photo escaped the flames.

The photo was taken on July 11, 1931 in Brooklyn, NY.  It's part of a series of photos of HPL and Frank Belknap Long taken that day by their friend Wilfred Blanch Talman.

    

[OtherEric]

My problem with a Lovecraft thread is deciding where to start.  Let's go in chronological order from my earliest books.

Amazing Stories, September 1927.  First publication of "The Colour Out of Space", which Lovecraft said was his personal favorite of his own stories.  He got so annoyed with Hugo Gernsback that he never sold anything to him again.

I personally think this issue is harder to find than the August 1928 Amazing Stories with the first Buck Rogers, but it's one of the easier Lovecraft books to find from the 1920's overall.

[Xaltotun]

6 hours ago, RedFury said:

I figured we could use a Lovecraft thread.

Here's a real rarity, an original photo of Lovecraft signed by himself.  The inscription reads:

To Samuel E. Loveman, Esquire
with the complements & esteem
of H.P. Lovecraft
July 1931

Samuel Loveman was a poet and critic from Cleveland who Lovecraft became close friends with.  Later, when Loveman, who was Jewish, learned the extent of Lovecraft's anti-semitism, he burned all his letters.  Somehow this photo escaped the flames.

The photo was taken on July 11, 1931 in Brooklyn, NY.  It's part of a series of photos of HPL and Frank Belknap Long taken that day by their friend Wilfred Blanch Talman.

   

Wow! Thanks for sharing! That baby yours?

[RedFury]

56 minutes ago, Xaltotun said:

Wow! Thanks for sharing! That baby yours?

Thanks! Yes, a recent acquisition, and new cornerstone of the collection.  

[Xaltotun]

Congratulations!

[OtherEric]

I don't have anything by Lovecraft from 1928, so let's jump to 1929. 

My oldest issue of Weird Tales, this features the first publication of "The Curse of Yig".  The story was the first revision Lovecraft did for Zealia Bishop, published here as by Zealia Brown Reed.  The story was reprinted in hardcover in the UK in 1931 as the lead story in "Switch on the Light", making it one of the first Lovecraft stories to appear in hardcover.  I'm not sure if it's the first of Lovecraft's revisions to be collected, but off the top of my head I'm not aware of any others.  Most sources have the story as published as being mostly actually written by Lovecraft.

[Surfing Alien]

On 4/20/2021 at 11:28 AM, RedFury said:

I figured we could use a Lovecraft thread.

Here's a real rarity, an original photo of Lovecraft signed by himself.  The inscription reads:

To Samuel E. Loveman, Esquire
with the complements & esteem
of H.P. Lovecraft
July 1931

Samuel Loveman was a poet and critic from Cleveland who Lovecraft became close friends with.  Later, when Loveman, who was Jewish, learned the extent of Lovecraft's anti-semitism, he burned all his letters.  Somehow this photo escaped the flames.

The photo was taken on July 11, 1931 in Brooklyn, NY.  It's part of a series of photos of HPL and Frank Belknap Long taken that day by their friend Wilfred Blanch Talman.

    

What a wondrous artifact to have! Congrats! I grew up near Parkside Avenue where he lived for a while in the 1920's & played on Parkside many a time. I can imagine him haunting the old Dutch 17th & 18th century farmhouses that dotted Brooklyn back then (including Martense family homes, of "The Lurking Fear" name  fame) Even now about a dozen remain but there were probably a hundred of them back then.

Here's a great site with a lot of pics, including others from this trip. Eerie...

https://www.hplovecraft.com/life/gallery.aspx

 

[RedFury]

24 minutes ago, OtherEric said:

I don't have anything by Lovecraft from 1928, so let's jump to 1929. 

My oldest issue of Weird Tales, this features the first publication of "The Curse of Yig".  The story was the first revision Lovecraft did for Zealia Bishop, published here as by Zealia Brown Reed.  The story was reprinted in hardcover in the UK in 1931 as the lead story in "Switch on the Light", making it one of the first Lovecraft stories to appear in hardcover.  I'm not sure if it's the first of Lovecraft's revisions to be collected, but off the top of my head I'm not aware of any others.  Most sources have the story as published as being mostly actually written by Lovecraft.

The Curse of Yig is a good story.  Regarding the authorship, Lovecraft claimed in various letters:

"I came damn close to writing the whole thing"

"all of the writing & most of the plot are mine"

"is well-nigh a piece of original composition on my part...All the plot & motivation in the present tale are my own—I invented the snake-god, the curse, the prologue & epilogue, the point about the identity of the corpse, & the monstrously suggestive aftermath. To all intents & purposes it’s my story."

"this story is about 75% mine"

[RedFury]

37 minutes ago, Surfing Alien said:

What a wondrous artifact to have! Congrats! I grew up near Parkside Avenue where he lived for a while in the 1920's & played on Parkside many a time. I can imagine him haunting the old Dutch 17th & 18th century farmhouses that dotted Brooklyn back then (including Martense family homes, of "The Lurking Fear" name  fame) Even now about a dozen remain but there were probably a hundred of them back then.

