Product Description
This is the collection that true fans of horror fiction have been waiting for: sixteen of H.P. Lovecraft's most horrifying visions, including Lovecraft's masterpiece, THE SHADOW OUT OF TIME--the shocking revelation of the mysterious forces that hold all mankind in their fearsome grip.
"I think it is beyond doubt that H.P. Lovecraft has yet to be surpassed as the Twentieth Century's greatest practitioner of the classic horror tale."
Stephen King
Amazon.com Review
Lovecraft is "the American writer of the twentieth centurymost frequently compared with Poe, in the qualityof his art ... [and] its thematic preoccupations (the obsessivedepiction of psychic disintegration in the face of cosmic horror),"writes Joyce CarolOates in the New York Review of Books. Del Rey hasreprinted Lovecraft's stories in three handsome paperbacks. Thisfirst volume collects 16 classic tales, including "The Rats in theWalls," "The Call of Cthulhu," "The Dunwich Horror," and "The ColourOut of Space." Introduction by Robert Bloch. Wraparound cover art byMichael Whelan. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (149)

Best Lovecraft Collection I Have Seen to Date
In this one book there are 16 Lovecraft Stories. At least three of them are classics widely quoted and referred to by Lovecraft fans. In this tome you get "the Call of Cthulhu", "The Dunwich Horror", "the Shadow Over Innsmouth" plus 13 others. The three I name are easily worth the cover price alone. The rest are just icing.

If you are a fan of Lovecraft and do not own these stories, then this is the book to you. If you are interested in Lovecraft, and just want to test the waters, this is also the book for you.

Stories are from 7 to 50 pages long. Most clock in at around 30 pages. They are culled from the pages of various magazines they were originally published in. This is an excellent collection for the initiate.

throwback
I had always wanted to read Lovecraft and this book was a good place to start

Only Good By Itself
If you're a complete newbie to Lovecraft and are just looking for one book to give you a taste of his style, then this book is OK. It has a good amount of his straight-forward horror stuff, it touches on the Cthulhu mythos, and it even dabbles in the Dream Cycle with one or two stories (which is completely different from his other stuff).
As it stands by itself, it's not so bad. But with an author as prolific Lovecraft, you can't avoid comparing it to all the other collections. Now, I'm not going to do that because I haven't read a lot of the other collections. But what I will do is compare it to a companion book which was released by the same publisher. Del Ray released this book as the first installment of a 3-part series (the other 2 books are "The Dream Cycle of HP Lovecraft: Dreams of Terror & Death", and "The Transition of HP Lovecraft: The Road to Madness").
I guess they wanted to span Lovecraft's career over the course of three books, which is an AWESOME idea. This one, according to its title, can be expected to contain the straight-forward horror stories. If it wasn't part of a series, then I could understand why they might include some Dream Cycle material and some Chthulu material etc., so the reader gets a taste of everything. But if Del Ray made these books as part of a series, THEN WHY DO THEY SHARE THE SAME STORIES!?!?!
This book contains 3 stories which also appear in the Dream Cycle book (the second one in the series). WHY? WHY WHY WHY?

"Pickman's Model", "The Silver Key", and "The Dreams in the Witch House" all appear in the Dream Cycle book. It's bad enough that they included the same stories in both books, but what's even worse is that "Pickman's Model" and "Dreams in the Witch House" have NOTHING to do with the dream cycle!
I can understand if they wanted to put the Witch House story in there because it deals heavily with dreams, but it doesn't involve the same subject matter as the Dream Cycle proper (ie, Celaphais, Kled and other recurring dream cities, Randolph Carter, etc). It just involves a character plagued by weird nightmares. But whatever, that's forgivable IF it wasn't already in this first book.
But "Pickman's Model" just blew me away. It has nothing to do with dreams whatsoever. It's a pure straight-forward horror/suspense story. So when they were putting the Dream Cycle book together, how did they overlook this? The Del Ray people said "Well, Pickman's Model has nothing to do with dreams PLUS we already put it in the first book in this series, but what the hell? Throw it in there anyway!"

I'm sorry for the little rant there. I didn't mean to stray off topic, I wasn't even talking about this book. What really got me upset with Del Ray are the mistakes in the NEXT book, the Dream Cycle book.....
I bought both books at the same time, not realizing they made this mistake, and it really made me feel...cheated.

But like I said, if you just want ONE book to give you a taste for Lovecraft's work, then go for it. It's not a bad collection and, ignoring the above-mentioned problem, I really enjoyed it.

True Mastery....
When I studied American Literature in college, never once did I come across the name of HP and that is a shame. The first I heard of HP was a television slightly based on his stories and he wasn't the author but he was a character (as himself) in the show. I love short stories and I was exposed to E. A. Poe early on but once I discovered HP Lovecraft it as like finding a treasure.
This is a great first book as an introductory to Lovecraft works. You definitely get the feeling that Lovecraft tapped into other worlds, dimensions and realms. You are drawn in from the very first story, The Rats in the Wall, through the Call of the Cthulhu to the last The Shadow Out of Time.
This collection is not for the fane of heart as the you can imagine, smell and feel everything in every word. H. P. Lovecraft is the reason we should beware of what goes bump in the night.

Critisizm of the review below: this is actually a 5.
H.P. Lovecraft is actually one of the best writers in American Lit.He is the father of modern horror.Yes, there are some literary cop-outs, but to describe the things Lovecraft wished to describe in the 1920's and 1930's would have ment to be banned, condemned, and hung.These cop-outs are actually supplied with more detail then the reviewer below is crediting.His descriptions are usually psychological allusions facing America during those times.

However, if you will notice for a reviewer to give such harsh critisism he or she seems to be illiterate. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (51)

Great Book great edition
This is an absolutely wonderful edition. Lovecraft is probably the best horror writer there ever was and this is a wonderful edition. Great font and color. Built in bookmark and easy to read hard cover edition.

Included of coarsethefamous Call of Cthulhufrom Weird Tales, 1928.

Why No Second Collection of HPL's Works?
It strikes me as very odd that The Library of America has no plans to publish a second volume of H. P. Lovecraft's Works.This first volume was one of their best-selling books, and it got lots of attention.S. T. Joshi could assemble for LoA such an amazing second collection, with the rest of the tales, some of the best revisions (such as "The Mound" and perhaps "Out of the Aeons"), and with the best of the weird poetry.Also included could be the most important or personal of the essays, and a selection of letters.

The selection for this first volume is excellent.It almost did not include "The Outsider," but the publisher sent the list of Contents to S. T. Joshi and he insisted that "The Outsider" should most definitely be included.I'm happy that Peter Straub was chosen to edit this, or that he approach'd The Library of America with the idea for this collection.Peter is himself one of the genre's very gifted writers, and his two-volume AMERICAN FANTASTIC TALES from The Library of America is fabulous.

The Best Compilation of Lovecraft to Date
Short Version:
If you want a book full of Lovecraft, buy this one

Long Version:
While one could argue quite successfully that H.P. Lovecraft wasn't an exceptional writer. However, his style is unique in inspiring a unique fear, the insurmountable cosmic evil of his major works (especially the Cthulhu mythos) have a strange way of making one feel helplessly insignificant, and yet actively engaged. This collection contains all the great gems of his career, some reviewers have noted that there are a number of sub standard stories here. Well, there simply aren't 800 pages of top notch Lovecraft work out there, and the editor decided to fill in the rest of the space with a bit of fluff, but rest assured, the truly essential pieces are all present.

A minor note on the book itself, high quality binding and a smooth paper stock(a quality of all Library of America publications I have read) make this book quite pleasant to handle as opposed to some other Lovecraft compilations on the market (specifically, Necronomicon: The Best Weird Tales of H. P. Lovecraft (Gollancz SF) is printed on funny smelling paper). It seems like a tiny nit to pick but it can greatly impact the experience of reading.

Definitive? Almost.
At this point, saying anything about Lovecraft's writing itself is somewhat redundant, as many others more qualified than me have chimed in.
Regardless, I will say: Lovecraft is excellent. His writing itself is turgid and difficult, but his ideas are wonderful and quite unlike any other horror author out there (in my opinion he surpassed Poe). I have found Lovecraft is an author to knock back quickly, then let the ideas simmer in your subconscious, then return to later. I first read Lovecraft when I was 17. I enjoyed a few of his stories, true, but overall I wouldn't even have called myself a Lovecraft fan.

Months later, as I endeavored to write horror stories of my own, I found Lovecraft's themes (man powerless against larger beings, etc) heavily present. Lovecraft's ideas had settled into my subconscious, and I have never been the same since.

This particular collection is quite lovely. The pages are thin, but pleasant to the touch, and the sturdy binding makes this a durable volume as well as one still comfortable to hold.
One minor gripe, and the reason I didn't give it five stars: one of Lovecraft's outstanding novellas "The Dream Quest of Unknown Kadath", a excellent foray in his very unique "dream world", is absent from this book. That surprises me greatly, as I expected to see it hear, along with his two other novels.
This is still a great collection to own and a fantastic place to start if you are new to Lovecraft's weird fiction.

Cthulhu Fhtagn!
While this collection is by no means perfect, it is the second best out there*. I'm not gonna go into detail about Lovecraft, plenty of reviews have done that, but I'll just say everyone I've tried to get into Lovecraft, even if it took some time, grew to like him, or at the very least appreciate him. While I won't tell you to go straight out and buy this book, at least rent it from the library, or any of his books, and read a few stories and see what you think. People have complained about some of the stories Peter Straub chose, but I like that he tried to show his different styles throughout his career.
*I recently discovered, to my surprise and delight, and Barnes and Noble hardback that contains Lovecraft's complete fiction. It's large, beautiful, thread bound, and the cover price is only $12.95. Unfortunately, I'm pretty sure you couldn't buy it from here, you'd have to get it from Barnes and Noble, but I feel to those Lovecraft fans who haven't discovered it, they should be told about it. ... Read more

Product Description
This title has fewer than 24 printed text pages. Garth and the Visitor is presented here in a high quality paperback edition. This popular classic work by Joseph Wesley is in the English language. If you enjoy the works of Joseph Wesley then we highly recommend this publication for your book collection. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (4)

Oy, Such A Mug!
It's difficult for me to get beyond the cover of this book -- I mean, GREAT YUGGOTH!!!Is that the fact of a horror author or what?!The eyes, of course, seem to have been tamper'd with -- they do not look natural -- but they do seem like eyes that have peer'd into ye Audient Void!I love this cover image so much that I had an enlarged print of it transferred onto a t-shirt, then I cut out the image and safety-pinned it to the back of one of my punk jackets.

