Beautiful and Recent Photo Tour of Lovecraft's Providence

A springtime tour of Lovecraft's College Hill over at the "Glimbit" art blog, using the walking tour map provided by hplovecraft.com, has yielded some stunning photos of H.P. Lovecraft related sites. By all indications, Providence is beautiful at this time of year. Recent photos of HPL's grave, residences, and favorite haunts are provided in this welcome photo trail. The author was also fortunate enough to swing by the Fleur de Lys Studio, an architectural oddity still regarded as such by contemporary Providence. In Lovecraft's own day, the unusual building (pictured above) served as an inspiration for the neurotic artist Wilcox, who culled Cthulhuvian artwork from dreams in "The Call of Cthulhu."

A mere glimpse through last weekend's Glimbit photos of Lovecraftian Providence is enough to recall the city's beauty, often praised in explicit and symbolic forms throughout Lovecraft's work. This aspect tends to be overlooked by the prevailing philosophy of Cosmicism and atmospheric weird horror his stories are steeped in. However, for Lovecraft the man, it's important to remember that the orange glow of an evening sunset on 18th century buildings came close to the the ideal, otherworldly beauty HPL coveted. The allure of the heavenly Providence was often a relief from the strange terror of the Dreamlands and monstrosities on earth in Lovecraft's fiction, and surely amelioration from the horror of life for Lovecraft himself.

-Grim Blogger