Archives on the Air: Robert Bloch.

Overlook Press's 2010 edition of
Robert Bloch's Psycho (1959)

Another episode of the the Archives on the Air radio program from the University of Wyoming's American Heritage Center focuses on Robert Bloch (Psycho, Star Trek's "Wolf in the Fold," etc.).

Brown's "Leaves of an Hour" exhibition.

Richard Kiley in "The Holy
Ground—The Killing, Pt 1," Judd
for the Defense (dir. Leo Penn,
writ. William Kelley, 1969)

Brown University Library's "Leaves of an Hour" online exhibition includes the following items of mystery-related interest: 

• The Terrible Hay-Stack Murder: Life and Trial of the Rev. Ephraim K. Avery (1878)

• Title page from Dashiell Hammett's The Maltese Falcon (1930)

• Mention of author, screenwriter, and Brown alum William P. Kelley (Judd for the Defense; Oscar winner for Witness. Clip from Kelley's acceptance speech at the 1986 Oscars; he's the white-haired fellow.)

• Mention of the library's collection of spy fiction by Watergate burglar E. Howard Hunt
  

• Discussion of the library's H. P. Lovecraft collections

• Gay and lesbian literature collections that include Joseph Hansen's The Man Everybody Was Afraid of (1978)

Ursula Le Guin on Lovecraft.

I really enjoy the Times Literary Supplement's "Then and Now" feature. One of the recent ones is Ursula Le Guin's 1976 review of Lyon Sprague de Camp's Lovecraft: "Lovecraft dangles like a rabbit from the jaws of his unconscious."

Of related interest: Brown Daily Herald on the real-life setting for Lovecraft's The Shunned House.

August Derleth: Best mysteries of 1969.

Essential Solitude: The Letters of
H. P. Lovecraft and August Derleth
Hippocampus P

In the Dec. 6, 1969, issue of the Capital [WI] Times, August Derleth (creator of the Holmes-like Solar Pons) listed his selections for the best fiction, nonfiction, and poetry books of 1969. Mysteries and sci-fi appeared under the subtitle "Entertainments" rather than the "Fiction" category. It may have been ethically questionable that he listed H. P. Lovecraft et al.'s Tales of the Cthulhu Mythos—which was issued by Arkham House, the publishing firm he cofounded.

The Godfather by Mario Puzo and Daphne du Maurier's The House on the Strand were two of his fiction selections, whereas two of his sci-fi picks were Fritz Leiber's A Spectre Is Haunting Texas and Douglas Warner's Death on a Warm Wind. His mystery selections included:

Allingham, Margery. The Allingham Casebook. Campion and Charlie Luke short stories
Bernkopf, Jean F., ed. Boucher's Choicest. Some of Anthony Boucher's picks for best mystery short stories
Carr, John Dickson. The Ghosts' High Noon.
Carter, Philip Youngman. Mr. Campion's Farthing. Carter was Allingham's widower
Christie, Agatha. By the Pricking of My Thumbs.
Davies, L. P. Stranger to Town.
Fish, Robert L. The Murder League.
Gardner, John. A Complete State of Death.
Kahn, Joan, ed. Hanging by a Thread.
Marric, J. J [John Creasey]. Gideon's Power.
Marsh, Ngaio. Clutch of Constables.
Queen, Ellery, ed. Queen's Minimysteries.
Simenon, Georges. Maigret in Vichy (aka Maigret Takes the Waters)
Stout, Rex. Death of a Dude.
Whitney, Phyllis A. The Winter People.

Want to study Lovecraft?

Joshi's I Am Providence: The
Life and Times of H. P. Lovecraft.
Hippocampus P

The Brown Library blog brings word of an upcoming research opportunity, the S. T. Joshi Endowed Research Fellowship, which will provide $2500 to a researcher planning 6 weeks of work in the collections on horror master H. P. Lovecraft in Brown University's John Hay Library. Application details are expected to be released in fall 2014. The fellowship is named for Joshi, who has done much work on Lovecraft and is a Brown graduate.

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."

Fine Books & Collections: Lovecraft's RI hangouts.

Providence Athenaeum
ca. 1900. Library of Congress,
Prints & Photographs Div.

Nick Mamatas discusses the favorite places in Providence, Rhode Island, of
H. P. Lovecraft (such as the Providence Athenaeum) in this piece in the May issue of Fine Books & Collections, which also discusses the question of Lovecraft's first book.

Lovecraftian bits in time for Halloween.

There is a fascinating account about the original manuscript of H. P. Lovecraft's "The Shadow Out of Time" (published in Astounding Stories in 1936, although Lovecraft was dissatisfied with the edited version, and reprinted in the Library of America volume edited by Peter Straub). Thought lost forever, it came to Brown University, which details its provenance here, including the part played by "an August Derleth." Also of interest: audio clips of Straub as part of the Lovecraft Reading series and Straub's editing of an issue of Conjunctions with sci fi, horror, and fantasy contributions. Further details on Brown's Lovecraft Collection can be found here.

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)

Mystery-related bookplates.

Lewis Jaffe, on his blog Confessions of a Bookplate Junkie, has a few mystery-related ones posted:

• E. V. and Laura Vanderstoep's bookplates with fingerprints

• S. Davis Levin's Conan Doyle Collection

• Sherlock Holmes-related bookplates here and here from bookseller-publisher Helan Halbach

• One for Muriel Clark Corby with a raven, which seems Poe-inspired to me.

• Arthur Conan Doyle's bookplate

• H. P. Lovecraft's bookplate

• Erle Stanley Gardner bookplates

And there's also the "Insane Department" at Philadelphia Hospital.

As I'm a Noel Coward fan, be sure to check out Sir Noel's bookplate.

About the image: Sherlockian Bookplates by William E. Butler, published by Primrose Hill Press