I reproduce ye Entire "A Note on the Text":

"The material in this volume consists of extracts from a few essays by Lovecraft (texts of which are derived from existing manuscripts or early printed appearances) and extracts of many letters.The letters have been secured from two major sources: manuscripts (many of them at the John Hay Library of Brown University and the State Historical Society at Madison, and a few in private hands) and the so-called 'Arkham House transcripts.'The transcripts were prepared by Arkham House for use in editing Lovecraft's SELECTED LETTERS; in many cases the original manuscripts of these letters have not come to light, and in some cases the manuscripts are known to have been destroyed.We have made relatively few alterations in the manuscript letters, occasionally correcting an obvious slip of the pen and writing out Lovecraft's habitual ampersands.We have made more alterations in the transcripts, in cases where there is good reason to believe that the transcriber erred in reading Lovecraft's handwriting.
"Few letters are presented in their entirety.We have not placed ellipses at the beginning or end of letters except in cases where our editing has resulted in a sentence fragment; but we have placed ellipses (enclosed in brackets) where we have made cuts or abridgments within a given extract.All other ellipses are Lovecraft's.Occasionally he used more than the conventional three or four periods in an ellipsis, and we have retained this usage to preserve the style of the original documents.We have also preserved other idiosyncratic usages, such as British spelling variants, archaisms or slang, irregular punctuation, and the like.Headnotes preceding the letters help to identify their contents and supply other necessary information.
"As an epigraph to the volume we have included Lovecraft's 'biographical notice' from Edward J. O'Brien's BEST SHORT STORIES OF 1928.The notice, although unsigned, is clearly by Lovecraft, and encapsulates in a remarkably small space the essence of his life and beliefs.As an appendix we have included Lovecraft's most polished autobiographical essay, "Some Notes on a Nonentity," written in 1933.
"Names cited frequently in the text (chiefly Lovecraft's colleagues or writers who influenced him significantly) are identified in a glossary of names at the end of the volume.Other names, and other points in the text that require elucidation, are identified in the endnotes.We have not felt the need to overburden the text with notes and commentary, and we believe that most of the extracts are self-explanatory.
"Our list of 'Sources' identifies the sources for our texts of the letters.In every chapter, each extract is numbered at its beginning, and the numbers correspond to the sequence of letters (or other works) listed in the 'Sources.'We have appended a list of further reading, supplying information on important editions of works by Lovecraft and significant biographical and critical studies.The literature on Lovecraft has now become immense, and the present list cites only the most significant works."

Thus we see that this single edition presents a number of fascinating items, as well as being a source book leading the reader to many other books.It was reading the five SELECTED LETTERS volumes from Arkham House that really secured in me that passion for HPL that makes one a life-long Lovecraftian.Lovecraft's letters reveal aspects of the man that do not appear in his brilliant weird fiction.This wonderful book reveals Lovecraft as he shew'd himself to his friends and colleagues, and the revelation is very captivating.This is one great book.I had the pb edition, but I was happy to find the hardcover edition here at Amazon, and highly recommend ye hardback edition.

The Letters of H. P. Lovecraft.
_Lord of a Visible World:An Autobiography of Letters:H. P. Lovecraft_ (2000, Ohio University Press), edited by S. T. Joshi and David E. Schultz, consists of a selection of the letters of the author of weird fiction H. P. Lovecraft.H. P. Lovecraft (1890 - 1937) is perhaps most famous as an author of weird fiction tales; however, he was also a dedicated letter writer who devoted his energies to important topics in philosophy, science, religion, politics, history, fiction, and other issues.This book examines his letters in detail providing an outline of his life in the letters he wrote to colleagues, friends, and family.Lovecraft was involved extensively in the amateur journals of his day (their version of the internet) and this is how he became started as a writer.Lovecraft was an eccentric character born in Providence, RI.He was prone to nervous disorders and suffered a nervous breakdown in high school which caused him to be unable to attend Brown University.Nevertheless, it is clear from the issues he discussed and his knowledge for the time, that he was obviously a man of considerable genius.In terms of philosophy, Lovecraft was a strict materialist who believed in a cosmic indifferentism.His understanding of science led him to this position (although I disagree with it).Nevertheless, his tales dealt extensively with the supernatural and the occult.Lovecraft also adhered to a racialist view of society (which became more clear when he lived in New York) and believed in the superiority of the Anglo-Saxon Aryan race.This is reflected in the fact that Lovecraft came from an "old American' ancestry.Politically, Lovecraft moved from an ultra-conservative (though he supported Prohibition) to a proponent of FDR and a "fascistic socialism" (and for a brief time he supported Hitler).Lovecraft also was widely traveled and developed close friendships with various important writers of his time.

This book consists of the following chapters detailing his letter writing -

Childhood and Adolescence (1890 - 1914)-details letters pertaining to Lovecraft's ancestry, childhood and adolescent period, noting his relationship with his mother, his school activities, his interests in science and philosophy.Lovecraft also explains his early interest in the mythology of ancient Greece, Rome, and the Arabian Nights.

Amateur Journalism (1914 - 1921)- explains Lovecraft's involvement in amateur journalism at this time, his involvement in science researches, and his authorship of the journal _The Conservative_.Interestingly, Lovecraft wrote an early essay detailing his theory of how man would eventually travel to the moon which proved especially prescient.Lovecraft details his interests in philosophy (and his opposition to Christianity), Aryan supremacy, dreams, and his discovery of Lord Dunsany.

Expanding Horizons (1921 - 1924)- discusses Lovecraft's relationship with Sonia H. Greene (who was eventually to become his wife), his travels to Ohio and New York, and his further philosophical and literary development (including his reading of Nietzsche).

Marriage and Exile (1924 - 1926)- discusses Lovecraft's elopement and his "exile" to New York where he became obsessed with racialist notions after witnessing the sprawling city scene.Also discusses Lovecraft's job prospects, the "Kalem club", the Red Hook scene (which was to feature in a prominent story by Lovecraft), and his travels.

Homecoming (1926 - 1930)-discusses Lovecraft's homecoming to Rhode Island, the end of his marriage with Sonia, philosophical expressions concerning his "cosmic philosophy", his travels, his colleagues, and other issues.

The Old Gentleman (1931 - 1937)- discusses Lovecraft's travels, further developments of his philosophy, the role of literature, and his final days.

Some Notes on a Nonentity (1933) - a brief autobiographical essay of Lovecraft showing his early influences and how he became interested in weird fiction.

These letters provide an interesting detailed autobiography of Lovecraft's life.They discuss various issues surrounding his life as well as important philosophical reflections.Lovecraft was a fascinating figure and an eccentric individual who managed to write not only some of the best weird fiction but also some very interesting letters and philosophical reflections.

Excellent contribution!
If you don't have access to the 5-volume "Selected Letters" (published by Arkham House), this book is indispensible.Thiscollection of letters spans Lovecraft's adulthood and covers such diverse topics as writing, eighteenth century antiquities, philosophy, politics, racism, economics, cats, travel, and even the art of buying a cheap suit!

Veteran Lovecraft scholars will enjoy this work because of the editors' efforts at placing each selection of letters in its proper context.These little annotations assist the reader in gaining a better understanding of the author's need to communicate with kindred spirits (despite his avowed misanthropy), his attempts to battle his depression with satiric humor, and the sometimes extreme lengths undertaken to cope with the slide into poverty and near starvation.

Well researched and ably constructed, Joshi and Schultz's offering is a welcome addition.Highly recommended.

A Happy Concept!
Strange that it took so long for someone to think of this. Lovecraft was one of history's great letter-writers, and many of his letters contain autobiographical details, so why not gather those all together?Well, here they are, 343 pages of letters, Lovecraft's autobiographical sketch SOME NOTES ON A NONENTITY, and some explanatory notes.The letters don't really form a coherent autobiography, and someone who reads this book without having read Joshi's biography of Lovecraft first will probably not form a very clear idea of Lovecraft's life.

Most of the letters are new to me, even though I am familiar with the contents of the multi-volume Arkham House "Collected Letters."Virtually all the letters are a delight to read, since poor Lovecraft could find entertainment in even the most humdrum activities... consider the wild Arabian Nights bazaar-haggling fantasy he inserts into the account of hissearch for a good, cheap suit, after a thief made away with almost everything he owned in the way of wearables.

The text has one annoying defect; the letters are usually not introduced by telling us who they were written to, and one must repeatedly turn to a couple of pages marked "sources" for this vital info.Lovecraft's tone and style, and openness or reticence, varied greatly with correspondent, and this is background info you have to have to appreciate a given letter.

Typographical errors are very few; I spotted only about four, all probably transcription errors in copying from Lovecraft's microscopically hand-written originals.

Like the majority of university press books I have seen over the past 40 long-suffering years, this one suffers from what Lovecraft himself might call "preternaturally odious" design.The cover consists of a fuzzy snapshot of Lovecraft superimposed on a collage of details from old engravings,and each major section is defaced by a grey blob that is probably imagined, by someone with no sense of design, to be decorative.Chapter headings seem to have been affected by word-processing runaway, so that for instance the index is headed "Marriage and Exile, Clinton Street and Red Hook"!

Let's just say I loved every word of it.After you read it, this should go right on the shelf with your worn, much-read volumes of Lovecraft fiction, and you'll find yourself dipping into it at random, at odd times. What a man! Recommended! ... Read more

Product Description

Customer Reviews (26)

excalent reading
I purchased this book for my son. he was so excited I found it. After reading it he said it was worth the wait.

The Volume Out of Space
Mr. Lovecraft is one of my favorite authors and this collection is a worthy tome. My most beloved tales of incomprehensible horrors lie within these pages, accompanied by fitting illustrations and the best Lovecraft book cover to date.

