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Algernon Blackwood (1869-1951) was England's greatest writer of weird fiction in the early twentieth century. He escaped a repressive religious education by absorbing Hindu and Buddhist texts. Venturing to Canada to look for work, he established a deep connection with the natural world on frequent camping trips. But his subsequent years in New York (1892-99) thrust him in a filthy, overcrowded megalopolis that affected Blackwood profoundly. Returning to England, he began a literary career in earnest in the early years of the new century. This is the first complete edition of Blackwood's short fiction, planned for six volumes. This volume contains stories he wrote from 1889 to 1907. Included are numerous stories uncollected in Blackwood's lifetime, including several interesting tales of romance, adventure, and childhood. "A Haunted Island" initiates his weird work; it and other stories in this volume were gathered in Blackwood's first book, The Empty House and Other Ghost Stories (1906). Blackwood's work is profoundly autobiographical, and in this volume we find stories reflecting his experiences in Canada ("Skeleton Lake: An Episode in Camp"), New York (the striking psychological horror tale "Max Hensig"), England ("The Listener"), and elsewhere. It culminates with "The Willows," which H. P. Lovecraft believed to be the greatest weird tale in literature. It is a fictionalization of a trip made by Blackwood and a friend in 1900 down the Danube. In an appendix, his long essay "Down the Danube in a Canadian Canoe" is printed. The volume has been edited by S. T. Joshi, a leading authority on weird fiction who has established the most accurate text of Blackwood's tales.

Hippocampus Press is proud to commemorate ten years of our acclaimed journal of weird poetry, Spectral Realms, with the publication of the twentieth issue.As before, it contains a diverse array of poetry by today's leading versifiers in the realm of horror and the supernatural-John Shirley, Scott J. Couturier, Frank Coffman, Manuel Pérez-Campos, Ngo Binh Anh Khoa, Leigh Blackmore, Ann K. Schwader, and a host of others. Maxwell I. Gold and Jay Sturner contribute provocative prose poems, while a cadre of poets pen tributes to Dylan Thomas (Carl E. Reed's Echoing Dylan Thomas"), Robert W. Chambers (David J. Kopaska-Merkel's "A Vision of Carcosa"), Emily Brontë (Michael Potts's "After Heathcliff Digs Up Cathy"), and the imperishable Shakespeare (Kyla Lee Ward's "Malvolio's Revenge").Among the classic reprints are poems by the Scottish writer William Sharp and the Weird Tales poet Mary C. Shaw. The issue concludes with a detailed index of poets and poem titles to issues 11-20.

Table of ContentsA Weird Gourmand's Delight ........... Daniel PietersenZara-Louise Stubbs, ed., The Uncanny Gastronomic: Strange Tales of the Edible Weird.The Subtle Aroma of Antiquity: Two Translations by Shawn Garrett ........... Karen Joan KohoutekJean Printemps, Whimsical Tales and Froylan Turcios, The Vampire; both tr. Shawn Garrett.Night's Black Promises ........... Géza A. G. ReillyDaniel Corrick, ed., Night's Black Agents: An Anthology of Vampire Fiction.Nightlands Festival, Hammonton, NJ: Kathedral Event Center 2-3 June 2023 ........... The joey ZoneHumor at Its Darkest ........... Darrell SchweitzerPablo Larrain, dir., El Conde. Ramsey's Rant: Watch Their Language ........... Ramsey CampbellWonder and Epiphany: The Question of Evil in the Stories of Arthur Machen ........... Katherine KerestmanArthur Machen. Collected Fiction (three volumes), ed. by S. T. Joshi.A New Lovecraftian Writer in Our Midst ........... Michael D. MillerTony LaMalfa, Forbidden Knowledge.Half Sunk a Shattered Visage Lies ........... Daniel PietersenHenry Bartholomew, ed., The Living Stone: Stories of Uncanny Sculpture, 1858-1943.Covid Horrors ........... S. T. JoshiRamsey Campbell, The Lonely Lands.Hungry ........... Taylor TrabulusCultists Descend upon Portland: The H. P. Lovecraft Film Festival ........... Katherine KerestmanAn Interview with Ellen Datlow ........... Darrell SchweitzerSacred Scares ........... Géza A. G. ReillyFiona Snailham, ed., Holy Ghosts: Classic Tales of the Ecclesiastical Uncanny.Crossing the Void ........... Michael D. MillerMatt Cardin, Journals, Volume II: 2002-2022.New Ways to Dread the Holidays ........... Dave FeltonEllen Datlow, ed., Christmas and Other Horrors: A Winter Solstice Anthology.About the Contributors

