Paul Herman just put out the word that Sentiment: An Olio of Rarer Works, the newest publication from the Robert E. Howard Foundation Press, has been pre-ordered down to very few copies. For those who don’t know much about this volume, here’s a run-down, courtesy of Coming Attractions…

SENTIMENT: AN OLIO OF RARER WORKS – Now available for pre-order!
The REH Foundation Press is proud to present Sentiment: An Olio of Rarer Works. This volume is the Howard collector’s dream, containing those hard-to-find stories from various small press publications from the 1960s, ’70s, and ’80s. No longer will readers have to seek out copies of Pay Day, Lurid Confessions #1, or The Dark Man #2; all of the Howard content in those volumes, and many more, is included here.

Also included are many items seldom seen by collectors. “The Rivals” makes its first appearance outside of a Foundation Newsletter; all three issues of Howard’s amateur press publication, The Right Hook, are presented in their entirety; and many other hard-to-find pieces have finally found a home in Sentiment. For most of these items, this is their first publication in book form. Many of the pieces in this collection are juvenilia.

This massive volume, close to 600 pages, will be printed in hardback with dust jacket, in a limited quantity of 150 copies, each individually numbered. Cover design by Jim Keegan; edited by [redacted].

Sentiment is $53 for REHF Members, $59 for non-members (all prices in US dollars) plus shipping.
(How to become a member? See here.)

Shipping (rates updated as of 10/14/09)
Domestic via USPS Priority, $9
Domestic via USPS Book Rate, $3
Canada via Global Priority, $23
Australia via Global Priority, $33
Europe via Global Priority, $33

Yesterday, Glenn Lord’s (early) birthday was celebrated in style at Tampico Seafood and Cocina Mexicana in Houston. The Cimmerian advised the REH faithful about the event several weeks ago. Now the preliminary reports are starting to trickle in on the TC ticker-tape.

Paul Herman (master of ceremonies) just posted this over on the Official Robert E. Howard Forum:

Glenn’s party went very well. Maybe 15 folks total, on a beautiful day to be sitting out of doors on the upper deck patio of a great Mexican seafood restaurant. What a group! Patrice Louinet and Fabrice Tortey from France, [redacted] from California, Dennis McHaney from Austin, Damon Sasser from Spring, TX, Crossplains Pilgrim and his blushing bride. Even a Paradox lawyer! Glenn made out like a bandit, with a very sizable sum collected (big thanks to the REHupans!, among others) to go towards rebuilding his house in Pasadena damaged by Hurricane Ike last year. Everyone stayed for hours after dinner, just talking as a group about REH. Dennis brought along some extra goodies.

I think everyone had a wonderful time, especially Glenn and his family.

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Original Clark Ashton Smith Color Primitive Art Framed

That’s what “pulpster,” the purveyor of the painting above, has to say.  The asking  price is $2,800, with both “Buy It Now” and “Make Offer” options available.

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The shadow of stately Trout Manor falls across a mysterious circle of lintels and supporting trilithons, in this aerial view. No one but the builders know the reason for this mysterious structure.
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Nothing rings in the holiday season like cosmic horror. So, without further ado, let’s look at upcoming publications featuring either the works of the Man From Providence or those of his acolytes, all of which bear some connection (sometimes tenuous) to Our Reason For Being here at The Cimmerian.

Courtesy of Coming Attractions, we find that Girasol Collectables, publishers of several fine facsimile editions of the pulp appearances of Robert E. Howard, is gearing up to present two volumes collecting all the stories of Lovecraft which appeared in Weird Tales. Here’s the blurb:

All of Lovecraft’s fiction from the original run of WEIRD TALES, in facsimile form right off the original pulp pages!

Girasol Collectables is pleased to announce their upcoming hardcover project, which will be the Weird Writings of HP Lovecraft.

It’ll be similar in format to their REH books; facsimile scans right from the original pages, with no edits or reset text, containing all of HPL’s material from the original run of WEIRD TALES.

A 2 volume set, with one oversized volume to cover the bedsheet issues from 1923 and 1924, and a smaller 7×10 sized volume for the standard sized issues.

Limited Edition of 200 copies.
Pre-release price of $150 + $10 s&h
until Jan. 15, 2010 (Save $25)
(within North America)
After 1/15/2010: $175

We’ll do our best to match existing numbers for REH buyers, but can’t guarantee it; get in early for the best chance at that.
Due out Spring of 2010.

