This book is not cheap, but if you are fan of Lovecraft, old books, and/or the occult, you should like it.

The idea is that the sect called Church of Starry Wisdom, mentioned in a Lovecraft story, when it went defunct, was going to sell all the books in its library. So an auction house, called Pent & Serenade, put together a rather dense auction catalog. The catalog, a true piece of Victorian Era/Gilded Age complexity, not only has descriptions of the physical items for sale, but little essays written by experts in the field on each book. That's the premise. Editor Nate Pedersen has got many Lovecraft specialists and occult scholars (S. T. Joshi and Donald Tyson, for instance) to write the little essays.

The books they write about include many familiar to readers of Lovecraft and related authors. It begins with The Dhol Chants and runs through things like The Book of Dyzan, Liber Ivonis, The Necronomicon, The Daemonolorum, The Book of Azathoth, and the like, ending with an outré manuscript letter from Lewis Carroll. The authors even manage to mention things readers might smile at, like Rennes-le-Château (p. 88). Some of the little essays are interesting, some like little short stories, though, fairly, some seem stilted and insignificant. The text is punctuated by six woodcut illustrations, each supposedly from six different historical books (though you can tell they are by one artist and faintly modern even as they try to ape old images). They are well-executed and interesting images, though (appropriately, I guess) a tad disturbing. What really sells the book, and makes it entertaining for the enthusiast, is the fonts, the typefaces, the layout, the footnotes, the archaisms. It looks very much like a late-1800s book and the authors and editors do their best to sound like 1800s scholars. It is wonderfully done.

There are a few errors here and there. Dates that don't match or make sense, et cetera. For instance, the description of The Nameless Tome mentions the "Tepenecz-Barish-Beckx MS" (p. 59), but this is what is now known as the Voynich Manuscript, which wasn't discovered until 1912 (the manuscript's associations with Tepenecz, Barish, and Beckx were not discovered until way later). However, this book, ostensibly from 1877 mentions a manuscript found in 1912! Another error, for instance, there was no "Treaty of Appomattox" (p. 168) that ended the American Civil War (anyone who calls the agreement between Grant and Lee at Appomattox Courthouse a "treaty" is quite mistaken).

Still, all-in-all, this an entertaining book if you are a fan of Lovecraft, Lovecraftian dusty old grimoires and tomes, and late-1800s books and bibliographies. ( )