H. P. LOVECRAFT, ESQ. (+playlist)
I am extremely impress'd with ye tome thus far. Leslie S. Klinger is an outstanding editor, a skill'd professional of ye highest order. For example, in Note 8 of his 53-page Foreword we have this:
Writing to Elizabeth Toldridge on March 15, 1929, he despaired of ever finding his own voice: "There are my 'Poe' pieces & my 'Dunsany' pieces--but alas--where are any Lovecraft pieces!" (This passage was mistakenly quoted as "my 'Lovecraft' pieces" in the original edition of Selected Letters, II, 315).
It is also misquoted as such in S. T.'s I Am Providence (page 241) and An H. P. Lovecraft Encyclopedia (page 207). Now this may seem a very minor detail; but it is good to have the precise quote, and to my knowledge, Les is the only of Lovecraft's editors to have noticed this.
I want to discuss more details of the Notes, but this arc is not the finish'd book and should not, really, be quoted from. I am making extensive notes of my own as I read the tome, and I will incorporate those when I write my Amazon review in October.
That was a great introduction to a wonderful book and premis. I must pre-order this! Literary hoaxes like the Necronomicon are interesting - 'minds me of "Fungoids" and "Negations" by Enoch Soames the son or a Preston Printer who sold his soul for the chance to revisit The British Library round reading room in Bloonsbury 100 years after his disappearance (1897) to see how posterity viewed his works. In "Enoch Soames" Max Beerbohm created one of the greatest literary hoax aesthete poets. In 1997, before the reading room was moved, a figure bearing Soames' likeness, bearing and dress as described by Beerbohm appeared by the shelves and inspected the Dictionary of National Biography 'S' volume. He drifted back to the shelves - and vanished. There are a number of witness accounts online - and a photograph! Back to HPL - I just received the Library of Weird Fiction set including the HPL volume and it is superb! Thank you for keeping us up to fate - I am going to go and pre-order! Hope you are well - you look it! All the best G. ;-)=
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