H.P. Lovecraft

Join us in the shop for a two-part journey into the mind of H.P. Lovecraft.

After years of frustration and financial hardship, Howard Phillips Lovecraft died obscurely in 1937, believing that his writing would be rapidly forgotten. In fact, he now enjoys a vast (and still growing) posthumous reputation as one of the most innovative, distinctive and uncompromising authors ever to devote himself to pulp genres. He has also provoked increasing controversy. Is there nothing to his stories beyond the “horror of bad taste and bad art” that the critic Edmund Wilson found in them, or does he bring a conviction, philosophic clarity and visionary intensity to his fiction that elevates it to the status of serious literature? Are the notorious quirks of his style a sign of ineptitude, or a mark of deep originality? Can the shocking racist and xenophobic attitudes he espoused be put aside as matter of irrelevance when assessing his literary achievement, or are they fatally undermining of it?

Robert Jones, of Topping & Company, spent much of his lockdown leisure reading through Lovecraft’s complete body of tales, seeking to arrive at a balanced view of this vexing but potently influential figure. Now he emerges unscathed from tentacular encounters with Cthulhu, Nyarlothotep, and assorted shoggoths to offer a two-part study event devoted to Lovecraft, attempting to place him in the larger context of the American and popular literature of his time. He will also look at Lovecraft’s indebtedness to earlier traditions of horror writing and connections with such varied Weird Fiction authors as Lord Dunsany, August Derleth, Robert Howard, Arthur Machen, Algernon Blackwood, and Clark Ashton Smith.

Those coming fresh to Lovecraft will find his fiction represented in a bewildering variety of editions. Of complete collections, The New Annotated H.P. Lovecraft, edited by Leslie S. Klinger, is attractively printed and illustrated with detailed notes, whilst Chartwell Books’ The Complete Fiction of H.P. Lovecraft is a recommendable budget option. There are also three Penguin selections edited by the leading Lovecraft scholar, S.T. Joshi, that offer a substantial and varied overview of his work with authoritative commentary. More detailed reading suggestions can be found on Robert’s blog www.typeevelley.com

Your single reservation is valid for TWO workshops, taking place on subsequent Tuesdays – 18th and 25th January 2022 – and includes a £10 Toppings voucher valid against the book of your choice.