No Words To Describe This
LOVE LOVE LOVE Lovecraft. This book has 36 stories altogether. I enjoy The Thing on the Doorstep the most, and that was the reason why I bought this book, because I couldnt find this story anywhere else, except in the PB books, that were $15 for only 5 stories. I own quite an extensive, collection of Lovecraft stories.....and plan on getting a few more books that has his stories in it, along with various other authors of horror short stories genre.
I highly recommend The Horror in the Museum by HP Lovecraft and Others, Tales of HP Lovecraft:selected and edited by Joyce Carol Oates, The Dream Cycle of HP Lovecraft: Dreams of Terror and Death, and The Transition of HP Lovecraft: The Road to Madness.

Love the Craft of Lovecraft
This is a wonderful collection of stories by one of the masters.Even my favorite Stephen King pays homage to HP and credits him with inspiring him to do what he does and has succeeded in for the past 30+ years.

A Perfect Bedside Companion
I love the edition. Black with golden letters.
It's not too heavy: just 880 pages, well woven.
I don't understand why people thought it was the COMPLETE edition. It says cleary: the BEST weird tales of H.P. Lovecraft.
So, except for the illustrations, I found them to be weird, yes, and appropriate for the book. The Frontispice is fine and mysterious. I like illustrations and find these of a high sensitivity to the contents.
I don't have to critique the stories, they are among the best of Lovecraft and his particular brand of occult and horror.
If someone can tell me, how Gollancz numbers its first editions, I'll be grateful. My British Import actually says (cased-meaning what?
slip cased? I have not seen any so far) and the number under ISBN is
9-8. A second printing?
Usually 1-0 or 10-0 denotes a first printing.
Any one care of use their expertise and elucidate?
Thanks.Impute: Fall to Sin ... Read more

Customer Reviews (9)

Rare and Minor Writing by H. P. Lovecraft
I like the old Del Rey mass pb editions of Lovecraft, although they do not contain the Corrected Texts that S. T. Joshi edited for the newer Arkham House and Penguin Classics editions.The covers for the newer Ballentine Books editions are by the gifted artist Michael Whelan, and although some people don't like them much, I find them weird and effective with their muted shades touched, here and there, by diabolic crimson.The contents for THE TOMB are:
The Tomb
The Festival
Imprisoned with the Pharaohs
He
The Horror at Red Hook
The Strange High House in the Mist
In the Walls of Eryx
The Evil Clergyman
EARLYTALES
The Beast in the Cave
The Alchemist
Poetry and the Gods
The Street
The Transition of Juan Romero
FRAGMENTS
Azathoth
The Descendant
The Book
The Thing in the Moonlight

The last named title is no longer included in modern editions of Lovecraft's Works, as it is not a tale written by Lovecraft, but rather a portion of a letter in which he relates a dream.A gentleman published it in his fanzine shortly after Lovecraft's death and adding his own beginning and end so as to try and make it a complete short story.Disregarded as it is by modern editors, "The Thing in the Moonlight" is evocative of that which we call "Lovecraftian horror," and this wee fragment has inspired many other horror writers with its imagery.Most recently, an entire novel by Edward Lee, TROLLEY NO. 1852 (Bloodletting Press 2009) was based on the fragment, a novel that is wild and kinky yet authentically and deliciously Lovecraftian in every way.Brian Lumley completed the fragment, and his version (first published in the Arkham Collector) has been recently reprinted in the Lovecraft issue of DARK DISCOVERIES.

"The Festival" has long been one of my favorite Lovecraft tales.It was never professionally published during his lifetime and only found its way into the pages of WEIRD TALES after Lovecraft's death, when readers began to clamor for more unpublished H. P. Lovecraft.The tale is set in mist-enshrouded Kingsport, the imaginary town of HPL's invention that I like best (I have written many of my own tales set in Kingsport).Kingsport was inspired by Marblehead, Massachusetts -- and it is cool to read the story and then visit that ancient seaport town and climb the burying ground that is described so eerily in this tale."The Strange High House inthe Mist" is also a tale of Kingsport (as is "The Terrible Old Man," not included in this book).

"The Evil Clergyman" was not written as a story during HPL's lifetime.As S. T. Joshi explains in his wee introduction to the tale in his Barnes & Noble edition of Lovecraft's fiction, "...this work is not a 'story' as such but an account of a dream, taken from a letter to Bernard Austin Dwyer.The date of the letter is not known, but it probably dates to the summer or fall of 1933; Lovecraft wrote to Clark Ashton Smith (October 22, 1933): 'Some months ago I had a dream of an evil clergyman in a garret full of forbidden books.'Lovecraft would probably have developed the idea beyond the relatively conventional supernaturalism here depicted.Dwyer submitted the story to WEIRD TALES shortly after Lovecraft's death, where it appeared in the April 1939 issue as 'The Wicked Clergyman'."The little story does pack a wonderful atmosphere of menace and mystery, and I am surprised that it has not influenced other writers as has "The Thing in the Moonlight."I shall be writing a longish weird tale inspir'd by it for one of my future books.

"He" is one of the tales that was inspired by Lovecraft's two years in New York.It is not oft commented on, perhaps because of its slightly racist nature.I have always enjoyed its sense of mystery and nightmare.Another New York story, "The Horror at Red Hook," is one of the most boring things that HPL ever wrote.Two of the tales herein are actually collaborations with other writers: "In the Walls of Eryx" is a science fiction tale written with Kenneth Sterling, and "Poetry and the Gods" was written with Anna Helen Crofts in 1920.Neither of these two tales is included in the Penguin Classics or Barnes & Noble editions of Lovecraft's works, and their appearance here makes this paperback a good source for really rare (and getting more rare) Lovecraft.

"The Book" is fascinating in that it is a retelling in prose of the three sonnets that open Lovecraft's sonnet cycle, "Fungi from Yuggoth."The first three poems of the cycle are connected in theme and story -- but then it seems Lovecraft grew weary of trying to tell an actual story in his sonnet cycle.The same lack of inspiration seems to have quelled his ability here, to write an actual short story inspired by his poems."Azathoth" is a fragment of what was purported by Lovecraft to have been planned as a novel, and I find it fascinating.There is a theory that Lovecraft wrote the novel eventually and called it THE DREAM-QUEST OF UNKNOWN KADATH.

None of the tales in this book overwhelm and impress as does the best fiction of H. P. Lovecraft, so this may not be the best book to begin with if you are reading HPL for the first time; but as an array of the kinds of fiction of which he was capable of writing, this is a solid and quite enjoyable edition.Highly recommended.

Not what I was expecting
For years the name "Lovecraft" conjured up images in my mind of wading through "Shakespeare's Unknown Works" Although I love horror, I had for some reason always assumed that his works would be a tedious and difficult read.Finally I decided that I really needed to commit myself to attempting to read some Lovecraft.When I read the first of the short stories in this book "The Tomb" I was thrilled to find that it wasn't difficult to read, it was simply beautiful, lyrical writing in a style that we cannot recapture today.His descriptions are bold, vibrant, and well crafted, but easily read.

I had also been under the assumption that all Lovecraft included things with tentacles... again I was wrong, here we had tale after tale of creepy, eerie, mysterious happenings often told through the first person, that are never fully comprehended by the teller of the tales.Possible Vampires, probable witches, maybe ghosts... you are never sure... is the man telling you the tale mad and recounting the horrors of their deranged minds or have they truly stumbled upon ancient horrors so profound that they defy description.

This book contains no gore, just a creepy vibe and a level of uncertainty that sticks with you after you close the book.Lovecraft is a master of the English language, wielding it as a sword and picking at your doubts.Opening scabs of uncertainty... are there terrible books and beings from "before the age of man" that would summon up the most unholy and terrifying of visions?

I am told that this is NOT one of the stronger collections that you could buy (I read it first because Amazon shipped it first).At the end there are fragments of unfinished tales, and some of his earlier work which make for an interesting read.If you don't read this book, pick up something by Lovecraft so that you can see the true power of the written word.It's beauty and it's ability to evoke emotion.

Real Horror for Real Lovers of the Occult Horror genre
Three words can describe this book: tongue in cheek.One of the best written works of horror fiction that any author can ever write about! Only Lovecraft fully knows the potential of using the occult in the work of fiction!This book is a must along with the other books that Ballantine has compiled for Lovecraft!It is also a must for those interested in using Lovecraft's fiction for their rituals, too!I suggest all Masonic Temple of Satan and Order of the Horned Goat members to read up on this.

Fascinating, but Lovecraft beginners should start elsewhere
In terms of readability or pure enjoyment, this title ranks low among the myriad Lovecraft titles.However, for the Lovecraft devotee, it offers enlightening insights into the author's writing.There is quite a hodge-podge of tales to be found in these pages."The Tomb" is a fairly standard horror piece, "Imprisoned With the Pharoahs" is a story ghost written for Harry Houdini which I count among Lovecraft's lesser tales, "In the Walls of Eryx" is a compelling, uniquely Lovecraftian science fiction story set on Venus."The Horror of Red Hook," while harkening to the types of unworldly themes Lovecraft came to be known for, is a somewhat dense story which I had unaccustomed trouble reading--largely, I feel, because it was written in the third person."The Festival," "He," and "The Strange High House in the Mist" concern ancient rites and hints of unearthly terrors while also hinting at the dream worlds that Lovecraft so often contemplated; not surprisingly, I find these stories to be the best ones in this collection.

The really interesting parts of this book consist of a number of early tales and fragments.There are four stories Lovecraft wrote during his teens, and it is almost incredible to see the distinctive Lovecraft voice and style so well developed at such an early age."Poetry and the Gods" and "The Street" are unusual and bear an ethereal air that did not find its way into his mature writings, while "The Beast in the Cave" and "The Alchemist" foreshadow the stories whose fame we now celebrate.The four story fragments are fascinating; though incomplete, they easily fit into a Lovecraftian world in that certain sometimes obscure references point to elements, characters, and themes developed more fully in other stories.One begins to see that all of Lovecraft's tales, Mythos and non-Mythos, share a mysterious thread or foundation.It is for this reason that I would not recommend reading this book without having read some of Lovecraft's better known stories.Certainly, those not yet fascinated by Lovecraft will reap small rewards from reading the fragments and early writings, and the other tales collected here are much less satisfying than those of the Cthulhu Mythos.

