Lovecraftian Thing A Day No.52: The Novel Of the Black Seal

This paperback edition of Machen was the first collection of his work that I owned - although not the first of his fiction that I read: that honour goes to the 1895 edition of The Great God Pan whose cover was illustrated by Aubrey Beardsley (and a work of fiction which I consider to be one of the earliest examples of cosmic horror). I discovered this in the special collections of Leeds University Library in 1987; this meant I was unable to borrow the book and instead had to read it whilst locked in the special collections' dedicated reading room. The reasons for this, I would like to presume, were on account of the shocking and unspeakable nature of the volume's contents...all in all, fairly typical of the kind of Lovecraftian fare that has increasingly come to constitute my daily life.