The fourth issue of Penumbra, Hippocampus Press's acclaimed journal of weird fiction, criticism, and poetry contains an abundance of short and powerful tales from such leading writers as Geoffrey Reiter, Michael Aronovitz, Joe Pan, and Scott J. Couturier. The issue also highlights the work of weird writers around the world, from Harris Coverley and Dmitri Akers (Australia) to Norbert Góra (Poland) to Arthur Staaz (Northern Ireland). Among the articles in the issue, Deborah Bridle studies two stories by China Miéville for their probing of the fraught issue of climate change. Peter Straub's work is analyzed by John C. Tibbetts; his article includes extracts of an interview with Straub. James Goho discusses the weird work of the Irish writer Dorothy Macardle, Marcos Legaria examines lesser-known writings by C. L. Moore, and David Rose illuminates the work of Brian McNaughton. Darrell Schweitzer presents a groundbreaking interview with leading contemporary weird writer John Langan. In a special section, the pulp writer Anthony M. Rud's story of Australian terror, "Bunyips in the Mulga," is reprinted, with analyses of that work by the Australian scholars Ellen J. Greenham and Duncan Norris. This issue of Penumbra also features the verse of a dozen poets, including Ann K. Schwader, John Shirley, Leigh Blackmore, Wade German, and DJ Tyrer. All in all, the issue provides a rich and varied feast for the devotee of the weird.

Clark Ashton Smith (1893-1961) is best known for creating exotic worlds of fantasy, such as the lost continent Zothique, set in the far future, the arctic realm of Hyperborea, and the medieval domain of Averoigne. It is less widely known that Smith was a pioneer in science fiction, as his tales appeared extensively in such pulp magazines as Wonder Stories and Amazing Stories and had a marked influence on the science fiction of his day. Mars was a favored locale for several significant tales, including the cosmic horror masterpiece "The Vaults of Yoh-Vombis." "Seedling of Mars" is one of several tales in this volume that broaches the distinctive subgenre of "green horror" that results from deadly animated plants. This motif first found expression in Smith's early prose poem "The Flower-Devil," and he utilized it in such tales as "Vulthoom," "The Demon of the Flower," and others. The remote planet Xiccarph is the setting for two tales, "The Maze of the Enchanter" and "The Flower-Women." One of Smith's most expansive tales, "The Monster of the Prophecy," is set on Antares, while the late story "Phoenix" is grimly apocalyptic in its setting in the far future, with most of the Earth's inhabitants killed off. Clark Ashton Smith's mastery of a prose-poetic idiom lends a distinctive flavor to his interplanetary tales. Far from being naively optimistic adventures into the depths of space, they exhibit a rueful doubt as to the place of human beings in an immense and hostile universe. This volume, edited by leading Clark Ashton Smith scholar Ronald S. Hilger, contains an illuminating preface by Nathan Ballingrud.

The joint correspondence of four titans of the Lovecraft Circle sheds fascinating light on the complex interplay of the personal and professional lives of these writers, artists, editors, and collectors. R. H. Barlow initiated much of the correspondence, seeking to preserve manuscripts and other material in what he called the "Vaults of Yoh-Vombis." Barlow discussed plans to publish a variety of Smith's poetry, but these ultimately came to nothing. Similarly, he wished to issue a volume of Howard Wandrei's weird artwork, but Howard's brother put an end to the idea. H. P. Lovecraft is a focal point of discussion in all the correspondence. Donald Wandrei developed an enmity to Barlow, in part because Wandrei falsely believed that Barlow had stolen Lovecraft's books and manuscripts, even though he had been declared Lovecraft's literary executor. When Wandrei was helping August Derleth found Arkham House, he urged Derleth, Smith, and others to shun Barlow, with the result that Barlow was essentially driven out of the field. This volume presents an invaluable glimpse into the world of weird and pulp fiction in the 1930s and 1940s, as each writer displays the distinctive traits that have made him a renowned figure in the genre. The correspondence has been meticulously edited and exhaustively annotated by David E. Schultz and S. T. Joshi, two leading authorities in Lovecraft scholarship.

