Earlier today I was doing some research for a talk that Phil Hine and myself are giving on Lovecraftian occultures (for the London Fortean Society, in March) when I uncovered this: an old catalogue listing current stock produced by Kadath Press (based in Keighly, North Yorkshire) sometime in the late 1980s or early 1990s. I can't quite remember where this came from, other than I picked it up whilst living in Leeds. I suspect it might have been tucked away inside a copy of Chaos International. In any case, the catalogue highlights the intersection between Lovecraftian fiction and occultism in the late-1980s: the first half of the catalogue lists Arkham House titles, along with other horror small press books and various Lovecraftian zines (Crypt of Cthulhu, Lovecraft Studies, Dagon, etc.); the second half is filled with Crowley rarities, Kenneth Grant books, and Lovecraftian occult titles by Peter Smith and the EOD. In addition to which, the cover is by Brian Ward (illustrator of Peter J. Carroll's Liber Null & Psychonaut), who I had the opportunity to meet (not long, it seems, before his mysterious disappearance - but therein lies a tale for another time...). Kadath Press was run by Mick Lyons who, I understand, was part of the Chaos occultural scene in the North of England in the '80s and 90s.
I have to say, though, that this makes me rather nostalgic for a simpler time before the internet, when, for an early-career collector of Lovecraftian fiction like myself, colourful little booklets like this (written on a typewriter, photocopied and stapled by hand) offered to unlock whole new worlds of strange possibilities...
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