For more than fifty years, Ken Faig, Jr. has been a leading scholar and researcher on the life and work of H. P. Lovecraft. Over the decades he has made landmark discoveries that have clarified many aspects of Lovecraft’s life, ancestry, and the influence of his personal experiences upon his weird fiction. In this new volume of essays, Faig continues his pioneering work in illuminating the obscurer corners of the people and places associated with the writer from Providence, R.I.
A long piece on Lovecraft’s English ancestry—his paternal forbears came from the county of Devonshire, in the southwest corner of England—traces the Lovecraft or Lovecroft name back to the 15th century. An essay on Lovecraft’s uncle by marriage, Edward F. Gamwell, clarifies how this figure influenced his nephew’s early writing. Faig also writes detailed histories of Lovecraft’s first two residences in Providence, 454 and 598 Angell Street.
Amateur journalism was a lifelong hobby of Lovecraft’s, and Faig has done extensive research on the members of the Providence Amateur Press Club and on his occasional nemesis, the literary radical Elsie Alice Gidlow. Faig also directs attention to the interplay between Lovecraft’s life and work as exhibited in such tales as The Case of Charles Dexter Ward and “The Dreams in the Witch House.”
Ken Faig, Jr. uses all the research tools at his disposal—from early maps of Providence to census records to tidbits found in Lovecraft’s extant letters—to paint a fuller portrait of Lovecraft and his world, enriching our understanding of the man and his work. All essays have been revised for publication in this collection.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Foreword, by S. T. Joshi
Abbreviations
Lovecraftian People
Devonshire Ancestry of Howard Phillips Lovecraft
Edward Francis Gamwell and His Family
George Elliott Lovecraft: Lost Scion of the House of Lovecraft
Lovecraft Was Our Neighbor: The People of The Arsdale
Lovecraftian Places
The Story of 454 Angell Street: The Birthplace of Howard Phillips Lovecraft
The People of 598–600 Angell Street
The Site of Joseph Curwen’s Home in The Case of Charles Dexter Ward
Can You Direct Me to Ely Court? Some Notes on 66 College Street
The Fiction
John Osborne Austin’s Seven Club Tales: Did They Inspire Lovecraft?
Ethnic Names in Lovecraft’s “The Dreams in the Witch House”
Amateur Journalism
The Providence Amateur Press Club: 1914–16
The Lovecraft–Gidlow Centenary
Sources
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This product was added to our catalog on Thursday 03 February, 2022.