Canadian writer Simon Strantzas has long been recognized as one of the most dynamic voices in contemporary weird fiction. Gifted with a prose style that can evoke both terror and wonder, he endows his stories with an emotional resonance that sets them apart from much of the work in this field. In this new collection, Strantzas presents eleven tales, long and short, that display the wide array of motifs he utilizes. "In the Event of Death" tells of what a man finds when he explores his dead mother's house. "Circle of Blood" is one of several stories that distinctively fuse a hard-boiled crime scenario with the weird. "Antripuu" relates what four hikers find in a remote forest. "Clay Pigeons" is an expansive novella set in Port Said, drawing upon the tradition of film noir in its suggestion of horrors amidst the parched desert of Egypt. Throughout his work, Strantzas finds weirdness in the complexities of human relationships just as much as in the terrifying monsters he puts on display. His complex, brooding characters are the ideal recipients of the bizarre.

H. P. Lovecraft was a devotee of astronomy from the age of eleven, when he first discovered the "myriad suns and worlds of infinite space." He immediately began reading astronomy books, going to Brown University's Ladd Observatory to gaze at the stars, and doing his own astronomical observations from a 3¿ telescope that his mother purchased for him. Soon he was writing astronomy columns for local newspapers. Lovecraft's passion for astronomy is a major component of his life, thought, and literary work, but until now it has never been extensively examined. This important topic has now been treated in an exhaustive treatise written by two authorities on the subject, Edward Guimont and Horace A. Smith. The authors probe the origin and development of Lovecraft's astronomical interests, his studies of the moon, Venus, Mars, and other objects in the solar system, his fascination with a "trans-Neptunian planet" (discovered in 1930 and named Pluto), and his conjectures as to what might lie in the farthest gulfs of the cosmos. Along the way they examine such crucial texts as "The Colour out of Space," "In the Walls of Eryx," and the handwritten astronomy journals and pamphlets that Lovecraft wrote as a boy. They make emphatically clear that astronomy was a central element in Lovecraft's life and a vital component of his weird fiction. Edward Guimont is a professor of history at the University of Connecticut. Horace A. Smith is an emeritus professor of astronomy and astrophysics at Michigan State University.

Lovecraft Annual is published once a year, in Fall. Articles and letters should be sent to the editor, S. T. Joshi, ¿ Hippocampus Press, and must be accompanied by a self-addressed stamped envelope if return is desired. All reviews are assigned. Literary rights for articles and reviews will reside with Lovecraft Annual for one year after publication, whereupon they will revert to their respective authors. Payment is in contributor's copies.

H. P. Lovecraft is distinctive for having inspired a plethora of poetic tributes from friends, colleagues, and disciples. These tributes emerged surprisingly early; the first ones date to 1918, when several amateur writers took note of the unique characteristics of Lovecraft's life and work. During his lifetime, Samuel Loveman, Frank Belknap Long, Robert E. Howard, Donald Wandrei, and others sought to portray Lovecraft's inimitable personality and his innovative work in wide-ranging verse. After Lovecraft's early death in 1937, other writers-Clark Ashton Smith, August Derleth, R. H. Barlow, Joseph Payne Brennan, Lilith Lorraine-paid homage to him in odes, quatrains, and sonnets. The tradition has continued to the present day, with such contemporary writers as Ann K. Schwader, Leigh Blackmore, Wade German, W. H. Pugmire, Adam Bolivar, Fred Phillips, and countless others envisioning the myriad phases of Lovecraft's creative work in poetry that itself evokes the terror and pathos of his writing. This volume contains dozens of poems, written over a period of more than a century, in which a multitude of diverse authors use the medium of poetry to convey their devotion to Lovecraft the man and to his imperishable literary oeuvre.

