Literature in the Making
On February 24, 1931, H.P. Lovecraft began writing his celebrated novella "At the Mountains of Madness". At some point prior to that, he literally sketched out his ideas for the story on an old envelope he had lying around. After filling one side, he tore the envelope open and continued to jot down his ideas and even sketched a picture of one of the story's Elder Things.
That envelope is still extant and in the Lovecraft Collection of the John Hay Library at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island. The HPLHS has worked with the library to create a highly accurate replica of that original envelope and we offer it here for collectors and HPL fans alike. This document provides a unique insight into Lovecraft's creative process. We see his early articulation of thoughts and images for the story. Even better, we see them in his own hand as they were written out by a man so frugal that he made good use of both the outside AND inside of an envelope he no longer needed. The postage stamp is no longer extant on the original envelope (perhaps HPL reused it?). Our replica features a custom designed stamp honoring the John Hay Library and depicting Lovecraft from Virgil Finlay's portrait of him as an 18th century gentleman.
Our Standard Edition is the most accurate recreation of the original document we could mass produce; the original document is here recreated at its original size and format and printed on two sides of a torn open envelope. Our Deluxe Edition features the replica from the Standard Edition in a double-sided float frame with a handsome engraved museum-style plaque on the front. The float frame allows you to easily turn the frame around to see the other side of the sketch or reverse the image to your preferred side.
We have always loved this glimpse into Lovecraft's process as a writer and we're very excited to share our replica with fans of HPL's work.
Deluxe Edition frame is 12"x12"x1". Standard Edition is roughly 10"x10".
I finally got to open this up today since I was out of town for awhile. Was really excited to get it, only to be really disappointed that it came damaged. It looks like it was dropped or banged up against something based on the split of the fram. I am fully aware this most likely was from the delivery people but still it's very disappointing especially since it's now sold out and I'm pretty sure there's no way to get it replaced.
awesome stuff as always.
This is such a cool little piece of literary history to own. If the folks responsible for this reproduction make anything else, like Lovecraft's sketch of Cthulhu, come up for sale, I'll be buying that!
An absolutely beautiful reproduction of Lovecraft's notes. A brilliant piece of history perfect for any fan of Lovecraft and his works. Well worth the wait through the slow moving machine that is the South African Post Office.
Those who have constructed detailed writings - whether for books, articles, RPG scenarios, or similar - may well find this Lovecraft artefact surprisingly familiar in nature, with its crossings-out, later amendments, trial sketches, and notes added at unusual angles. Indeed it often feels reassuring to discover that great authors and artists make use of a comparable planning and development process to those of us of far lesser ability and repute, albeit theirs to a much more fruitful end result! As other reviewers have commented, the handwriting is not always easy to decipher, for which familiarity with the final story will certainly assist. On my own copy, slight misalignments of the two separate triangular side-flaps created a few extra problems in this respect, albeit not insurmountable ones. For me, the most fascinating aspects were the sketches showing the development of ideas for the appearance of the Elder Things. Of those, the crossed-out one at the top of the inside central panel looks oddly like some of the post-Lovecraft illustrations for the Mi-Go, in several of Chaosium’s “Call of Cthulhu” RPG products, for example. A wonderful addition to any Lovecraft enthusiast’s collection!
