Bibliography, early occult detectives in fiction.

Willa Cather, NYPL

In time for Halloween, Clues contributor Tim Prchal (under his pseudonym Tim Prasil) is compiling a "chronological bibliography of early occult detectives" that begins in 1817 with Doktor K in E. T. A. Hoffman's "Das oede Haus" and runs to 1938 with Judge Keith Hillary Pursuivant in works by Gans T. Field. Authors include Alice and Claude Askew, Willa Cather, Arthur Conan Doyle, F. Tennyson Jesse, Arthur Machen, Sax Rohmer, and the obligatory Bram Stoker.

Conference on weird fiction scheduled.

Algernon Blackwood, NYPL

The conference "The Weird: Fugitive Fictions/Hybrid Genres" will be held at the University of London on November 8, 2013. A keynote speaker is S. T. Joshi (who has done much work on H. P. Lovecraft). The conference call for papers mentions interest in papers on Lovecraft and similar writers (probably including Algernon Blackwood, Lord Dunsany, M. R. James, Arthur Machen, and Robert Louis Stevenson), but also indicates the intent to cover topics such as "modernism and the weird."

Exhibition: M. P. Shiel, Christopher Morley, etc.

Roberts 1895 edition of
M. P. Shiel's Prince Zaleski.
Providence Atheneum.

The University of Delaware exhibition "London Bound: American Writers in Britain, 1870–1916" includes M. P. Shiel (author of the Haycraft-Queen Cornerstone work Prince Zaleski, 1895, and friend of Arthur Machen); Baker Street Irregulars founder Christopher Morley; and Stephen Crane's "The Ghost," to which authors such as Henry James, H. Rider Haggard, and A. E. W. Mason (the latter the author of At the Villa Rose, 1910) contributed. The exhibition is on display until Dec. 17.

The weird world of Arthur Machen.

Dr. Adrian Eckersley of the Friends of Arthur Machen discusses with Malcolm Hopkins the career of Arthur Llewellyn Jones, aka Arthur Machen (1863–1947)—who inspired H. P. Lovecraft, among others, with works such as "The Great God Pan" (1894) and "The Inmost Light" (1894)—in this broadcast from the "Lost Steps" program of London's Resonance 104.4fm.

Clues 25.1 (2006) featured Paul Fox's "Eureka in Yellow: The Art of Detection in Arthur Machen's Keynote Mysteries."

(Hat tip to D. C. Rose. About the image: Arthur Machen, NYPL)

Happy birthday, Arthur Machen, Nicolas Freeling, and Max Allan Collins.

H.P. Lovecraft inspiration Arthur Machen was born today in 1863; the late Nicolas Freeling, the creator of Inspector Piet Van der Valk, would have marked his 80th birthday today; and the ever-energetic Max Allan Collins turns 59 today. Collins, the author of Road to Perdition and many other works, will release Black Hats under the pseudonym Patrick Culhane in April 2007, which features the intriguing combination of Wyatt Earp, Bat Masterson, and Al Capone.