I was recently struck by this passage in a 1937 letter from Clark Ashton Smith to Virgil Finlay.
"I think you define very well the main difference between my tales and those of Lovecraft. HPL, in his most characteristic stories, always built up an elaborate and minutely detailed groundwork of realism, no matter how fantastic the eventual departure. Though I have sometimes written tales with an actual setting, I am more at ease when I can weave the entire web on the loom of fantasy. It is probably idle to speculate as to whether one method is more creative than the other. No doubt my own preference is motivated by a certain amount of distaste for the local and the modern, and a sort of nostalgia for impossible and unattainable dreamlands. Yes, I agree with you that my tales - especially the Zothique stories - would call for an arabesque type of illustration, with much ornamental detail; while drawings for HPL's work should be more austere and bleak. Different types, page sizes, bindings, etc., could be utilized appropriately in publishing books by HPL and myself."
It got me to thinking about something I had not really previously considered: did either HPL or CAS get the full treatment in terms of great types, binding, and book design in their own lifetime? It is strange to think that these genius writers, who are so revered in our own time by a broad spectrum of readers and scholars, should have been relegated to the pages of ephemeral pulp mags. I have nothing against pulps, but I am curious as to how CAS or HPL would have felt, never having seen their canonical works enshrined in the pages of a real, solid, and intelligently designed volume.
I also am particularly interested to speculate, as CAS so tantalizingly mentions in the last line of this passage, what the authors themselves would have appreciated in terms of the typefaces and material makeup of a possible book.
Here is a prime example in the modern world of the kind of beauty that can be achieved with a book, and a truly deserved honor done to the text of Lovecraft, as it probably never was in his lifetime. A letterpress edition of Lovecraft's "Shadow Over Innsmouth", with specially designed wood engravings:
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www.heavenlymonkey.com]