French Lovecraft "Rumor"

Alban has been a consistent correspondent to the HPLblog, and always sends interesting items, notably from France. (Thanks, Alban !)

He sent this message to Chrispy: Here's a translation of a French site about an unknown and unpublished book of HPL that was expected to be published in France some years ago (2001). The story is beautiful because at the crossroad of prop making (it seems that the cover was really made by somebody deeply involved in old French edition and printing usage) and of the fantastic (the guy is surely an HPL fan) he made HPL French fans dream about the possibility of the book! I hope it's published some day .

You can find the whole article and picture in French here http://clefargent.free.fr/wb_7rev.php



(Excerpts)

"Weird & Bizarre"

The club of the seven dreamers.

Some years ago, a strange document, circulated on the French web. First came a reproduction of the first cover of the book named "The Club of the Seven Dreamers" and that the author might be Howard Phillips Lovecraft (1890-1937)!
Here's an example:

To:
Subject: Unknown_novel_of_Lovecraft
Date: Thu, 15 Mar 2001 22:32:36 +0200

Message to all Lovecraft fan's. It has been discovered recently at a bookseller a copy of an unknown novel of Lovecraft; translated by Gabriel Lautrec, a correspondent of R.H. Barlow, who translated it at the end of the 30's. You will soon find the text of this novel on our website; under construction. We will communicate the address in a next email.

No other message was received, and we have no more information at the moment! Despite of our searches on the web, no site corresponds to the one that our mystery correspondent is talking about. Regarding the address of the electronic mail of the expeditor, it seems to have been deactivated a short time after the sending of the mail.

The Club of the Seven Dreamers is the title of a novel - or of some novels - that Lovecraft wanted to write toward the beginning of the 1920's. As S.T.Joshi mentions in his biography of Lovecraft: "In March [...] A lot of diverse ideas are coming to me at the moment, especially an horrific novel which will be title the Club of The Seven Dreamers".

…