This nineteenth issue of Spectral Realms contains the customary array of diverse and riveting poetry by today's leading weird poets, including Ann K. Schwader, Wade German, Scott J. Couturier, Ian Futter, and Ngo Binh Anh Khoa. David Barker contributes two more poems to his ongoing series of reimaginings of Lovecraft's Fungi from Yuggoth. Oliver Smith looks at Frankenstein in an innovative way. Frank Coffman tells a miniature weird tale in a four-sonnet cycle, "A Cabin in the Wood." Carl E. Reed, Andrew White, and Christian Dickinson draw upon ancient folklore for their brooding poems. Maxwell I. Gold contributes three of his cosmic prose poems, while Jay Sturner and Liam Garriock add their own distinctive prose poems. Two classic reprints (by Erasmus Darwin and Thomas Hardy), along with S. T. Joshi's review of a new edition of the obscure American Decadent poet Lee Roy J. Tappan, conclude the issue.

H. P. Lovecraft's literary career ended very much the way it began-with amateur journalism. In 1914, he had entered the United Amateur Press Association and gained lifelong friends and a renewed will to live and write. In 1930, Lovecraft's attendance at the annual convention of the National Amateur Press Association led to a renewed interest in the multifarious issues agitating amateurdom at that time. Encouraged by a new colleague, Helm C. Spink, Lovecraft took on the role of poetry critic for the NAPA's Bureau of Critics. Hyman Bradofsky, whose Californian allowed an unprecedented amount of space for lengthy contributions, persuaded Lovecraft to write numerous articles and to steer other amateurs in Bradofsky's direction. Lovecraft then became embroiled in heated controversies and feuds, many of them revolving around the argumentative Ralph W. Babcock. This volume also includes substantial letters to devotees of weird fiction, including Richard Ely Morse, Margaret Sylvester, John J. Weir, and a pair of brilliant weird artists, Virgil Finlay and Frank Utpatel. As in previous volumes in this series, all letters have been meticulously edited and thoroughly annotated. The appendix includes a generous array of poetry by Morse along with other materials that shed light on all the issues discussed here.

In a vibrant follow-up to his edition of Marjorie Bowen's The Grey Chamber (2021), John C. Tibbetts has assembled a second volume this unjustly forgotten British writer's work. Here we find selections from half-a-dozen of her most vivid and provocative novels, including such vivid historical works as The Viper of Milan (1906) and The Poisoners (1936). Presented in full is The Devil Snar'd (1932), a novel of supernatural horror that, in the words of Virginia Woolf, "comes from the force with which it makes us realize the power that our minds possess for such excursions into the darkness." There follow an expansive series of recollections of Bowen and critical analyses of her work, from such distinguished writers as Graham Greene, Rebecca West, Michael Sadleir (who writes on "Marjorie Bowen's Tales of Terror"), and Jessica Amanda Salmonson. In an appendix to this volume, Tibbetts transcribes the letters between Bowen and the American literary critic Edward Wagenknecht, covering the period 1945-48 and discussing the grim postwar period in England as well as the possibility of Arkham House publishing some of Bowen's work. Tibbetts concludes the volume with an exhaustive bibliography of her work. Along with The Grey Chamber, this volume provides some of the most illuminating documents relating to the life and work of Marjorie Bowen, one of the most distinctive writers of her generation. John C. Tibbetts is a professor at the University of Kansas and the author of The Furies of Marjorie Bowen (2019), the first full-length critical study of her work. He has also written The Gothic Imagination (2011) as well as books on music and film.

