Miskatonic Literary Society - Volume 1

$ 125.00

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For the Discerning Reader of Weird Literature

Join the Miskatonic Literary Society and you'll receive a beautiful edition of a classic weird tale carefully selected by Garrison Matthis, Ph.D., Chairman of the English Department at Miskatonic University in Arkham, Mass. For the Society's inaugural year, Dr. Matthis and his Executive Committee have chosen the stories:

"What Was It?" by Fitz James O'Brien (shipping December 15, 2022) - a tale of an otherworldly apparition in a New York boarding house
"The Yellow Wallpaper" by Charlotte Perkins Gilman (shipping March 2023) - the story of a woman's incipient madness brought on by her confinement in a wallpapered room
"Markheim" by Robert Louis Stevenson (shipping June 2023) - good and evil collide strangely in a London antique shop
"The Cask of Amontillado" by Edgar Allan Poe (shipping September 2023) - Poe knits a disturbing tale of revenge in one of literature's greatest short stories

These stories have been carefully curated by the MLS to provide readers with uncanny thrills and macabre delights, wrapped in the most elegant writing of the modern age and illustrated by artists with a penchant for the outré. Bespoke publisher Helios House Press has commissioned original artwork for each story, and had these fine volumes offset printed and thread bound by a traditional printer in Scotland, with letterpress covers. These editions are published exclusively for the MLS and are not available elsewhere. The print run is limited to 500 hand-numbered copies.

This set of books is no longer available as a subscription. But if you order now you'll get all four of the books above, along with additional ephemera and other bonus items. You'll also receive all four stories as Mythophonic MP3 audio recordings by the esteemed orators Mssrs. Branney & Leman, suitable for playback through all manner of digital phonographs.

You can also get MLS merch in our Redbubble store! We have shirts, hats, journals, mugs and more!

Frequently Asked Questions

Q: Isn't this a subscription?

A: Originally, we offered a subscription for this series. Now that all subscription books have been fulfilled, we're making the set available as a one-time purchase.

Q: These books are small - why are they so expensive?

A: These books are published by Helios House and are printed using high quality techniques and materials by craftsmen in Scotland. They are produced in limited quantities for discerning readers. You will receive four separate shipments from us including the books and possibly surprises we're not telling you about. Your subscription also includes a download of a special Mythophonic recording of each story, produced by the HPLHS.

Q: Why is shipping so much less than it used to be?

A: With a subscription, your purchase includes four separate mailings of books. Here we send you one package that contains all four books plus other goodies.

Q: Can HPLHS Members earn a bonus stamp by joining the Miskatonic Literary Society?

A: Why yes, they can and will!

Lovely collection

A lovely set of short books, charmingly produced. The audio versions are also wonderful, and have a delightful period feel.

These booklets are beautifully printed, as are all the Helios publications--and your local publications too. The Miskatonic Missives are truly extraordinary--I wish the original letter in HPL's handwriting was also included, as well as a typewritten copy. Keep up the great work.

An amazing collection.

This was gifted to me by a family member. I have been watching this for quite some time and I can say that I regret waiting. All of these stories are excellent works by their respective authors. The booklets are all superbly crafted and come with a few little props for an added bit of fun. You should buy this, it's amazing.

Weird and wonderful

The last story in the series has just been delivered and each story has been met with equal parts dread and wonder, I can only pray that my sanity will last to the end of this exceptional subscription. Perfectly curated stories made to a very high standard. I have renewed my membership to that hallowed institution the Miskatonic Literary Society...come join us.

A lovely addition to my library

When this first annual subscription came out, I did not instantly buy it as the price seemed a bit high. Eventually, because it was a limited press run and knowing the quality of everything else HPLHS creates, I took the plunge, and upon arrival of the first book I instantly regretted my momentary hesitation. They are, like every other item I have bought here, a very high quality item, wrought with love and care. When HPLHS announced the second annual subscription a day or two ago, I pre-ordered immediately. I now note that this first volume has some copies still available; do yourself a favor, buy this set as well as the subscription to the second volume. You will be glad you did.

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Hand crafted

The piece is hand crafted with very much the appearance and feel of a genuine artifact. It's worth keeping the display card.

Outstanding!

This is a fantastic addition to the campaign! Every item in the box is top quality, can't wait for my investigators to get their hands on this!

My cup runneth over!

Such a treasure! Superbly exquisite quality. Every Lovecraft fanatic and collector must own this. It's worth every penny!

A Reading of an Unreadable Text

In the long, winding corridors of scholarship—and I speak as someone who’s crawled through actual ones in the musty basements filled with the detritus of rotten texts —it is rare to encounter a document that so convincingly masquerades as both object and oracle. The Liber Oblitus, the latest fictitious monograph from the tireless craftsmen of the HPLHS Society’s Miskatonic University Press, is not merely a pastiche of academic research—it is a deliberate act of scholarly invocation.

Let me be plain: this is not just a book. It is a weaponized artifact of intellectual archaeology.

From the moment I laid hands on the moss-green cover—saddle-stitched with care and confidence—I was struck by the weight of authenticity. The typography, layout, and citations are not just “in character.” They are indistinguishable from the seminar-room mimeographs of a more disciplined era, when even imagined truths required peer review.

The premise is delightfully preposterous: a team of interdisciplinary scholars, led by a meticulous (and vaguely obsessive) art historian, has unearthed a handwritten manuscript in a language unknown to linguists, impossible to date, and yet chillingly familiar to anyone acquainted with the deeper registers of Lovecraftian epistemology. Think: Voynich Manuscript meets Gödel’s incompleteness theorem... with perhaps a whiff of The King in Yellow.

But where lesser mythos tributes trade in overt horror, Liber Oblitus thrives on insinuation. Each contributor—historian, psychologist, mathematician—wrestles not only with the content but with the concept of interpretation itself. Their divergent analyses do not so much converge as spiral, drawing the reader deeper into a vortex of half-revealed patterns, suggestive symmetries, and encoded madness.

The mathematical commentary deserves special mention. What begins as a structuralist mapping exercise quickly descends (ascends?) into a probabilistic commentary on recursive infinities. I was reminded of my own work on nonlinear failure modes in hydrologic design: when a system cannot be solved by standard means, one begins to suspect the system may not want to be solved.

Add to that a psychologist’s dive into symbology and shared delusion, a historian’s brave contextualization of nonexistent empires, and art historical observations that hint at forbidden geometries rendered in hauntingly familiar brushwork, and what you have is not just a fictional book—it’s an unstable document. The kind you store in an evidence locker, not a library.

The 16-inch centerfold—resplendent in glossy detail—is both a visual reward and a challenge. I strongly advise not staring at it under dim light after midnight.

Final Assessment:If you’re a collector of Mythos artifacts, a fan of deep-cut esoterica, or a player in roleplaying campaigns where the stakes are measured in sanity points, Liber Oblitus is indispensable. This isn’t just a prop. It’s a trapdoor—beautifully built and cunningly baited—for the curious mind.

In the words of an old field operations chief I once knew, “If you find yourself needing to explain it twice, it’s probably real.”

Nice

Lovely warm hoodie, pins look great, and look forward the prepping the finest academic institution in the US

Miskatonic Literary Society - Volume 1

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For the Discerning Reader of Weird Literature

You can also get MLS merch in our Redbubble store! We have shirts, hats, journals, mugs and more!

Frequently Asked Questions

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