I had recently reviewed Ken Faig Jr.’s collection Lovecraftian People and Places (2022) from Hippocampus Press. In 2025, he came out with a sequel, More Lovecraftian People and Places.
For those not aware, Ken Faig Jr. has been a leading scholar of H.P. Lovecraft for more than 50 years. Like the previous volume, this one focuses on Lovecraft’s relations with various friends and colleagues.
In More Lovecraftian People and Places, we get 16 essays collected into six sections: Relatives, Educators, Helpers and Neighbors, Others, Places, and Early Recognition. While these articles may be too esoteric to be of interest to the casual Lovecraft fan, those wanting to know more about the man and his works should check this collection out.
In Relatives, we get three articles. Lovecraft had noted to a friend that his family line was full of clergymen. So we get an article looking into “Clergymen Among Lovecraft’s Paternal Ancestors.” The other articles are on specific relatives. Franklin C. Clark had married one of Lovecraft’s aunts, and Ethel Philips Morrish was one of his last living relatives and was at his funeral.
In Educators, we get a couple of articles on some of the teachers in Lovecraft’s life. It should be noted that, due to health reasons, Lovecraft was never able to finish school, and this also prevented him from going to college. Abbie Ann Hathaway (1852–1917) was one of his primary school teachers, and Arthur Palmer May was a tutor for Lovecraft later on.
In Helpers and Neighbors, we get another pair of articles on people who lived near Lovecraft, as well as Delilah Townsend (ca. 1868–1944), who did housekeeping and other work for one of Lovecraft’s aunts, and whom he knew. The strangest article is the one on Mariano De Magistris (1862–1939), with whom Lovecraft had a mortgage.
With Others, we get a mixed bag of articles. One looks at Edwin Baird, the editor at Weird Tales who bought Lovecraft’s first professional sales. A longer article is on “Lovecraft and the Irish.” It is kind of a different article. Lovecraft was a bit of an Anglophile, plus he was often in discussions with Robert E. Howard, where they were on opposite sides. Lovecraft was pro-Roman, whereas Howard was pro-Celt, and so on. But Lovecraft also admired the Irishman Lord Dunsany, and he had other connections to the Irish.
The last piece in this section is on Lovecraft’s 1937 Diary. Lovecraft was not big on keeping a diary, but he did so during the last year of his life. We know it exists because Robert H. Barlow had it in his possession and sent notes about it to Derleth and others. But we do not know where it wound up. We get all the details of what we know was in this diary here.
In the section on Places, we also get three pieces. One looks at “Providence’s Poe Street” and what is on that street. Then we get a look at “Lovecraft’s Travelogues of Foster, Rhode Island,” which is where his mother’s family was from. Tied to this is “Boy in Summer,” which is a fictional piece telling of Lovecraft’s trip to Foster.
The final section is Early Recognition and contains one work, looking at “The First Public Lecture on H.P. Lovecraft,” which was held in 1944 at the Providence Public Library by Winfield Townley Scott, who was literary editor for The Providence Journal. We do not know the content of this lecture, but it is clear that Scott made an effort to get to know who Lovecraft was, and we see pictures of some of his correspondence.
I enjoyed this and wonder if we might get a third volume. Who knows. I do hope to review two other volumes of his, The Unknown Lovecraft (2008) and Lovecraftian Voyages (2017), as well as some of his fiction, sometime in the future.
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