Here's a great site with a lot of pics, including others from this trip. Eerie...

https://www.hplovecraft.com/life/gallery.aspx

 

Yes, my photo is the same as #52 on that site.  What's interesting is that the reproduced photo, which is so well known, is much darker than the original, and has become an iconic image of HPL with his eyes totally in shadow, giving him an eerie or creepy, or even skull-like appearance.  But you can see that the original print is only slightly shaded around his eyes, and you can still see his eyes clearly.  I think this was a case of a poor reproduction accidentally creating a classic image.

  

Edited April 21, 2021 by RedFury

[Surfing Alien]

2 hours ago, RedFury said:

Yes, my photo is the same as #52 on that site.  What's interesting is that the reproduced photo, which is so well known, is much darker than the original, and has become an iconic image of HPL with his eyes totally in shadow, giving him an eerie or creepy, or even skull-like appearance.  But you can see that the original print is only slightly shaded around his eyes, and you can still see his eyes clearly.  I think this was a case of a poor reproduction accidentally creating a classic image.

  

Yours is so much better! Still very eerie but the sepia tint and additional lighting makes it more dimensional and you can see that right eye and ear! More haunting to my eye.

[Xaltotun]

This is slightly off-topic, but here is the original to a Clark Ashton Smith pic taken by George Haas in 1959. A friend of mine wanted it and I helped him get it. I love this shot.

[RedFury]

2 minutes ago, Xaltotun said:

This is slightly off-topic, but here is the original to a Clark Ashton Smith pic taken by George Haas in 1959. A friend of mine wanted it and I helped him get it. I love this shot.

That's amazing.  What a great picture of CAS.  He's even got his beret on. 

[Xaltotun]

And here is a much better version of pic 52 as seen on the link posted by Surfing Alien.

The original is real small, at least the print I scanned, which dates from the 1950s. It will be up for auction soon, I am told.

[OtherEric]

Another Lovecraft book from 1929, this features the second publication of "The Call of Cthulhu" ever.  It is also, I believe, only the second time a Lovecraft story was anthologized in the US, after "The Horror at Red Hook" in the US edition of "Not at Night!"

Given how much "The Call of Cthulhu" is considered, if not Lovecraft's best story, his signature work, it's surprising that this is the only time it was reprinted in anything other than a Lovecraft or Mythos specific collection in English until the 70's, as near as I can tell.  Unlike most of Lovecraft's better known works and quite a few of his lesser ones, it was never reprinted in Weird Tales, Famous Fantastic Mysteries, Avon Fantasy Reader, or any other magazine that I know of.

[IngelsFan]

1 hour ago, OtherEric said:

Another Lovecraft book from 1929, this features the second publication of "The Call of Cthulhu" ever.  It is also, I believe, only the second time a Lovecraft story was anthologized in the US, after "The Horror at Red Hook" in the US edition of "Not at Night!"

Given how much "The Call of Cthulhu" is considered, if not Lovecraft's best story, his signature work, it's surprising that this is the only time it was reprinted in anything other than a Lovecraft or Mythos specific collection in English until the 70's, as near as I can tell.  Unlike most of Lovecraft's better known works and quite a few of his lesser ones, it was never reprinted in Weird Tales, Famous Fantastic Mysteries, Avon Fantasy Reader, or any other magazine that I know of.

This is also, if I recall correctly, the first time it was published in its original form. Weird Tales published it heavily edited.

[Xaltotun]

4 hours ago, IngelsFan said:

This is also, if I recall correctly, the first time it was published in its original form. Weird Tales published it heavily edited.

I am not sure it was. "At the Mountains of Madness" was severely truncated in Astounding. Maybe that's the tale you were thinking of.

Wright didn't censor or bowdlerize as a rule. At most, he would silently edit a word here and there, but if there was something he didn't like, or felt a stroy was too long, he would ask for a rewrite.

[IngelsFan]

2 hours ago, Xaltotun said:

I am not sure it was. "At the Mountains of Madness" was severely truncated in Astounding. Maybe that's the tale you were thinking of.

Wright didn't censor or bowdlerize as a rule. At most, he would silently edit a word here and there, but if there was something he didn't like, or felt a stroy was too long, he would ask for a rewrite.

Thanks for the correction. I read it in an online HPL forum last year and couldn’t find it again when I made the response. I haven’t been able to find any other references of it either....so I blame the internet 😁

[OtherEric]

1 hour ago, IngelsFan said:

Thanks for the correction. I read it in an online HPL forum last year and couldn’t find it again when I made the response. I haven’t been able to find any other references of it either....so I blame the internet 😁

I've been able to find references to the Beware After Dark version being from a different typescript than the Weird Tales version; but there seems to be some debate which version is preferable.

[Xaltotun]

Here's a link to the original typescript. https://repository.library.brown.edu/studio/item/bdr:425219/

Very, very, light editing by Farnsworth Wright. And HPL would never have retyped it. He just hated doing that.

[OtherEric]

August 1930 Weird Tales, featuring "The Electric Executioner", a revision Lovecraft did for Adolphe De Castro.  This one is unusual in that the original story Lovecraft revised for De Castro, "The Automatic Executioner", was actually published in addition to the revision, back in 1893.  I only got the book recently and haven't read the story yet, it's on my to do pile: