By H.P. Lovecraft
With Texts Edited by S.T. Joshi
And
an Introduction by August Derleth
Dust Jacket Text
FOLLOWING S.T. Joshi’s
acclaimed three-volume critical edition of the Lovecraft fiction, this
final supplementary collection includes all known revisions and collaborations
undertaken by Lovecraft on behalf of his friends and clients. As with
previous volumes in this series, the texts preserved herein scrupulously
follow archival manuscripts, typescripts, or original publications, and
constitute the definitive edition of these stories.
Since Lovecraft’s customary procedure as a revisionist was to
discard his client’s draft and entirely rewrite the story in his own
words, much of the fiction in this collection represents original work by
Lovecraft, including such notable contributions to the Cthulhu Mythos as
“The Electric Executioner,” “Out of the Aeons,” and “The Diary of Alonzo
Typer.” Supreme among the revisions in this volume is the brilliant
nouvelle “The Mound,” which embodies Lovecraft’s satirical commentary on
the Machine Age “decadence” of his era and which receives its first
unabridged publication in the present edition.
In the whole range of fantastic literature, Lovecraft created
a new form that is neither pure fancy nor pure science fiction. He
combined a factual and accurate scientific knowledge with its extension to
the absolute limit in supernatural bizarrerie. His work defies
classification, for it is as much myth as reality—both lore and legend at
their haunting, haunted best, and at the same time science at its most
provocative. His tales have been termed the finest weird fantasy ever
written, and yet also the most superbly literate science fiction.
Lovecraft’s work has achieved an honored eminence among the great
visionary fiction of the ages precisely because, while betraying no trace
of the commonplace, his stories are based convincingly in the world of
everyday reality, yet lure the mind into the farthest reaches of the
imagination, the star-flung spaces of the universe, the cosmic realm of a
master mythmaker.
Contents
Bibliographic Information
The Horror in the Museum and Other Revisions. By H.P. Lovecraft, With Texts Edited by
S.T. Joshi, and an Introduction by August Derleth. Sauk City, WI: Arkham House Publishers, Inc.;
1989; ISBN 0-87054-040-8; Hardcover.
Purchasing This Book
This book may be purchased in hardcover from Amazon.com or Barnes & Noble or directly from the publisher, Arkham House.