"Recluse, Scholar and Gentleman"
On December 26, 1943 The Providence Sunday Journal published an article entitled "The Case of Howard Phillips Lovecraft of Providence, R.I." In it, the newspaper's Literary Editor W.T. Scott wrote a lengthy article about H.P. Lovecraft following the publication of Beyond the Wall of Sleep by the newly formed publisher, Arkham House. The article begins, "It is a regrettable, if not a wholly strange matter that one of the best writers Rhode Island has produced - perhaps the most remarkable - is practically unknown here." The article goes on to paint a thorough (and occasionally prescient) picture of the man and his work and it's accompanied by a photo of HPL and the famed Georgian illustration of HPL by Virgil Finlay.
The HPLHS acquired a fragile, yellowed original of the paper and through the ceaseless toiling of the HPLHS Graphics Department recreated the entire page (including a reverse side!) in painstaking detail and then had it printed on an actual newspaper press at full size (about 17.5 by 23 inches). The result is an authentic replica of page 6 from section III of the Sunday Journal. The document is a fascinating look at HPL from just after the time of his death. It's also a great view of a Providence newspaper from that era, complete with book reviews, letters to the editor and a crossword puzzle.
This replica document is only available through the HPLHS and is, quite frankly, the kind of thing only we would be weird enough to make and provide for Lovecraft fans. We realize our products can sometimes be confusing as we often fabricate newspaper articles and other period documents. This is not that - this is a recreation of one page of an actual newspaper from 1943.