NOT LOVECRAFT'S BEST
I guess THE BEST OF H.P. LOVECRAFT spoiled me. When I got to this book, I found the stories not near as frightening or appealing. There are some fragments in this book, though, and the most important thing is that they ARE fragments. No pastiche authors here, thank you. Then there's a part of the book showing off some of HPL's earlier work. It's interesting to compare his earlier work with his later work, to see how he matured as a writer. By the way, did you know that HPL ghost-wrote a story for HARRY HOUDINI? I didn't either, until I read this book. I give this book 3 stars because I feel that only books that are TRULY OUTSTANDING deserve 4 or 5 stars. Only books that are absolutely terrible and have no merit deserve 1 or 2. So I give this book a conservative 3 stars. ... Read more

Product Description
Howard Phillips Lovecraft, has been hailed by literary critics as the inventor of modern horror, and a cultivating force behind such modern writers as Robert Bloch (Psycho), Wes Craven (The Craft, Nightmare on Elm Street, Scream), and Stephen King (Pet Semetary, Carrie, Children of the Corn), just to name a few. This Volume includes: The Lurking Fear; The Thing on the Doorstep; and Haunter of the Dark. Brought to life again by the incomparable Wayne June come horrors from the mind of the Master himself, in the way that only he can. Approx. 3.5 Hours ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

A Wonderful Audio Series
THE DARK WORLDS OF H. P. LOVECRAFT is a wonderful audio series from Audio Realms, and this fifth volume showcases three of Lovecraft's most popular tales."The Lurking Fear" was an early work of Lovecraft's that was written for a semi-commercial magazine.Although never considered one of Lovecraft's finest tales, it has many fine moments of horror."The Thing on the Doorstep" is one of Lovecraft's oddest stories, and it includes fascinating hints as to his inventive world that has become known as the Cthulhu Mythos -- for example, here we hear of a mystic woods and its pit of shoggoths, we learn of the curious students who roam the halls of Miskatonic University in Arkham, and we meet the doomed fantastic poet, Edward Derby, a character that seems to contain in his nature curious and twisted aspects of his creator's biography."The Haunter of the Dark," a story that was inspired by an earlier tale by Robert Bloch (and this story by HPL is dedicated to Bloch), has long been one of my favourites.It is one of the creepiest Gothic weird tales ever written, filled with fabulous moments of dark brooding horror.Fans of the Cthulhu Mythos have long pondered the exact nature of this "haunter of the dark," this avatar of Nyarlathotep.The story is set in Lovecraft's hometown of Providnece, Rhode Island, which is beautifully brought to life.

The one flaw of the series is that the readings seem to be taken from the early corrupted texts of Lovecraft's works, which have since been thoroughly re-edited and corrected by the magnificent scholar, S. T. Joshi.Per example, the final line of "The Haunter of the Dark" reads, in its corrected text, "I see it--coming here--hell-wind--titan blur--black wings--Yog-Sothoth save me--the three-lobed burning eye..."
In the uncorrected version, unable to read Lovecraft's handwriting, the person editing the text deciphered "titan blur" as "titan blue," and this incorrect version is what we hear on this recording, alas.

The entire series is superbly read by Wayne June.I am especially anxious to listen to Volume Seven, which will be a complete and unabridged reading of my all-time favourite work by H. P. Lovecraft, THE CASE OF CHARLES DEXTER WARD!!! ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

An important and excellent book
This small paperback book reprints the Arkham House hardcover edition of 1963, a book that now sells anywhere from $150 to over $400.The book being offered here, the Ballantine Books paperback reprint, has also been selling for large sums, and so the prices offered here are EXTREMELY reasonable.Of course, the text was at times poorly edited by August Derleth (and has been corrected in the magnificent edition of Lovecraft's Complete Poems, edited by S. T. Joshi for Night Shade Books), but this wee book has a special charm all its own in that it reprints the delightful illustrations by Frank Utpatel that were commissioned for the Arkham House edition.The previous reviewer has been extremely helpful in listing the contents of the book. It is a volume that any Lovecraft fan should have!I carried my copy during my one visit to Providence and had it with me when S. T. Joshi led a wee group of us to #10 Barnes Street, the house wherein Lovecraft lived when he wrote his "Fungi from Yuggoth" sonnet cycle.I love this book!Get it at these remarkable prices and you'll be very lucky indeed! ... Read more

Product Description
“H. P. Lovecraft has yet to be surpassed as the twentieth century’s greatest practitioner of the classic horror tale.”
–Stephen King

“Lovecraft’s fiction is one of the cornerstones of modern horror.”
–Clive Barker


Some tales in this collection were inspired by H. P. Lovecraft, others he revised, two he co-authored–but all bear the mark of the master of primordial terror.

The Horror in the Museum–Locked up for the night, a man will discover the difference between waxen grotesqueries and the real thing.

The Electric Executioner–Aboard a train, a traveler must match wits with a murderous madman.

The Trap–This mirror wants a great deal more than your reflection.

The Ghost-Eater–In an ancient woodland, the past comes to life with a bone-crunching vengeance.

AND TWENTY MORE STORIES OF UNSPEAKABLE EVIL ... Read more

Customer Reviews (13)

Ummm...Not Lovecraft.
Revision, elaboration, colaboration... call it what you want, it's just a way of cashing in on a great author's name for what amounts to a collection of extremely mediocre fiction, even with Lovecraft's undetermined amount of help. For compulsive collectors only (who I doubt will ever actually take it off the shelf and read it).

An Excellent Book, and Lovecraft DID Write it
The Del Rey trade paperback edition, with its wonderful introduction by Stephen Jones, reprints the Corrected Text edition published in hardcover by Arkham House.The other paperback editions probably reprint the corrupted text of the original hardcover, which was edited and in some cases distorted by August Derleth (he altered the ending of "Medusa's Coil" to conceal Lovecraft's original racist last line of the tale).

Here is S. T. Joshi's "A Note on the Texts," first published in his Corrected Text edition for Arkham House and included in the superb Del Rey trade pd edition:

In this corrected edition of H. P. Lovecraft's revisions and collaborations, we have attempted not merely to restore the texts but to arrange the tales in accordance with the presumed degree of Lovecraft's involvement with them.What we have called "primary" revisions are those that were wholly or almost wholly written by Lovecraft (although a plot-germ or occasionally an actual draft was supplied by the revision client); the "secondary" revisions are those in which Lovecraft merely touched up--albiet sometimes extensively--a preexisting draft.

The two collaborations with Winifred Virginia Jackson, "The Green Meadow" and "The Crawling Chaos," are interesting in that they are among the few works (the others are "Poetry and the Gods," "Through the Gates of the Silver Key," and "In the Walls of Eryx") where Lovecraft affixed his name along with that of his collaborator, even though here both were pseudonyms.Nevertheless, there is little evidence to suggest that Jackson contributed any prose to either tale.

For the two tales revised for Adolphe de Castro, "The Last Test" and "The Electric Executioner," we have de Castro's original versions: they were published in his collection IN THE CONFESSIONAL (1893), under the titles "A Sacrifice to Science" and "The Automatic Executioner."Lovecraft has rewritten both stories completely, preserving only the skeleton of each work.It should be noted that in Lovecraft's only reference to the first tale he calls it "Clarendon's Last Test"; it is not certain whether he or someone else made the change.Lovecraft also speaks in letters of a third story revised for Castro, but this has evidently been lost.

All three stories revised for Zelia Bishop--"The Curse of Yig," "The Mound," and "Medusa's Coil"--were, as Lovecraft notes, based on the scantiest of plot-germs and are accordingly close to original works by Lovecraft.The persistent rumor that Frank Belknap Long assisted in the writing of "The Mound" is false; Long, as Zelia Bishop's agent, merely abridged the story in a vain attempt to place it with a pulp magazine; after these efforts failed, the original version of the story as written by Lovecraft was restored, remaining in manuscript until Lovecraft's death.August Derleth then radically revised and abridged both "The Mound" and "Medusa's Coil" and marketed them to WEIRD TALES.This edition represents the first unadulterated publication of both works.

There is abundant evidence that Lovecraft wrote nearly the entirety of all five stories revised for Hazel Heald; Heald's contention that Lovecraft's role in "The Man of Stone" was somewhat less extensive than in the others does not seem to be borne out by the text.

For "The Diary of Alonzo Typer" we have both a draft by William Lumley (the title is his) and Lovecraft's rewriting.Again Lovecraft has preserved only the nucleus of the plot, and all the prose is his.Lumley's draft was first published (along with the original versions of the two Adolphe de Castro tales) in a special edition of CRYPT OF CTHULHU, ASHES AND OTHERS (1982).

Of the secondary revisions, Sonia H. Greene (Davis) reports that Lovecraft "revised and edited" "The Horror at Martin's Beach" (the title "The Invisible Monster" was supplied by WEIRD TALES), hence we can assume a preexisting draft.The other tale by Greene thought to be revised by Lovecraft, "Four O'Clock," was written, as Grenne tell sus, only at Lovecraft's suggestion and does not seem to bear any Lovecraftian prose or content; it has accordingly been omitted from this edition.

In recent years Lovecraft's revisory hand has been detected in a number of tales by his friends and colleagues, and five stories have been added to this edition.Kenneth W. Faig, Jr., first observed that Lovecraft in letters refers to four tales revised for C. M. Eddy, Jr.; all were probably based on existing drafts by Eddy, who wrote many tales in his own right."Ashes" appears to be the earliest of these stories, and Lovecraft's hand in it is probably very light.In the other three--"The Ghost-Eater," "The Loved Dead," and "Deaf, Dumb, and Blind"--the two authors probably contributed equally.

It is difficult to ascertain how much of Lovecraft remains in William Blanch Talman's "Two Black Bottles," as Lovecraft's letters suggest that Talman was annoyed at Lovecraft's extensive revisions in the story and may perhaps have reinstated his own prose in the final draft.

