By H. P. Lovecraft

Dustjacket Text

H. P. (Howard Phillips) Lovecraft (1890–1937) was a prolific American writer who specialized in tales in the gothic, horror, and science-fiction genres. He wrote his first story at the age of fourteen, and as a young man, he was a contributor to the pulp magazine Weird Tales. After a brief marriage and a stint living in New York City, Lovecraft returned to Providence, Rhode Island, where he lived most of his life and wrote some of his best works.

The commercial success of Lovecraft’s fiction and his subsequent literary fame came after his death, and has influenced some of today’s greatest writers and filmmakers, including Stephen King, Alan Moore, F. Paul Wilson, Guillermo del Toro, and Neil Gaiman.

According to Lovecraft, tales of supernatural horror connect with some primal emotions at the very core of human natuer: “The oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fear, and the oldest and strongest kind of fear is fear of the unknown.” This imbues the weird tale with inherent value as a literary form. Despite the authenticity and dignity of the weird tale, Lovecraft recognizes that the “appeal of the spectrally macabre is generally narrow because it demands from the reader a certain degree of imagination and a capacity of detachment from everyday life. Relatively few are free enough from the spell of the daily routine to respond to rappings from outside.” Nevertheless, the weird tale will never fall completely out of favor with the reading public because fear of the unknown is genetically hard-wired into human nature. Even if the conscious mind were “purged of all sources of wonder,” the instinctual, genetic drives written into our nervous systems would still compel us to shiver with dread at the dark and shadowy mysteries at the heart of all weird tales. —From the introduction by Eric Carl Link

Contents

• Introduction by Eric Carl Link
• The Beast in the Cave
• The Alchemist
• The Tomb
• Dagon
• A Reminiscence of Dr. Samuel Johnson
• Polaris
• Beyond the Wall of Sleep
• Memory
• Old Bugs
• The Transition of Juan Romero
• The White Ship
• The Street
• The Doom That Came to Sarnath
• The Statement of Randolph Carter
• The Terrible Old Man
• The Cats of Ulthar
• The Tree
• Celephaïs
• The Picture in the House
• The Temple
• Facts Concerning the Late Arthur Jermyn and His Family
• From Beyond
• Nyarlathotep
• The Quest of Iranon
• The Music of Erich Zann
• Ex Oblivione
• Sweet Ermengarde
• The Nameless City
• The Outsider
• The Moon-Bog
• The Other Gods
• Azathoth
• Herbert West—Reanimator
• Hypnos
• What the Moon Brings
• The Hound
• The Lurking Fear
• The Rats in the Walls
• The Unnamable
• The Festival
• Under the Pyramids
• The Shunned House
• The Horror at Red Hook
• He
• In the Vault
• Cool Air
• The Call of Cthulhu
• Pickman’s Model
• The Strange High House in the Mist
• The Silver Key
• The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath
• The Case of Charles Dexter Ward
• The Colour Out of Space
• The Descendant
• The Very Old Folk
• History of the Necronomicon
• The Dunwich Horror
• Ibid
• The Whisperer in Darkness
• At the Mountains of Madness
• The Shadow over Innsmouth
• The Dreams in the Witch House
• Through the Gates of the Silver Key
• The Thing on the Doorstep
• The Evil Clergyman
• The Book
• The Shadow out of Time
• The Haunter of the Dark
• The Life and Times of H. P. Lovecraft
• Further Reading

Bibliographic Information

The Complete Fiction of H. P. Lovecraft. By H. P. Lovecraft. New York, NY: Chartwell Books; 2016; ISBN 978-0-78583-420-5; 1120 pages; hardcover.

Purchasing This Book

This book may be purchased in hardcover from Amazon.com or Barnes & Noble or directly from the publisher, Chartwell Books.