“The Little Glass Bottle” by H.P. Lovecraft
The Hay Ride Paragraph
I have a dark secret: I haven’t actually read all of Howard Phillips Lovecraft’s works, even though my focus is on his content. I want to change that, and if you’re in the same boat as me, you’re in the right place.
I know that these long preambles are usually found on recipe blogs (often about how a hay ride inspired an apple cider donut recipe,) not a weird librarian’s sideblog, but you must forgive me. It’s what Lovecraft would want.
I’m a big advocate for reading the works of an author in the order they were released. It’s why I overwhelmingly recommend people watch “Key and Peele” in its entirety, from start to finish, season one episode one onwards. That way, folks can understand how Jordan Peele grew as a horror auteur and see how themes he explored in that show were further fleshed out in his future works.
So, that’s how I decided I’d read through Lovecraft: in chronological order.
I’m making video recordings of my readings for a few reasons:
External growth as a content creator because I’m still a really small creator, nearly a year since debuting, which is on me. I don’t release consistent content and my content is very much ‘variety content’
I have a very bad habit of speed reading and skimming content. Reading the works aloud forces me to make sure I do not skip anything! Plus, I don’t know how to edit videos, so I have to do everything right in a single take. If I mess up a word or stumble, I have to restart the reading. Oh no — a second (or third…or fifteenth…) chance to read a work! How dreadful!
To log my progress in reading through Lovecraft’s works
I am utilizing Donovan K. Louck’s Lovecraft website for this. I am utilizing both his chronological ordering of Lovecraft’s works as well as the text he gives: Lovecraft's Fiction - Chronological Order
The Story
Lovecraft’s possible first story, “The Noble Eavesdropper,” is currently lost media. With a potential writing date of 1897, Lovecraft would’ve been seven when he wrote the story. His second story, “The Little Glass Bottle,” is dated to the same year.
“The Little Glass Bottle” shows how Lovecraft's work really can trace some of its roots to the adventure, mystery, and pulp genres. It features a treasure hunt at sea, the exotic (to Lovecraft) Southern Hemisphere, and, surprisingly for Lovecraft (but not for a boy his age): a prank. We continue to see this fascination with the Southern Hemisphere and Pacific Islands in other works by Lovecraft. Unlike other works by Lovecraft, it’s extremely short, to the point, and not very purple in its prose — perhaps due to his age.
One fun fact: I wasn’t sure what I should say in my reading when it came to the dollar amount listed in the story. The dollar amount listed in the text is “$25.0.00” — twenty five, dot, zero, dot, two zeroes. This text actually appears in the original manuscript.
Ironic the Lovecraft was only accepted to Brown posthumously (original take of the day)(not)
Lovecraft is consistent with this numbering in the story. I don’t know if this is supposed to be $25, $250, $2,500, or $25,000, so I went with $25 in my reading.
I think Lovecraft’s little map is just adorable too. So darling. I should’ve used this for the thumbnail. It’s brown, just like the paper in the story. Did the paper age and become brown over time? Was it brown to begin with? Truly, a mystery lost to the ages.
I am very impressed that he could (almost) spell Australia. Maybe Aust-rail-ia is a place with lots of trains…