I discovered Lovecraft's role in Henry S. Whitehead's "The Trap"; in a letter to R. H. Barlow (25 February 1932) he reports writing the entire central section of the story.In letters Lovecraft refers to another story by Whitehead, "The Bruise," for which he supplied a synopsis; and although William Fulwiler, who brought this matter to our attention, believes that Lovecraft may have actually written the story (published as "Bothon" in WEST INDIA LIGHTS), I am not convinced that Lovecraft contributed any prose to this work.

Lovecraft's letters to Duane W. Rimel indicate that he was reading and reviewing many of Rimel's tales during the 1930s, and in two of them he seems to have had a hand.Scott Connors noted Lovecraft's involvement in "The Tree on the Hill," and Robert M. Price and I confirmed it.Rimel has stated that Lovecraft wrote the entire third section of the tale, as well as the citation from the mythical CHRONICLE OF NATH in the second section.Will Murray first suspected, on internal evidence, Lovecraft's role in "The Disinterment."Rimel maintains that Lovecraft's revisions in the story were very light, and letters by Lovecraft unearthed by Murray and myself appear to confirm that claim.

For R. H. Barlow's "'Till A' the Seas'" we have a typescript by Barlow (apparently a second draft) with exhaustive revisions by Lovecraft in pen.Dirk W. Mosig discovered Lovecraft's hand in Barlow's "The Night Ocean," as cited in a letter to Hyman Bradofsky (4 November 1936).Mosig believed the tale to be nearly entirely written by Lovecraft; but documents subsequently consulted by me suggest that he played a much smaller role in the genesis and writing of the tale.The work was probably largely Barlow's, although with heavy revisions and additions by Lovecraft at random points.

For a more detailed discussion of the degree of Lovecraft's involvement in these stories, see my article "Lovecraft's Revisions: How Much of Them Did He Write?" CRYPT OF CTHULHU 2, (Candlemas 1983): 3-14.

Our editorial practice for this disparate body of work must of necessity be cautious.Autograph manuscripts (or Lovecraft's autograph corrections) exist for only two tales in this volume--"'Till A' the Seas'" and "The Diary of Alonzo Typer."Typescripts exist only for "The Mound" and "Medusa's Coil," although both were prepared by Frank Belknap Long and contain several errors and incoherencies, the apparent result of Long's inability to read Lovecraft's handwriting.The texts for allother works must be based upon publications in amateur journals or pulp magazines.For the primary revisions we have reinstated Lovecraft's normal punctuational, stylistic, and syntactic usages, on the principle that nearly all the prose in these tales is his; for the secondary revisions we have only corrected obvious misprints or internal inconsistencies of usage in the original publications.

[Note from ye Reviewer:S. T. Joshi recently announced in his blog that he is working on a two-volume edition of this book, to be called THE ANNOTATED REVISIONS AND COLLABORATIONS OF H. P. LOVECRAFT.The book will be published by Bloodletting Press.]

great
The book was in excellent condition.This was very important to me, I hate books that falling apart, or look as if they have been dragged through the mud.The book was nice and clean, and I was very happy to have it.

Bait and Switch
It arrived in a box. The plain brown cardboard exterior of the oblong container gave little indication as to the contents within. The only visible evidence was a curved black arrow marking its origin as Amazon. Curiosity took hold of my hand and with one deft slash with the edge of a key I sliced through the tape binding the upper flaps. Pulling them apart like the doors of an ancient mausoleum I viewed within a smallish translucent pillow that held in place a curious object of modest dimensions. Withdrawing it from its secure placement I beheld a book inscribed in large bold letters the name H.P. Lovecraft.

Four times prior I delved into the darkness of Lovecraft and four times I left pleased with my investment but on this occasion a growing sense of dread crept over me as I turned page after page. `The Horror in the Museum' was different from those prior encounters. This was an unspeakable nightmare, a grotesque mockery. As I read the stilted dialogue and bland endings I could no longer fully contain my revulsion and uttered a gasp. What had Del Ray wrought upon Lovecraft fans? These twisted perversions of writing contained tales that ceaselessly and remorselessly disappointed. Stories that should have remained hidden beneath the sands of time, buried by their own mediocrity, now were unearthed in a naked attempt to capitalize on the money drawing power of Lovecraft. What blasphemy to apply the name of the great writer to this collection of lackluster tales.

The days have grown cold and the nights long. The ancient names haunt my dreams, Hazel... Zealia... Berkeley... Castro. My quest for knowledge has cost me much. Hours of my time and $11.53 but in the end I learned but one painful lesson. These stories were not written by H.P. Lovecraft.

A Must for Fans
Having read and enjoyed most of Lovecraft's other works, I picked up this book for a diversion - curious to see how the collaborations worked out. I was unprepared for the fantastic quality of some of the stories, which in my opinion rank with his best work. My two personal favorites include "The Last Test" and "The Mound." Those two stories are worth the price alone. Not all of the stories, of course, are equally successful, and Lovecraft's level of involvement varied. One thing that remained clear, however, was that Lovecraft was ahead of his time, and no modern horror/weird fantasy writer has yet to catch up. ... Read more

Product Description
"The Ancient Track" collects, for the first time, the complete poetry of H. P. Lovecraft. This massive undertaking was completed by renowned Lovecraft Scholar S. T. Joshi, and features an extensive index of both titles and first lines. This collection will appeal to both the casual fan of Lovecraft, as well as the committed Lovecraft collector. This volume will be made available in an affordable trade paperback edition as well as a Library quality hardcover edition catering to each category of fan. This is the definitive collection of poetry by one of the 20th century's most popular, yet enigmatic writers. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (6)

An Enchanting World of Posey
This is an amazing book, a wonderful tome.There is much in it that may be consider'd dull or boring, of course; but that is merely a matter of taste, and I love poetry in most of its manifestations.Even Lovecraft's Juvenilia shews a boy who had an active brain and questing soul.Here is the very early poem, "On the Vanity of Human Ambition":

Apollo, chasing Daphne, gain's his prize
But lo! she turn'd to wood before his eyes.
More modern swains at golden prizes aim,
And ever strive some worldly thing to claim.
Yet 'tis the same as in Apollo's case,
For, once attain'd, the purest gold seems base.
All that men seek 's unworthy of the quest,
Yet seek they will, and never pause for rest.
True bliss, methinks, a man can only find
In virtuous life, & cultivated mind.

How fascinating, that poem, written by a boy who wou'd go on to live a life that one may call virtuous and cultivated. But it is section two of the book that thrills me, as an obsess'd fan of Lovecraftian horror.Lovecraft's supernatural poems have been published by themselves in various editions, and a new modern edition of just his horror poetry is something I would love to see.Many of these poems are so haunting, so beautiful and strange.He was an unusual man with a singular mind.Some of the lines are superbly macabre, such as these from the opening of "The Eidolon":

When flesh upon its earthly bed
Sprawls corpse-like and untenanted--
Vacant of soul, which freely flies
Thro' worlds unknown to waking eyes.
The horned moon above the spire
With ghastly grace was crawling high'r,
And in the pallid struggling beams
Grinn'd memories of ancient dreams.

Some poems found expression, later, as weird fiction, such as "The House," which in time was re-imagined as "The Shunned House."Some of the verse sounds very like Poe to me, and this would be natural, for a writer who so admired Poe's poetry and tales.An example is the opening of "The City":

It was golden and splendid,
The City of light;
A vision suspended
In deeps of the night;
A region of wonder and glory, whose temples were marble and white.

What can be more evocative than ye opening of "The Ancient Track"?

There was no hand to hold me back
That night I found the ancient track
Over the hill, and strained to see,
The fields that teased my memory.

And the sonnets are, for the most part, exquisite."Fungi from Yuggoth" is a work of which I never tire (and it may eventually be available in an annotated/illustrated edition!!!).The first three sonnets of the "Fungi" are fascinating in that they are interrelated and suggest that Lovecraft may have begun the cycle with the idea of having it tell a cohesive tale.This seems reinforced by that wee prose segment known as "The Book," which is a prose retelling of these first sonnets in the cycle.Some scholars have try'd to shew that "Fungi from Yuggoth" does indeed tell a story, has a consistent plot line -- but it doesn't.

The Fantasy and Horror poetry ends at page 83, and the book continues to page 469 with poetry and many additional pages of notes, &c.Poetry was a natural aesthetic expression of H. P. Lovecraft, in which he express'd his mind with fancy, opinion, and friendship.Many of the poems were found in letters to friends and not in any way intended for publication; but how wonderful that this magnificent and never-tiring editor, S. T. Joshi, has found them all -- or most of them, and given us this work in a superbly edited edition.It's a great book.

When they say complete, they mean it.
I would have preferred a volume of nothing but Lovecraft's ingenious and immersing works of fictional poetry, and I do not think I'll read all the way through this weighty tome... I actually bought it because it contains "Fungi From Yuggoth", a favorite of mine, and for that I shall enjoy it... until I find that same work in a different collection, at which time this one will be retired for sure.

Lovecraft - not a bad poet!
Having read and collected everything else that lovecraft has written, I decided that it was time to invest in this collected edition of his poetry. I had heard that I shouldnt expect too much, since his prose was a lot better than his poetry. That is still true, but i was quite surprised to find that his poetry is not bad at all. I have to admit, that i have never read or cared much for poetry, and mainly bought this collection to complete my library of lovecraftian books. But i really have enjoyed nearly all of the poems that i so far have read, even though only few of them are horrific and connects to his usual wriitings.

It should also be noted that the publisher Night Shade has done a fine job in producing this hardcover volume; good paper and printing and smythesewn binding that will let you read this book over and over again without the pages falling out. It is rare to see books of this kind nowadays! Buy it!!

IA!! Lovecraft master of the bizzare!!! Chutulu Ftagn!!
Absolutely amazing! I had no Idea Lovecraft had written so much poetry! 557 pages in length. Divided into 10 parts. juvenillia(poetry written as achild or just getting started in poetry),fantasy and horror(my favorite),occasional verse,satire,seasonal and topographical,amateur affairs,politics and society,personal,alfredo a tragedy( a play by lovecraft),and fragments. Very thorough. A must for the Lovecraft purist and collector.