Wicked and Wonderful Celtic Folklore ........... Daniel PietersenJohnny Mains, ed., Celtic Weird: Tales of Wicked Folklore and Dark Mythology. An Essential Index ........... Tony FonsecaS. T. Joshi, The Horror Fiction Index: An Index to Single-Author Horror Collections, 1808-2010. Howard Days 2023 ........... Bobby Derie Classics from a Contemporary ........... The joey ZoneAllen Koszowski, Dreams from The Dark Side. Ramsey's Rant: Gidget Goes Yog-Sothoth ........... Ramsey Campbell Dark Nights of the Soul: Part I ........... Michael D. MillerMatt Cardin, Journals, Volume 1: 1993-2001. An Introduction to the Horror Films of Paul Wendkos ........... Clark Tucker An All-Consuming Thing: An Interview with Curtis M. Lawson ........... David Peak Arrangements in Adamantine ........... The joey ZoneSax Rohmer, The Whispering Mummy and Others. The Literary Adolescence of a Grandmaster ........... Darrell SchweitzerRay Bradbury, The Earliest Bradbury, ed. David Ritter and Daniel Ritter. Deterritorializing a Genre toward the Infinite ........... Géza A. G. ReillyMichael Cisco, Weird Fiction: A Genre Study. Audible Nightmares: Thomas Ligotti's Penguin Classic Becomes an Audiobook ........... Oliver SheppardThomas Ligotti, Songs of a Dead Dreamer and Grimscribe, narr. Jon Padgett and Linda Jones. Nightmares Inspired by an Uncertain Future ........... Greg GburJohn WM Thompson, ed., Mooncalves: Strange Stories. The Cabinet of Dr. del Toro ........... Michael D. MillerGuillermo del Toro's Cabinet of Curiosities. Something of a Living Order ........... David PeakThomas Ligotti, Pictures of Apocalypse. John William Polidori's The Vampyre ........... S. T. Joshi

For decades, Darrell Schweitzer has been prominent in studying and elaborating upon the work of H. P. Lovecraft. As critic, poet, and fiction writer he has analyzed and expanded upon Lovecraft's Cthulhu Mythos without compromising his own distinctive voice. In this new collection of tales, Schweitzer draws upon the fictional realm that he has made his own-Chorazin, a village in rural Pennsylvania where all manner of strange events occur. The strangeness lies not only in the incursion of extraterrestrial entities but in the very souls of its reclusive inhabitants. Just as Lovecraft fused the cosmic and the human in his evocation of such sinister locales as Arkham, Innsmouth, and Dunwich, so Schweitzer creates his own sub-Mythos in a region long familiar to him. Other stories in the book present novel improvisations on other aspects of Lovecraft's work. "Down to a Sunless Sea" elaborates upon Lovecraft's Antarctic novella At the Mountains of Madness; "Not in the Card Catalog" is a riff on the "forbidden book" theme; and in "The Return of the Night-Gaunts" Schweitzer puts Lovecraft himself on stage as a literary character. In all these tales, Darrell Schweitzer combines horror, pathos, and emotional intensity to bring a new dimension to the neo-Lovecraftian tale, where the anomalies of the human psyche are as terrifying as the incursion of alien entities from the depths of space.

The ageless D. Sidney-Fryer, who has been producing vital work in poetry, prose, and criticism since the 1960s, is back with another dynamic volume of miscellany that exhibits his wide range of interests. Leading off the volume is the novella Star Drek, an exquisite parody of the TV show Star Trek as it recounts the tribulations of a pair of men who run a "garbage scow in outer space." This rollicking adventure spans the cosmos while reflecting the genial good humor characteristic of the author. There follows a series of poems in prose and verse focusing on such wide-ranging subjects as Arthur Machen, ancient gods, painting, dance, and the rugged terrain of New England. "Cosmic Castaways" includes additional poems of a more pensive and wistful sort, while the section "Infinitude and Then Return Therefrom" features work of a philosophical cast and reflects the author's decades-long interest in humanity's place in the universe. D. Sidney-Fryer has made a name for himself as a leading scholar on Clark Ashton Smith and other poets of fantasy and terror. But in this volume he himself emerges as a creative artist in his own right, taking the cosmos as the backdrop for his deft ventures into prose and verse.

