By Robert H. Waugh

Back Cover Text

For more than three decades, Robert H. Waugh has been one of the most penetrating scholars of the work and thought of H. P. Lovecraft. His earlier volume, The Monster in the Mirror, contained a treasury of essays that displayed Waugh’s exhaustive knowledge of Lovecraft’s work and his skill in placing Lovecraft in a broader literary context. This second collection of essays cements Waugh’s reputation as a pioneering Lovecraft scholar. Among the contributions are studies of the influence of World War I on “The Rats in the Walls”; Lovecraft’s relationship to his two late colleagues, Robert Bloch and Fritz Leiber, as well as to such other writers as D. H. Lawrence, C. S. Lewis, J. R. R. Tolkien, and Eugene O’Neill; the influence of Roman literature and history on Lovecraft; and the sublimated eroticism of “The Thing on the Doorstep” and “Medusa’s Coil.” All in all, this volume displays the inexhaustible depths of Lovecraft’s writing and Robert H. Waugh’s deftness in probing its intricacies.

Contents

• Introduction
• Further Sorties
• The Blasted Heath in “The Colour out of Space”
• Lovecraft and Lawrence on the Hidden Gods
• “The Rats in the Walls,” The Rats in the Trenches
• The Hounds of Hell, the Hounds of Heaven, and the Hounds of Earth
• The Ecstacies of “The Thing on the Doorstep,” “Medusa’s Coil,” and Other Erotic Studies
• Free Range
• Bloch and Leiber: The Siblings at War with Lovecraft, the Compound Ghost
• The Weird Historical Novel: Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell, The Case of Charles Dexter Ward, and Other Historical Ventures
• “Hey, Yew, Why Don’t Ye Say Somethin’?” Lovecraft’s Dramatic Monologues
• The Surreal and the Organic Imaginations: Lewis, Tolkien, and Lovecraft
• “An Exquisitely Low and Infinitely Distant Musical Note”: German Romantic Opera and Lovecraft’s Aesthetic and Practice
• Filiations and Affinities
• Lovecraft, a Citizen of Rome
• Lovecraft Speaks French, in a Manner of Speaking
• Lovecraft and O’Neill: The New England Haunts
• In Swan Point Cemetery
• Works Cited
• Index

Bibliographic Information

A Monster of Voices: Speaking for H. P. Lovecraft. By Robert H. Waugh. New York, NY: Hippocampus Press; 2011 & 2021; ISBN 978-0-9844802-2-7 (softcover); 396 pages.

Purchasing This Book

This book may be purchased in softcover from Amazon.com or Barnes & Noble or directly from the publisher, Hippocampus Press.