The Starry Wisdom Library

The Starry Wisdom Library, to be released some time this year by PS Publishing, is a unique anthology project, and I’m happy to say that I will have a story — or rather, an essay or sorts — featured in it. The project is the brainchild of rare books expert Nate Pedersen, whose rather brilliant conceit is to publish an authentic-looking facsimile reproduction of the original 1877 “lost” auction catalogue for the library of occult books that Lovecraft once described as residing in the abandoned Church of Starry Wisdom in Providence, Rhode Island:

In a rear vestry room beside the apse Blake found a rotting desk and ceiling-high shelves of mildewed, disintegrating books. Here for the first time he received a positive shock of objective horror, for the titles of those books told him much. They were the black, forbidden things which most sane people have never even heard of, or have heard of only in furtive, timorous whispers; the banned and dreaded repositories of equivocal secrets and immemorial formulae which have trickled down the stream of time from the days of man’s youth, and the dim, fabulous days before man was.

— H. P. Lovecraft, “The Haunter of the Dark”

Each “story” in The Starry Wisdom Library is written in the form of a (completely made-up) scholarly description of, and essay on, one of these fictitious texts. The full list of them was determined by Nate and gleaned from the entire bristling universe of Lovecraftian fiction. For my part, I wrote the entry on the Daemonolorum, a tome of “nightmare arcana” invented by Robert Bloch for one of his stories.

The book with its faux facsimile design will have quite a charming and handsome appearance, as evidenced by the title page:

 

Here’s the full list of contributors, along with the titles of their respective entries. As you’ll see, Nate has managed to assemble a pretty amazing roster of Lovecraftian and weird horror writers.

Introduction by S. T. Joshi

ANIOLOWSKI, Scott David — Massa di Requiem per Shuggay
BARRASS, Glynn — The Book of Azathoth
BERGLUND, Edward P. — Cultus Maleficarum
BIRD, Allyson — The Book of Karnak
BRENTS, Scott — Lewis Carroll / Charles Dodgson Letter
BULLINGTON, Jesse — Il Tomo della Biocca
CAMPBELL, Ramsey — The Revelations of Glaaki
CARDIN, Matt — The Daemonolorum
CHAMBERS, S. J. — Remnants of Lost Empires
CISCO, Michael — Liber Ivonis
CUINN, Carrie — Image du Monde
FILES, Gemma — The Testament of Carnamagos
GAVIN, Richard — De Masticatione Mortuorum in Tumulis
HANSON, Christopher — The Pnakotic Manuscripts
HARMS, Daniel – The Book of Dzyan
JONES, Stephen Graham — The Ssathaat Scriptures
LANGAN, John — Les Mystères du Ver
LEMAN, Andrew – Practise of Chymicall and Hermetickall Physicke
LLEWELLYN, Livia — Las Reglas de Ruina
MAMATAS, Nick — The Black Book of the Skull
MORENO-GARCIA, Silvia — El Culto de los Muertos
MORRIS, Edward — The Book of Invaders
NICOLAY, Scott — The Ponape Scripture
PRICE, Robert M. — The Book of Iod
PUGMIRE, W. H. — The Sesqua Valley Grimoire
PULVER, Joe — The King in Yellow
RAWLIK, Pete — The Qanoon-e-Islam
SATYAMURTHY, Jayaprakash — The Chhaya Rituals
SCHWADER, Ann K — The Black Rites
SCHWEITZER, Darrell — The Nameless Tome
SPRIGGS, Robin — The Dhol Chants
STRANTZAS, Simon — The Black Tome of Alsophocus
TANZER, Molly — Hieron Aigypton
TAYLOR, Keith — The Book of Thoth
TIDBECK, Karin — The Cultes des Goules
TYSON, Donald — Liber Damnatus
VALENTINE, Genevieve — The Seven Cryptical Books of Hsan
WALLACE, Kali – The Tablets of Nhing
WARREN, Kaaron — The Book of Climbing Lights
WEBB, Don — The Black Sutra
WELLS, Jeff — Observations on the Several Parts of Africa
WILSON, F. Paul — Unaussprechlichen Kulten

Rare book cataloging for the anthology conducted by Jonathan Kearns of Adrian Harrington Rare Books.

Featuring six original woodcuts by Liv Rainey-Smith

Dust jacket cover by Andrew Leman of the H. P. Lovecraft Historical Society