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The Persian slaughtered the Apis Bull;
(Ammon-Ra is a darksome king.)
And the brain fermented beneath his skull.
(Egypt’s curse is a deathly thing.)

He rode on the desert raider’s track;
(Ammon-Ra is a darksome king.)
No man of his gleaming hosts came back,
And the dust winds drifted sombre and black.
(Egypt’s curse is a deathly thing.)

 
The eons passed on the desert land;
(Ammon-Ra is a darksome king.)
And a stranger trod the shifting sand.
(Egypt’s curse is a deathly thing.)

 
His idle hand disturbed the dead;
(Ammon-Ra is a darksome king.)
Til he found Cambysses’ skull of dread
Whence the frenzied brain so long had fled,
That once held terrible visions red.
(Egypt’s curse is a deathly thing.)

 
And an asp crawled from the dust inside
(Ammon-Ra is a darksome king.)
And the stranger fell and gibbered and died.
(Egypt’s curse is a deathly thing.)

“Skulls and Dust,” by Robert E. Howard

“No man of his gleaming hosts came back.” Indeed. What REH (and Herodotus) said. Verification of Herodotus’ tale concerning Cambyses’ lost army has been a long time coming (sort of like what Howard said about the Picts and the Basques). The archaeological findings of twin Italian brothers in the sands of the eastern Sahara might finally solve a millennia-old mystery. Naysayers have scoffed at the veracity of the Man From Halicarnassus, but they may have to rearrange their paradigms now.

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After my Tolkien post last Saturday, several interesting new insights have come to light. Wayne Hammond and Christina Scull, authors of The J.R.R. Tolkien Companion and Guide, posted this response to the Daily Telegraph article over on the J.R.R. Tolkien Collector’s Guide forum:

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Robert E. Howard’s seminal Southern Gothic horror tale, “Pigeons From Hell,” continues to go from strength to strength in the pop-cultural arena, bloody axe in hand. During the last week of October, a stage adaptation of “Pigeons From Hell” was performed at Greystone Mansion in Beverly Hills. Now, as I just learned from Bill Thom’s Coming Attractions, the television adaptation filmed for Boris Karloff’s Thriller will be released in 2010. Here’s the blurb straight from Bill:

Boris Karloff’s THRILLER – Coming to DVD in 2010!
Boris Karloff’s THRILLER anthology series was aired from 1960 to 1962. The series featured a wide variety of stars such as William Shatner, Mary Tyler Moore, Rip Torn, Richard Chamberlain, Robert Vaughn, Elizabeth Montgomery,  Leslie Nielsen, John Carradine, and Ursula Andress. Stories were based on the works of Robert Bloch, Edgar Allan Poe, and Robert E. Howard. The entire remastered series will be released as a deluxe collectors box set featuring all 67 episodes of the show. Extensive special features are being developed including audio commentaries as well as never-before-seen extras.

Included in this release is Robert E. Howard’s “Pigeons From Hell.”

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If one judged by recent posts, it might be hard to tell that The Cimmerian is a “website and shieldwall” for Robert E. Howard and J.R.R. Tolkien. The Man From Cross Plains has dominated our recent blog activity, but never think we’ve forgotten Tollers. The Cimmerian will be giving the Loremaster of Middle-earth his due in the coming weeks and months. I stumbled upon a couple of news items relating to John Ronald Reuel yesterday. While both concerned revelations that are weeks old (at least), I hadn’t known about either of them and I assume that both articles would be news to many others.

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I was still in high school when I found a copy of “Magazine of Horror” #19, the January 1968 issue. I had read some of Howard’s poetry by then, but mostly as headers in the fiction, and a few from comics, and an old Arkham anthology I found in a library, Fire and Sleet and Candlelight.
I remember how shocked I was by the clear-cut suicidal statement it was.

Better the silence and the long black rest;
Better the grey grass growing through my brain —

and

Better the shot, the fall, the growing stain,
Then one long blindness, shot with crimson pain

Howard speaks of black agony, iron thorns and womwood, gall and vemon, coming years that are long and gloomy black, and finishes with the thought “Even such brains as mine may crash to dust.”
The entire poem can be found on pages 412-3 of The Collected Poetry.

Later I would encounter other Howard poems in a similar light, like “The Tempter” in one of Dennis McHaney’s fanzines, and the two from Skull Face Omnibus, but none will ever succeed in shocking me as that first encounter with Howard’s death-wish expressions did. And to top it off, editor R.A.W.Lowndes used a spot illo from “Weird Tales” of Death on a horse riding a dusty trail to illustrate it. How spot on, as the British say.