Saturday, November 07, 2020

Robert Bloch - H.P Lovecraft Drawings, 1933

Robert Bloch - Untitled Lovecraft Artwork, 1933Untitled Lovecraft Artwork
  Robert Bloch - Dine and Dance, 1933Dine and Dance
  Robert Bloch - Saboth, 1933Saboth
  Robert Bloch - Explorer, 1933Explorer
  Robert Bloch - Untitled Lovecraft Artwork 2, 1933Untitled Lovecraft Artwork
  Robert Bloch - Abdul Alhazred writing the Necronomicon, 1933Abdul Alhazred writing the Necronomicon
  Robert Bloch - The Ghoul, 1933The Ghoul
  Robert Bloch - The Lurking Fear, 1933The Lurking Fear
  Robert Bloch - The Feast, 1933The Feast
  Robert Bloch - The Whisperer in the Darkness, 1933The Whisperer in the Darkness
  Robert Bloch - Yagath, 1933Yagath
  Robert Bloch - Kadath, 1933Kadath
  Robert Bloch - Dream-Thing, 1933Dream-Thing
  Robert Bloch - IÄA. Shub-Niggurath Y'A, 1933IÄA. Shub-Niggurath Y'A 

"During the 1930s, Bloch was an avid reader of the pulp magazine Weird Tales. H. P. Lovecraft, a frequent contributor to that magazine, became one of his favorite writers. As a teenager, Bloch befriended and corresponded with Lovecraft, who gave the promising youngster advice on his own fiction-writing efforts.[1] Bloch's first professional sales, at the age of just seventeen, were to Weird Tales with the short stories "The Feast in the Abbey" and "The Secret in the Tomb". Bloch's early stories were strongly influenced by Lovecraft, and a number of his stories were set in, and extended, the world of Lovecraft's Cthulhu Mythos. It was Bloch who invented, for example, the oft-cited Mythos texts De Vermis Mysteriis and Cultes des Goules.
 
The young Bloch even appears, thinly disguised, as the character "Robert Blake" in Lovecraft's story "The Haunter of the Dark", which is dedicated to Bloch. In this story, Lovecraft kills off the Bloch character, repaying a courtesy Bloch paid Lovecraft with his tale "The Shambler from the Stars", in which the Lovecraft-inspired figure dies; the story goes so far as to use Bloch's then-current street address in Milwaukee. (Bloch even had a signed certificate from Lovecraft [and some of his creations] giving Bloch permission to kill Lovecraft off in a story.) Bloch later wrote a third tale, "The Shadow From the Steeple", picking up where "The Haunter of the Dark" finished.
 
After Lovecraft's death in 1937, Bloch continued writing for Weird Tales, where he became one of its most popular authors. He also began contributing to other pulps, such as the science fiction magazine Amazing Stories. He gradually evolved away from Lovecraftian imitations towards a unique style of his own. One of the first distinctly "Blochian" stories was "Yours Truly, Jack the Ripper", which was published in Weird Tales in 1943. The story was Bloch's take on the Jack the Ripper legend, and was filled out with more genuine factual details of the case than many other fictional treatments.[2] Bloch followed up this story with a number of others in a similar vein dealing with half-historic, half-legendary figures such as the Man in the Iron Mask ("Iron Mask", 1944), the Marquis de Sade ("The Skull of the Marquis de Sade", 1945) and Lizzie Borden ("Lizzie Borden Took an Axe...", 1946)." - quote source


Artworks found at the Brown University Library.

Another artwork from Robert Bloch was previously shared here.

2 comments:

Marcel Ruijters said...

Quite a find! I see some of Aleister Crowley's doodlings in there, and maybe a bit of William Blake. Thanks!

Aeron said...

Indeed, I was unaware of these drawings by Bloch and only just discovered them. It's fascinating to think of one of the greatest horror films of the 20th century having such a direct connection to Lovecraft.