For more than forty years, S. T. Joshi has been a presence in the weird fiction community. In this expansive and elegantly written memoir, Joshi reflects on the major facets of his life. Born in India in 1958, he came with his family to the United States in 1963, settling in the Midwest. He hit his stride in an Indiana high school, where he first read Lovecraft's books from the public library. He was accepted as an undergraduate at Brown University, where he not only learned Greek and Latin but explored the vast resources of the Lovecraft Collection at the John Hay Library. By 1982, Joshi was already recognized as a leading authority on Lovecraft, and his preparation of corrected texts of Lovecraft's fiction for Arkham House helped to launch a revolution in the study of the dreamer from Providence. In the decades that have followed, Joshi has expanded his range to cover the entire history of weird fiction, as well as such fields as atheism and left-wing politics. Among his nearly 400 books are bibliographies of leading weird writers, monographs, histories and biographies, and even a few works of fiction. What Is Anything? speaks frankly of Joshi's relations with friends and colleagues (among them Ramsey Campbell, T.E.D. Klein, Marc Michaud, Robert M. Price, and David E. Schultz), as well as his two wives. This memoir, enlivened with many photographs of Joshi and his friends and family, provides unprecedented insights into the worlds of Lovecraft scholarship and many other related subjects. For this paperback edition, Joshi has added a lively chapter covering the eventful years of 2018-22.

The work of British writer Sax Rohmer (pseudonym of Arthur Sarsfield Ward, 1883-1959) was once immensely popular, but most of it has lapsed into oblivion-except his corpus of weird fiction. This volume features the best of his tales of horror and strangeness, culled from his numerous story collections from the 1910s and 1920s. The mystery of Egypt dominated Rohmer's imagination, and the volume Tales of Secret Egypt (1918) contains some of his best weird work, such as "The Whispering Mummy," "The Death-Ring of Sneferu," and "Lord of the Jackals," which may or may not involve the supernatural. "Tchériapin," Rohmer's finest weird tale, is authentically supernatural and even features a science-fictional undercurrent in its suggestion that a chemical formula can render any organic substance hard as diamonds. "The Curse of a Thousand Kisses" fuses horror and poignancy in its suggestion that a hideous old woman is the centuries-old Scheherazade, the victim of a curse. Sax Rohmer can take his place with H. Rider Haggard, Rudyard Kipling, and other writers who, while chiefly focusing on tales of adventure, was frequently inclined to incorporate terror and weirdness into his exciting narratives. His stories are as readable today as when they were first written.

As Hippocampus Press's award-winning weird poetry journal Spectral Realms completes its ninth year of publication, it continues to feature some of the best poems of terror and the supernatural by leading contemporary poets. Ann K. Schwader, Adam Bolivar, D. L. Myers, Wade German, and others grace this issue. Carole Abourjeili writes on vampires, Christian Dickinson in banshees, Steven Withrow on ghosts, and Scott J. Couturier on ghouls. David Barker continues his revisioning of Lovecraft's Fungi from Yuggoth, while Carl E. Reed writes a vibrant tribute to Clark Ashton Smith. Ngo Binh Anh Khoa uses a Vietnamese verse form to cosmic terror and grue; master versifier Frank Coffman conveys weirdness in a quaternelle; and Joshua Gage utilizes the ghazal to speak of the "old gods." The classic reprints include an anonymous poem dating to 1823 and James F. Morton's "Haunted Houses." Reviews by Leigh Blackmore, Katherine Kerestman, and Steven Withrow of recent books of weird poetry complete a bountiful issue.

The English author Clemence Housman (1861-1959) was the sister of the renowned poet A. E. Housman and the novelist Laurence Housman; but she was a distinguished writer in her own right. In 1890 she published The Were-Wolf, a vibrant exposition of the werewolf motif, in a magazine; it was published in book form in 1896. This novella captures both the terror and the sensuality of this supernatural conception, featuring a female werewolf who exercises a baleful influence on the hapless men she encounters. In 1898, Housman's full-length novel The Unknown Sea was published. This rare work involves another seductive female, the mermaid-like Diadyomene, an elusive figure whom a poor fisherman finds on a remote island near his coastal village. On the very borderline of the weird, The Unknown Sea is a rich and complex work written in an archaic and poetic idiom that enhances its elements of terror and strangeness. The short story "The Drawn Arrow" completes the corpus of Housman's weird output-an ethereal tale possibly set in an imaginary realm and perhaps influenced by the work of Lord Dunsany. Housman, an ardent feminist who was jailed for her protests against the denial of the vote to women, is a forgotten master of weird fiction whose work has waited too long to be resurrected. Now we can all appreciate the power and depth of her writings from the beginning to the end of her career.