R. H. Barlow

Lovecraft's young protegé and literary executor, Barlow was responsible for preserving Lovecraft's manuscripts. He later became a distinguished professor of anthropology.

Eyes of the God: Selected Writings of R. H. Barlow (Second Edition, Revised and Expanded)

Collects Barlow's early fantasy stories, some written in collaboration with Lovecraft, including many that were long available only in the pages of fan publications from the 1930s. Included is a brief series, "The Annals of the Jinn" that is in the vein of Lovecraft's dreamlands series and Smith's Hyperborean fantasies. There are passing references to some Lovecraftian entities such as Nyarlathotep, Azathoth, Shub-Niggurath, and Yeb, as well as the Smithian Tsathoggua (here called Zotog-Ua). The volume also includes Barlow's poetry and a selection of his nonfiction, including moving essays about Lovecraft and Henry S. Whitehead. The greatly expanded second edition runs to 596 pages.

Marcos Legaria, L'Affaire Barlow

Bringing Lovecraft's works to a mainstream audience was a journey fraught with complications. In L’Affaire Barlow, the author shows how dangerously close Lovecraft’s work was to being litigated into obscurity. Bruised egos, personal vendettas, and Machiavellian plots abound, making control of the Lovecraft literary estate read like a tale from one of the pulp magazines. Lovecraft designated Robert Barlow as his literary executor. Barlow created the Lovecraft archives at Brown University even as a campaign was waged to wrest control of Lovecraft’s work from him. It was only after his premature death that his unyielding guardianship of Lovecraft’s legacy was fully understood. L’Affaire Barlow is the story of Robert Barlow’s quest to preserve the Old Gent from Providence for the ages.

Marcos Legaria, The Man Who Collected Lovecraft

“The Vaults of Yoh-Vombis” was the name that R. H. Barlow bestowed upon his impressive collection of manuscripts, pulp magazines, and other material that he assembled through his contacts with such leading figures in weird fiction of the 1930s as H. P. Lovecraft, Clark Ashton Smith, E. Hoffmann Price, and C. L. Moore. What happened to this priceless collection of Americana? As Marcos Legaria, a leading scholar on Barlow, establishes in this pioneering study, much of Barlow’s collection ended up in academic libraries, but other parts of it fell into private hands as it was successively curated by George T. Smisor, August Derleth, and others. Legaria presents a comprehensive portrait of the disposition of a remarkable assemblage of material that was central to the weird writing of its time.

Cthulhu Files Bookstore Contents

Cthulhu Files Home Page

Copyright 2021-2026, Joseph F. Morales