For Better or Verse...
The three titans of WEIRD TALES, Clarke Ashton Smith, H. P. Lovecraft, and Robert E. Howard, all wrote verse but only Ashton Smith was taken seriously as a poet by the contemporary literary establishment.Howard's manly Kiplingesque verse was written largely for his own amusement, and HPL's was almost entirely confined to his days of activity in the Amateur Press movement (1914-22).

Most of HPL's verse is in an archaic, highly artifical late 18th Century or "Georgian" mode, which he had come to love from the books he found in his grandfather's library as a child.He sometimes writes in the manner of Poe, but almost always to parody.Actually, his most effective verse, like "Fungi from Yuggoth," is in the sonnet form--- a form he rarely used.Editor Joshi says this is "complete," and he means it, down to birthday card inscriptions and one or two line fragments found among HPL's papers.But this almost guarantees a low average of literary quality and interest.Most educated men in the early 19th Century composed verses on occasion.I have seen a photo of Einstein playing violin with a father and son on piano and violin.Einstein inscribed the photo (in German), "Here's to the father and his lad.Our music was--- not bad!"Imagine someone collecting all such Einsteinian greetings and publishing them as THE COMPLETE POETICAL WORKS OF EINSTEIN.Einstein would be horrified, and so should you be.Should we be equally horrified by this book, which is not so different?I think not, because HPL is an important literary figure, and after all some of the material collected herein is seriously intended--- but not much.

A lot of the verse consists of gentle kidding of friends in the AP movement, particularly HPL's teenage buddy Alfred Galpin.There is even a mock-Elizabethan blank verse play in which Galpin and other figures of the AP have prominent roles, including HPL himself. One of the most astonishing of these works is "Medusa: A Portrait," several pages of inventive vituperation aimed at a female enemy of HPL's.

Most readers will spend most of their time with HPL's "Fantasy and Horror" verse, which takes up about 60 pages of this mammoth 557-page time.Given the interest many rock musicians take in HPL it is surprising more of this material has not been set to music.A quick search of the Internet did reveal some posted MP3s of precisely such--- I didn't sample them but did notice the titles chosen were often the ones I'd also have chosen for that purpose.

This is a book to keep by the side of the bed and read a few pages in every time cats get you up to be let in or out, or a loud jalopy going by jolts you awake. I think that's about the only way to get through it. ... Read more

Product Description

When he died in 1937, destitute and emotionally as well as physically ruined, H. P. Lovecraft had no idea that he would one day be celebrated as the godfather of modern horror. A dark visionary, his work would influence an entire generation of writers, including Stephen King, Clive Barker, Neil Gaiman, and Anne Rice. Now, the most important tales of this distinctive American storyteller have been collected in a single volume by National Book Award-winning author Joyce Carol Oates.

Customer Reviews (13)

Get It For Ye Introduction
This is actually a good (not great) sampling of H. P. Lovecraft's weird tales, but the one reason to buy this edition is for the Joyce Carol Oates introduction, which was a review of S. T. Joshi's H. P. LOVECRAFT: A LIFE.The introduction explains aspects of Lovecraft biography, his history of publication, and the evocative power of Lovecraft's finest narratives.I was amused by her disdain for one of my favourite tales by Lovecraft, "Pickman's Model," which she dismisses as "trashy."The tales included are "The Outsider" (long thought to be semi-autobiographical in its emotions, but this is highly debatable), "The Music of Erich Zann" (a fabulous fable set in Paris, which evokes a supernatural/cosmic terror that I found extremely suggestive and chilling), "The Rats in the Walls," "The Shunned House," "The Call of Cthulhu" (possible his most influential tale), "The Colour Out of Space" (a classic that shews exactly the nature of what is a "Lovecraftian" story), "The Dunwich Horror," "At the Mountains of Madness," "The Shadow Over Innsmouth" and what has long been considered as Lovecraft's greatest masterpiece, "The Shadow Out of Time."I only wish that a book edited by so distinguished a person had had a cover worthy of her reputation -- the cover here is not so good.For me, the finest cover for a Lovecraft book is an image of H. P. Lovecraft himself -- he had such a remarkable face, and looks every inch the weird fantasist!

Losing interest
The stories are somewhat interesting and fairly unique.I am only halfway done with the book and have lost most of my interest though.Lovecraft doesn't seem to develope any of his characters at all and his writing formula is very apparent and strictly adhered to.This makes it a bit boring, but the premises of each story are interesting enough to carry the reader along.When comparing Lovecraft to his peer, R.E. Howard - I must say that Howard outshines Lovecraft in raw power, horrific, uniqueness of stories, interesting characters, and over all style.
I'd suggest this book only for people interested in researching the sci-fi genre, but it lacks much for entertainment for the educated reader.

Gothic Mythology
A big thank you to Joyce Carol Oates for compiling these wonderful stories.If you have never read H.P. Lovecraft before, this collection is a great introduction.

H.P. Lovecraft, once an obscure early twentieth century writer of science fiction, mythology, and horror works, is now the inspiration for all great modern horror and suspense writers (like Stephen King).

Often compared to Edgar Allen Poe, Lovecraft was a prolific writer who was largely unpublished until after his death.Highly intelligent, he developed his own mythology and created a series of stories surrounding these myths.He also explored, what could be called today, "genetic evil;" where people inherit a primitive evil that passes along the generational bloodline.

His stories run the gamut of horror and suspense in this collection.Oates seems to have arranged them as if to pick up steam.The next story is a little longer and more involved than the last.More exciting than scary, these stories do take a long to build up and then end as if in an explosion.These stories are not for everyone, but everyone should give them a try.

My personal favorites are: The Rats in the Walls, The Call of Cthulhu, The Outsider, and The Shunned House.

Best way to get into Lovecraft
If you're just getting into Lovecraft, this is, without a doubt, the best way to get started with your favorite old god, Cthulhu. It contains a perfect list of Lovecraft standards: The Outsider; The Music of Erich Zann; The Rats in the Walls; The Shunned House; The Call of Cthulhu; The Colour out of Space; The Dunwich Horror; At the Mountains of Madness; The Shadow over Innsmouth; and The Shadow Out of Time. You'll love every one, and crave more.

If you're torn between this and the Penguin editions, I'd recommend you start with this. The three Penguin volumes are complete, but each is a mixed bag of great stories with...not so great. Go for those after you read through this.

The Shadow over Lovecraft
On the front cover of this book there is a quote from Stephen King - `H.P.Lovecraft has yet to be surpassed as the twentieth century's greatest practitioner of the classic horror tale.' I had read other praise for HP Lovecraft before and could not wait to get started on my first collection of tales from what I expected was one of the greatest horror writers ever to grace the earth. As I read the introduction I was even more intrigued and also because of the tragic circumstances of his life even more predisposed to like him. However, as I started to read the first tale I found myself being slightly disappointed. His work did not seem original to me - this is probably a by product of Lovecraft himself being heavily influenced by Edgar Allen Poe and every modern horror writer being influenced by both Lovecraft and Poe. I read on hoping that each story would be a little bit better than the last and still was disappointed.

Most of his stories are written in the first person, most our written as eyewitness accounts of the strange events that they themselves - the writers - have witnessed. This does give the reader a sense of realism but at times I believe Lovecraft goes too far in describing these events. Every creature, every nightmare vision is described down to the most intricate of details leaving nothing to the reader's imagination. (Is it just me or should a pre-requisite for a horror writer not be to leave something to the imagination of the reader? As our imaginations can conjure up more enduring and sinister visions that a writer could not possible describe on paper.)

I feel I have been quite harsh towards Mr Lovecraft, although I do believe my criticisms are warranted, however, I am going to offer him some praise. The Call of Cthulhu gives life to the dreaded creature, Cthulhu a sleeping creature who sleeps the sleep of the dead in his nightmarish domain. He is the High Priest of the `Great Old Ones' a race of people that inhabited this earth before we humans evolved. We are warned in this story and in many of Lovecraft's other stories that `The Great Ones' will return and displace mankind forever. This story shows excellent promise and would have been the basis of a great novel had Lovecraft gained the respect of his peers during his lifetime maybe he would have delighted even me, a Lovecraft sceptic, with more tales of Cthulhu.
... Read more

Product Description
Chilling! Uncanny! Macabre! The wall that separates reality and nightmare comes fast undone in this, the complete, horrific chronicle of young H.P. Lovecraft! Is he a harmless writer of supernatural fiction - or a secret god of destruction and despair? This is one strange tale, indeed! ... Read more

Customer Reviews (3)

Good for Comic Fans, Not for Fans of Lovecraft
I felt, as something of a Lovecraft scholar, that this comic book was not at all true to Lovecraft's nature.While it cleverly captured several moments inspired by his stories, it was difficult for me to get past the image of a swashbuckling, pistol-wielding H.P.

Anyone who has read Lovecraft's letters, even casually, can get a sense of Lovecraft's nature and personality.It is easy to imagine him stooped, ever so slightly, over his work.I find it difficult to imagine this individual cavorting about like the characters in his stories.

Regardless, I still approached the comic with optimism, hoping that it would be a worthwhile distraction, if nothing else.I wasn't disappointed, at least as far as a distraction was concerned.

I found this comic somewhat hard to follow.I am fairly experienced with comics, and have read many graphic novels.These particular comics tend to jump around, leaving holes in the plot and fragmentary bits of dialogue.The artwork is, however, very nice.I was especially fond of the various cover art.

So, all in all, this isn't a bad comic to take up an afternoon of your time.I would have to say, though, that to truly appreciate this you need to be more of a fan of mainstream Lovecraft and comics than of Lovecraft himself.

Excellent comics about the origins of HPL's stories
Ever since I've been reading Lovecraftian fiction there have been authors who have used HPL as a character in their stories, often as someone who knew the awful truth and wrote it disguised as fiction to warn the world.I bet a complete listing of such stories would comprise quite a bibliography in its own right.For the life of me I cannot figure out the appeal; it spoils the world building.Whenever I see this plot device I am immediately predisposed to be annoyed (with the caveat that I have not read probably the most ambitious of the books, The Lovecraft Chronicles by Peter Cannon).Lately it has been an especially prominent trend in Lovecraftian comics.Howard Lovecraft and the Frozen Kingdom showed similar weird adventures for HPL as a child; for me it was not a success partly due to unattractive art.Lovecraft by Hans Rodionoff had good monsters and a good story but, again, I was not happy with the depictions of HPL.HPL even made an important appearance in Atomic Robo and the Shadow from Beyond Time.This last book was quite fun.

