About the Timelines
Methods
To begin construction of the timeline, I identified two of Lovecraft’s texts, “The Call of Cthulhu” and “The Temple,” and followed their publication history via their bibliographical information. “Call of Cthulhu” was chosen due to the pop-cultural penetration of Cthulhu, one of Lovecraft’s mythical god like aliens, while “The Temple” was chosen due to the recent U.S. release of a Japanese comic adaption of the original short story. In order to compile the bibliographic information, I consulted two main sources: WorldCat.org, and H.P. Lovecraft: A Comprehensive Bibliography, compiled by Lovecraft scholar, S.T. Joshi. The information gleaned from WorldCat provided the starting base for each text, while Joshi’s Bibliography was used to fill in any blanks and clarify any missing information from the original list. In a few instances I was forced to draw upon other online sources to clarify or flesh out certain bibliographical entries, these sites included Amazon, Good Reads, and HPLovecraft.Com (a site maintained in association with S.T. Joshi). The combination of information from these various sources allowed me to create what should be a comprehensive history of each story’s publication history, though it is important to note that certain parameters were followed so that not every single instance of publication is included.
I focused solely on the physical publication history of each text. Given that many of his works—if not all of them—are currently in the public domain, it seems prudent to avoid the dozens of digital collections which include the stories, lest the amount of information becomes too large for me to track and catalogue given the scope of this project. If the project were to continue and grow beyond its current incarnation, digital editions of his work would make for an easy fit, with little to no re-working necessary for the current information.
I further omitted any comic book adaption or role playing game books and supplements. This was primarily due to the large number of false positives that were resulting from the various Call of Cthulhu game books, while the comics were removed to keep the emphasis on the publication of Lovecraft’s original prose itself—though, much like the digital editions of Lovecraft’s work, a future expansion with the addition of graphic novel/comic book adaptions would help expand upon the scope of his influence in the international pop-cultural mileu.
One type of work which was included, however, are anthologies. Lovecraft’s penchant for short stories means that many of his works have been published in various non-Lovecraft centric collections. As the purpose of the timeline is to track the publication of the individual stories, the inclusion of these various anthologies represent an important venue for the spread and dissemination of the texts.
Data
The data which formed the basis for the finalized timelines may be found here.