I thought I might have asked about this before, but I don't see a thread title that sounds like it.

Please help me if you can. What good evidence do we have regarding Lovecraft's use of public libraries, university libraries, etc.?

I have begun to write an article for the monthly Tolkien newsletter, [/i]Beyond Bree[i]. It's my intention to discuss the libraries of C. S. Lewis (the catalogue of which is available online), J. R. R. Tolkien (the catalogue of which should be published very shortly), and HPL (I have received in today's mail the 4th edition of the Joshi/Schultz catalogue). Of course my focus will be on the books each man owned (and I anticipate finding some interesting overlaps between two or three of the three -- and also with the Ballantine Adult Fantasy Series list of 1969-1974), but I wanted to say something about each man's access to books in libraries. Lewis and Tolkien, of course, were Oxford academics, and, in Lewis's case, eventually a Cambridge professor, so they would have had access to those great British libraries. I want to know what libraries Lovecraft certainly used. It would be nice if you could cite a source(s) on this.

Thanks for your help.

Dale Nelson

Well ... he obviously had access to the restricted library at Miscatonic University.

:)

He often seems familiar with early editions of books that he could hardly have owned. For instance, when in "The Festival", he refers to the 1681 edition of the Saducismus Triumphatus of Joseph Glanvil, he spells "Glanvil" with one "l", exactly as the name appears in the 1681 edition. (The more common accepted spelling is "Glanvill").

"The Picture in the House", contains a reasonably accurate description of Pigafetta's Regnum Congo. I'm not sure the plates should go in the middle of the book, though. But these books were bound by hand, so maybe they sometimes did.

He seems to have been familiar with the older versions of the Arabian Nights, by way of early English translations of Galland's Mille et Une Nuits. However, Joshi may be correct in supposing he only read Andrew Lang's abridgement. Lang did a reasonably good job of extracting most of the good stuff.

Thanks, Playtpus.

I assume that some of Lovecraft's learned bibliographic references were derived from material in encyclopedias and recent books.

But do we know if HPL had borrowing privileges at Brown University? If not, was he able, at least, to consult books there without checking them out? So much is known about Lovecraft, but what about these questions?

I suppose he would have visited the New York Public Library when he lived in that city.

Anyway, I hope for more light here.

Btw I wonder what happened to Lovecraft's copy -- a family inheritance -- of Mather's Magnalia Christi Americana.