Maybe I've been beaten into submission but dang it, The Strange Adventures of HP Lovecraft is a hugely entertaining graphic novel.I was hooked beginning to end.These individual comics were originally released by Image Comics in 2008.I am very glad for the compilation as I completely missed them in the original run; it's pretty easy to miss an important Lovecraftian book or comic these days, what with the pace of publication and so many companies getting on the Cthulhu bandwagon.The creative team included story by Mac Carter, pencils and ink by Tony Salmons, colors by Adam Byrne and flats by Keaton Kohl.Mac Carter worked on the award winning documentary Spellbound and a movie about DC Comics; I am not aware of anything specifically Lovecraftian he has done otherwise.Thhis book lists for $16.99 but can be had at Amazon for a nicely discounted $12.23.Page count is a generous 184, and includes a cover gallery, always appreciated in a graphic novel.

Minor spoilers may follow so skip if it bothers you.......

After a prologue that details the fate of Abdul Alhazred in wonderfully gory fashion we skip ahead to the 1920s.HPL is living in Providence with his aunts, worrying about his mother in Butler Hospital and trying to overcome his writer's block.He pines fruitlessly away for a childhood flame, Sylvia St.Claire (this book is peopled with real figures from HPL's life and some who are entirely fictional).She works in the John Carter Brown LIbrary.As he rushes to a missed appointment with her, HPL passes a new display, an ancient tome just acquired by the university.The book seems to communicate with him.Nothing in Howard's life remains mundane after that.The walls of dream and reality begin to warp; the world becomes much more dangerous for those wh have been making life difficult for him.The police begin to suspect HPL in a series of grisly events and as his understanding grows, he desperately seeks a way to protect Sylvia.

I really liked this book.The story was tautly written with a propulsive plot, good dialogue and lively characters, including the bit parts.Tony Salmons made the story come alive on the page with excellnt action drawings.His otherly dimensional beings were quite good, particularly his shoggoths, but I giev special kudons to his drawings of HPL, his aunts and his mother.The ending was spot on excellent for this kind of story.I breathlessly finished it in an hour or so and then did a much more leisurely re-read, enjoying it more the second time.I can't imagine a fan of Lovecraft and comics would not enjoy The Strange Adventures of HP Lovecraft.I only hope the creative team will give us more stories, either further adventures of HPL, or maybe some straight up Cthulhu mythos books.

Awesome read
You like Lovecraft?

You like comics?

Great!

Go get it. ... Read more

Product Description
In 1929-30, H.P. Lovecraft made some lists of both literary and popular stories "having the greatest amount of truly cosmic horror and macabre convincingness." These lists of his favorite weird tales make for a truly landmark Lovecraftian anthology. We present Lovecraft's own favorites horror

stories, including some well-known classics, alongside of a number of excellent rare tales by forgotten authors. Many of these stories are classics, inspiring several generations since of the world's best horror authors. Contributors include Edgar Allan Poe, Ambrose Bierce, Arthur Machen, Robert W. Chambers, M. R. James, Algernon Blackwood, M. P. Shiel, A. Merritt, Walter de la Mare, Paul Suter, M. L. Humphreys, H.F. Arnold, Everil Worrell, Arthur J. Burks, and John Martin Leahy. This is the anthology of favorite weird tales that Lovecraft himself hoped to compile!

"To understand why Lovecraft regarded these stories as the touchstone for greatness in the literature of supernatural horror is to understand the significance of the genre itself.The classic works included in this collection, along with Lovecraft's own best tales, both justify and represent the essence of this form of human expression." – Thomas Ligotti ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

A Solid Collection Of Artful Horrors
The premise of H.P.LOVECRAFT'S FAVORITE WEIRD TALES is certainly interesting - take several stories that horror master Lovecraft regarded as his favorite pieces of weird short fiction, based on his correspondence, and compile tham together in one volume. If you think this would yield an enjoyable book, you'd be correct - there really isn't a bad story in the bunch (the closest thing to a clunker is M.P. Shiel's "The House Of Sounds", which struck me as merely bizarre for the sake of being bizarre), but I'll try to discuss what I thought was the crème de la crème as concisely as I can.

- "The Novel Of The Black Seal" by Arthur Machen: Machen was my great discovery in reading this collection. It's amazing to me that his work is seldom discussed anymore except amongst horror aficionados - like Lovecraft, Machen strikes me as a writer of brilliance who just happened to write horror fiction. "The Novel Of The Black Seal" has to be one of the eeriest stories I've ever read, centering around the notion that the legendary "little people" of the British Isles have been (to quote Machen) "called... 'fair' and 'good' precisely because [our ancestors] dreaded them, so they dressed them up in charming forms, knowing the truth to be the very reverse." If you enjoy stories like Lovecraft's "The Whisperer In Darkness", this one will likely knock you out of your chair.

- "The Yellow Sign" by Robert W. Chambers: In which we encounter an early use of what was to become a standard Lovecraftian trope: the Evil Grimoire. The last several paragraphs of this story are uniquely disturbing in a way that's difficult to describe - I found myself re-reading them several times, trying (unsuccessfully, I'm afraid) to pin down how Chambers got his effects. A really good one.

- "The White People" by Arthur Machen: I'm actually not that fond of hyperbole, but it seems to be hard to avoid in describing Machen's work; this might be the most accomplished English-language horror story I've ever read. I described it on my blog as "Ulysses (Penguin Modern Classics) meets Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (Unabridged Classics) in Hell", but that only begins to hint at the story's aura of unearthly dread. It's a shame that more critics and scholars aren't aware of this one.

- "The Floor Above" by M.L. Humphreys - a story of enormous subtley, originally published in the pulp magazine WEIRD TALES. I actually had to read this one a couple of times to figure out exactly what was going on.

Well, if you've read this far, you'll probably find this worth picking up, even if you already own a couple of the stories in other volumes. Lovecraft fans will, of course, find it particularly interesting, but I'd recommend it to anyone who'd like a demonstration of how horror fiction can refrain from explicit violence and be all the more effective because of it.

Superlative collection
This is an absolutely superlative collection -- important for its assemblage of some of the very best of the horror genre and also because it helps provide historical insight into the tastes of H.P. Lovecraft, serving as a reading guide for his classic SUPERNATURAL HORROR IN LITERATURE.It also helps that this has such nice readable type!--unlike many of the collections of similar material released in paperback.Doug Anderson continues providing excellent insight into the literature of the weird and the fantastic. ... Read more

Product Description
H. P. Lovecraft (1890-1937) is commonly regarded as the leading author of supernatural fiction in the 20th century. He has a tremendous popular following as well as a considerable and growing academic reputation as a writer of substance and significance. This exhaustive guide reveals many aspects of Lovecraft's life and work, codifying the detailed research conducted by many scholars over the past three decades. The volume draws upon rare documents, including thousands of unpublished letters, in presenting plot synopses, descriptions of characters, biographies of colleagues and family members, and entries on various topics and esoteric lore related to his works. Many of the entries include bibliographies, and the volume concludes with a list of works for further reading. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (7)

An Excellent Reference
Night had fallen, and I was bent over my keyboard, attempting to compose my new tale of Lovecraftian horror.Okay, I admit it -- I write fiction "in the tradition" of H. P. Lovecraft.Not a very honourable occupation to some, I guess.Why would anyone want to write stories that sound like those of another writer?I was sitting here, with Barbra Streisand playing in the background -- and I needed a reference; for I was basing my new story on Lovecraft's "Pickman's Model."I wanted to write a story that explained, in a misty suggestive manner, what happened just before the artist vanished.You've read Lovecraft's original tale, no doubt, about the weird cat who paints ghouls -- paints them with such finesse that they seem to be representations of things that actually breathed and moved through realms of necrophagous shadow.

I reached -- for The Book.

And I heard an eldritch wailing that sounded like the end of mortal time!What dripping eidolon of cacodaemonic ghastliness could make such spectral noise?Ah -- it was just the Streisand cd.I switched off the player and listened to hushed silence, reaching again for -- The Book.Its pale purple cover contained a ghostly image of The Master of Cosmic Horror -- he looked every inch a horror writer.It was he I wished to emulate in my own humble weird fiction -- it was his titan elbow beneath which I paid homage to his genius.

I turned to page 204 and read the middle passage:

"PICKMAN, RICHARD UPTON.In 'Pickman's Model,' a painter, of Salem ancestry, whose paintings of outre subjects are assumed to be the fruits of keen imagination, but are ultimately found to be from real life and from first-hand knowledge of forbidden subjects.He is compared to Gustav Dore, Sidney Sime, and Anthony Angarola.He disappears mysteriously, after emptying his pistol at an unseen monster lurking in the basement of his studio in the North End of Boston during a visit by the narrator of the story.In THE DREAM-QUEST OF UNKNOWN KADATH, Pickman becomes a ghoul, like the subject of many of his paintings in 'Pickman's Model.'"

I then read the rather lengthy yet succinct description of the tale that followed as next entry.And I felt a curious longing.For haven't I come to Boston and found this small apartment in the North End exactly because of my obsession with this, as some call it, "minor" tale by a Master of supernatural fiction?I held onto The Book as I put on my jacket and stepped outside.Strolling past the ancient church, I walked up the inclined street, to Copp's Hill Burying Ground.What had the editors written concerning that haunted place, which Lovecraft had invested with his ghouls.I flipped through the C section, squinting at the pages beneath the pale illumination of a street lamp -- and I was disappointed to see that there was no reference to Copp's Hill.The Book was not as thorough as one would have liked.

What was its purpose, then, this nameless tome?Was it naught but a reference of what the editors felt were the most important names of persons and places in Lovecraft's poetry and prose?Yes, I think that was the purpose that it served.I turned to the Preface and examined the lines of text -- and found:

"A word must now be said on what is NOT included in this volume.
One of the most popular aspects of Lovecraft;s work is what has come to be known as the 'Cthulhu Mythos' (a term Lovecraft himself never used).His literary pantheon (entities who, in many cases, prove merely to be extraterrestrials from the depths of space) has proved fascinating to readers and writers alike... The 'gods' themselves, with rare exceptions, do not figure as 'characters' in any meaningful sense in the tales, so there are no entries on them."

