[Providence] Tribune,Astronomy Articles for.
Series of 20 astronomy articles (August 1, 1906–June 1, 1908).
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The articles appeared variously in the Morning Tribune[MT], Evening Tribune[ET], and Sunday Tribune[ST], as follows: “In the August Sky” (MT, August 1, 1906; ET, August 1, 1906); “The September Heavens” (MT, September 1, 1906; ET, September 1, 1906); “Astronomy in October” (MT, October 1, 1906; ET, October 1, 1906); “The Skies of November” (MT, November 1, 1906; ET, November 1, 1906); “The Heavens for December” (MT, December 1, 1906; ET, December 1, 1906); “The Heavens in January” (MT, January 1, 1907; ET, January 1, 1907); “The Heavens in February” (MT, February 1, 1907); “The Heavens in March” (MT, March 2, 1907; ET, March 2, 1907); “April Skies” (ET, April 1, 1907); “The Heavens in May” (MT, May 1, 1907; ET, May 1, 1907); “The Heavens in June” (MT, 1 June 1907); “Astronomy in August” (MT, August 1, 1907; ET, August 1, 1907); “The Heavens for September” (ST, September 1, 1907); “The Skies of October” (MT, October 1, 1907; ET, October 1, 1907); “The Heavens in November” (MT, November 1, 1907; ET, November 1, 1907); “Heavens for December” (ST, December 1, 1907); “The Heavens in January” (ET, January 1, 1908; MT, January 2, 1908); “February Skies” (ET, February 1, 1908); “The Heavens in the Month of March” (MT, March 2, 1908; ET, March 3, 1908); “Solar Eclipse Feature of June Heavens” (MT, June 1, 1908; ET, June 1, 1908).
The articles are somewhat mechanical accounts of celestial phenomena for the coming month, made interesting by the fact that all except those for August and September 1906, June 1907, and June 1908 feature hand-drawn star charts by HPL, the first (and virtually the last) time that any artwork of his was published in his lifetime. (In the article for March 1908, only the illustration appeared in ET, under the title “The Evening Sky in March.”) The articles end abruptly because a nervous breakdown caused HPL to withdraw from high school.
Pseudonyms, Lovecraft’s.
HPL used pseudonyms frequently, but almost exclusively during his years in amateur journalism and mostly for poems. In part, the pseudonyms were a means of disguising the fact that HPL was contributing more than one item to a given issue of a paper; in other cases (e.g., the religious poem “Wisdom”), HPL may have been wishing to conceal his identity in a work whose subject matter would have been considered anomalous for readers who knew his work. Some pseudonyms (e.g., Henry Paget-Lowe, Ward Phillips) did not well conceal his identity. His first pseudonym was “Isaac Bickerstaffe,” used in late 1914; and this Augustan nom de plumepaved the way for numerous other pseudonyms derivative or suggestive of eighteenth-century poetry. HPL never used pseudonyms for his major works of weird fiction. Below is an alphabetical list of HPL’s pseudonyms and the works under which they appeared in his lifetime (listed chronologically), followed by brief explanations of their use or origin.
“Lawrence Appleton” was used for the poems “Hylas and Myrrha: A Tale” ( Tryout,May 1919) and “Myrrha and Strephon” ( Tryout,July 1919). The name reflects the college where Alfred Galpin studied (Lawrence College in Appleton, Wis.), as these poems deal whimsically with Galpin’s schoolboy romances.
For the use of Winifred Virginia Jackson’s pseudonym “Elizabeth Berkeley” for HPL’s poems “The Unknown” ( Conservative,December 1916) and “The Peace Advocate” ( Tryout,May 1917), see entry for Jackson.
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“Isaac Bickerstaffe, Jr.” was used for HPL’s satirical attacks on the astrologer J.F.Hartmann in the [Providence] Evening News:“Astrology and the Future” (October 13, 1914), “Delavan’s Comet and Astrology” (October 26, 1914), [letter to the editor] (December 21, 1914). For the name see Astrology, Articles on.
“Jeremy Bishop” was used for the poem “Medusa: A Portrait” ( Tryout,December 1921). “Alexander Ferguson Blair” was used for “North and South Britons” ( Tryout,May 1919), a poem urging unity between England and Scotland, hence the Scottish-sounding pseudonym. “El Imparcial” (“the impartial one”) was used for the essays “What Is Amateur Journalism?” ( Lake Breeze,March 1915), “Consolidation’s Autopsy” ( Lake Breeze,April 1915), “New Department Proposed: Instruction for the Recruit” ( Lake Breeze,June 1915), “Little Journeys to the Homes of Prominent Amateurs” ( United Amateur,October 1915 and July 1917), “Among the New-Comers” ( United Amateur,May 1916), and “Winifred Virginia Jordan: Associate Editor” ( Silver Clarion,April 1919), all on amateur subjects. Of the two “Little Journeys” articles, the first is a biography of Andrew Francis Lockhart (who had previously written a “Little Journeys” biography of HPL) and the second is a biography of Eleanor J.Barnhart.
“John J.Jones” was used for the self-parodic poem “The Dead Bookworm” ( United Amateur, September 1919).
“Humphry Littlewit” was used for the story “A Reminiscence of Dr. Samuel Johnson” ( United Amateur,November 1917), the poem-cycle “Perverted Poesie or Modern Metre” ( O-Wash-Ta-Nong, December 1937; including the poems “The Introduction,” “Unda; or, The Bride of the Sea,” “The Peace Advocate,” and “A Summer Sunset and Evening”), and possibly for the unlocated newspaper publication of the satiric poem “Waste Paper” (the manuscript has the Littlewit pseudonym affixed to it). The name is suggestive of eighteenth-century satire (cf. the line in “He”: “look, ye puling lackwit!”).
“Archibald Maynwaring” was used for the poems “The Pensive Swain” ( Tryout,October 1919), “To the Eighth of November” ( Tryout,November 1919), and “Wisdom” ( Silver Clarion,November 1919). The name is probably derived from Arthur Mainwaring, one of the translators of Sir Samuel Garth’s edition of Ovid’s Metamorphoses(1717), which HPL read as a boy (see SL1.7).
“Michael Ormonde O’Reilly” was used for the juvenile poem “To Pan” ( Tryout,April 1919; as “Pan”). “Henry [or H.] Paget-Lowe” was used for the poems “January” ( Silver Clarion,January 1920), “On Religion” ( Tryout,August 1920), “On a Grecian Colonnade in a Park” ( Tryout,September 1920), and “October” ( Tryout,October 1920), and the collaborative story “Poetry and the Gods” ( United Amateur,September 1920), with Anna Helen Crofts.
“Ward Phillips” was used for the essay “Ward Phillips Replies” ( Conservative,July 1918; containing the poem “Grace”), the poems “Astrophobos” ( United Amateur,January 1918), “The Eidolon” ( Tryout,October 1918), “Ambition” ( United Co-operative,December 1918), “In Memoriam: J.E.T.D.” ( Tryout,March 1919), “The City” ( Vagrant,October 1919), “Bells” ( Tryout,December 1919), “The House” ( Philosopher,December 1920), “Sir Thomas