So much for Nyarlathotep, I thought -- for the Crawling Chaos was the "god" with whom I was most obsessed.If anything deserved an entry, it was "Him" (It?).Night had fallen, and the gate to the burying ground was locked.I turned away from it and leaned my back against its chilling black metal.I flipped through The Book until I came to page 190."He" was there!

"'Nyarlathotep.'Prose poem (1,150 words); probably written in November or December 1920. ...Nyarlathotep emerged out of Egypt.He begins giving strangeexhibitions featuring peculiar instruments of glass and metal and evidently involving anomalous uses of electricity."

I heard a far-off wailing sound in dark heaven, accompanied by a singular buzzing voice that almost spoke my name.I looked above me, to the lamp post; and I wondered why it looked so queer, so black; why its single bulb peered down on me as if it would devour me.I placed half of The Book into my mouth, grabbed onto the cold metal of the gate and hurled myself over it, into the burying ground.I crawled on chilly earth until I came to the tall marker that had been toppled over, thus revealing a set of earthy steps that led down, below the cemetery sod, into blackness illimitable.

The Book was in my mouth.How strange that I could feel the ink with which its nameless text had been printed move along my tongue.I felt that text move over my tongue and slip upward, to my brain.The language of The Book dripped upward, like sentient ichor that sought to dwell within the recesses of my cracked skull.The buzzing above me had ceased, but now I heard another noise -- a deep uncanny breathing from the pit of blackness beneath me.I imagined that it whispered, "You fool -- come down."And so I crept, with Book in mouth, down the cold steps of sediment, to my unhallowed doom.

An Invaluable Companion
This sweeping volume covers, more than adequately, the elements and workings beyond the wall of Lovecraft's writings.After casually sampling some of Lovecraft's best, I decided to seriously pursue his fiction as well as the man himself.This fine work has proven a wonderful guide, and its insights have greatly augmented the pleasure of the journey.I must emphatically recommend this work to anyone with more than a casual interest in Lovecraft's marvelous writings.

Inconsistent and Horribly Incomplete
I gave this inch-thick book three stars because it IS full of good information, well researched, and will certainly be just what some people are looking for. For me, however, it was not at all what I expected (or wanted).

I was hoping that a 'Lovecraft Encyclopedia' would shed light on the fictional elements within his works. However, this encyclopedia concerns lovecraft's life, acquaintances, influences, etc.

Mostly.

It's inconsistent; if you look up "Azathoth," you get two paragraphs about the stories "he/it" appears in and those that inspired, but learn absolutely nothing about what Azathoth actually *is*. "Cthulhu" provides pages of info, but really nothing more than the geneology of the name "Cthulhu Mythos," and absolutely nothing at all about the character.

But if you look up "Lake," "Atwood," "Dombrowski" ... you at least do get a sentence or two about these fictional characters, though not much, really. Why include relatively unimportant fictional characters but include no information about the "heavy-hitters"?

Seriously diappointing; there's room for another book here.

I would have been happy if the book at least gave definitions for certain archaic words, such as "eldritch" and the like, words not found in a contemporary dictionary. But no. Or perhaps even a pronunciation guide for commonly mis-pronounced words.

I guess for now, if you want to know something about the entities in HPL's works, you have to buy a book related to the "Call of Cthulhu" role playing game or something.

If you need to do a term paper on the life of HPL, you may find some gold here; if you enjoy his stories but would like to understand them better, this will be of no help.

a work for all seasons
Although this excellent piece of work is more suited to Lovecraft's fans or people with some background on his work, it serves equally well the interests of newcomers into the subject.I shall just point out the utmost care and respect for the Master's original work, the passion and scholarship pervading every single line of the encyclopedia.I did not grade it with a fully deserved 5 stars,though....because only the Deep Ones are perfect...

Especially for Lovecraft enthusiasts
Collaborative compiled by Lovecraftian experts S. T. Joshi and David E. Schultz, An H. P. Lovecraft Encyclopedia is an exhaustive reference filled with an impressive wealth of biographical and literary lore about one of the best-known writers of supernatural horror in the 20th century. Filled cover to cover with bibliographical information, the encyclopedia lists entries in A to Z format of people Lovecraft knew, characters in his books, and much more. An extensive, scholarly reference especially for Lovecraft enthusiasts, An H. P. Lovecraft Encyclopedia is an essential, core, indispensable reference work for students of Lovecraft's life and work. ... Read more

Product Description

Occult scholar Donald Tyson plumbs the depths of H. P. Lovecraft’s cosmic visions and horrific dream world to examine, warts and all, the strange life of the man who created the Necronomicon and the Cthulhu mythos.

Lovecraft expressed disdain for magic and religion, and most of his biographers have dismissed the mystical side of his nature. This book redresses this imbalance. Here you will find the roots of Lovecraft’s extraordinary cosmic vision laid bare. The dream-world sources for his mythic Old Ones are examined, along with the practical esoteric implications of Lovecraft’s unique mythology. A man in fundamental conflict with himself, Lovecraft lived always on the brink of madness or suicide. Tyson reveals Lovecraft for what he truly was—a dreamer, an astral traveler, and the prophet of a New Age.

PRAISE:
“The Dream World of H. P. Lovecraft is a thought-provoking and intellectually stimulating book. Its fusion of sound biographical knowledge and critical insight makes it a must-read for Lovecraftians.”  
—S. T. JOSHI, LEADING AUTHORITY ON H. P. LOVECRAFT  

Customer Reviews (1)

Good biography, but a little too speculative.
I should start this review with an honest disclosure:I, like the real Lovecraft, am a committed materialist.Donald Tyson is anything but a materialist.Despite my materialism, I am generally a curious and open-minded person, and I spend a good deal of time considering alternative views on the universe.This book is not my first exposure to Tyson.In fact, I have read many of Tyson's books with more than a little interest, however I have never found any reason to believe that Donald is correct in his endorsement of a "magical" universe.

Most of Tyson's recent works have been on Lovecraft and trying to turn his mythos into a workable system of ritual magic.I applaud Donald's creativity, and admit that he can even tell a pretty engrossing yarn at times, (See his book "Alhazred" for a good, if at times disturbing, read.) but I am certain that Lovecraft himself would be horrified to find his works of fiction being used to support anything founded in the occult.

From a strictly biographical point of view, this book is pretty well put together.Donald takes an interest in his subject that inclines him toward a good amount of detail, which is excellent.Often times Lovecraft has been painted in brush strokes that are so bold as to completely obscure his regular, everyday humanity.On the downside, Donald cannot help but impose his own magical point of view on Lovecraft, and although he repeatedly points out how Lovecraft would never approve of seeing himself as having anything to do with the occult, the undertone of the book is that Lovecraft was just somehow struggling with the deeper, darker truth of his dream-born occult powers.I take issue with interpreting Lovecraft in this way for various reasons, most importantly because Lovecraft did not see himself this way.Although deep internal struggles and denial make for great fiction, most of us, Lovecraft included, don't live in total ignorance of our own natures.Lovecraft, being a deeply intelligent and insightful man, was no stranger to analyzing himself, and I fully believe that he had a pretty good handle on his own nature.

All in all, I would suggest this biography to others, but I would include a warning to carefully considered every time Tyson inserts his own opinion.Take commentary with a grain of salt, and you'll learn quite a lot you probably never knew about Lovecraft. ... Read more

Product Description
One of the most influential practitioners of American horror, H.P. Lovecraft inspired the work of Stephen King, Anne Rice, and Clive Barker. As he perfected his mastery of the macabre, his works developed from seminal fragments into acknowledged masterpieces of terror. This volume traces his chilling career and includes:
IMPRISONED WITH THE PHARAOHS--Houdini seeks to reveal the demons that inhabit the Egyptian night.
AT THE MOUNTAINS OF MADNESS--An unsuspecting expedition uncovers a city of untold terror, buried beneath an Antarctic wasteland.
Plus, for the first time in any Del Rey edition:
HERBERT WEST: REANIMATOR--Mad experiments yield hideous results in this, the inspiration for the cult film Re-Animator.
COOL AIR--An icy apartment hides secrets no man dares unlock.
THE TERRIBLE OLD MAN--The intruders seek a fortune but find only death!
AND TWENTY-FOUR MORE BLOOD-CHILLING TALES
Amazon.com Review
"There is a melancholy, operatic grandeur in Lovecraft's mostpassionate work," writes Joyce CarolOates in The New York Review of Books, "... a curiouselegiac poetry of unspeakable loss, of adolescent despair, and anexistential loneliness so pervasive that it lingers in the reader'smemory, like a dream, long after the rudiments of Lovecraftian plothave faded."Del Rey has reprinted Lovecraft's stories in threelarge-format paperbacks. This third volume collects one poem, onestory fragment, and 26 tales not included in the first two, including"Herbert West--Reanimator," "The Lurking Fear," "Dagon," "TheUnnameable," and the classic short novel "At the Mountains ofMadness." Introduction by Barbara Hambly.Beautiful cover art bysurrealist John Jude Palencar. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (31)

The evolution of Lovecraft
Among the most influential of horror novelists is H.P. Lovecraft, and this is appropriate.His tales of weird fiction are still in their own little niche.Thematically, most of his stories fit into two categories which are not exclusive:there are things that man is not meant to know, and there are places that have a certain wrongness.Unlike most horror novelists who may provide a typical happy endings with evil vanquished, there is little such joy at the end of a Lovecraft story; for Lovecraft, merely surviving the horror with sanity intact is the best that can be hoped for.

The Transition of H.P. Lovecraft, subtitled The Road to Madness offers glimpses into some of his earliest work and shows how it evolved over time.As would be expected, the very earliest tales are not all that great.Tales like "The Beast in the Cave" are purely second-rate, but even here, Lovecraft's narrative style can be seen.

Most of the early stories are short (less than 10 pages), but as you progress through these 29 tales, the stories get generally longer.Rather than discussing all of them, I just want to point out a noteworthy few."Herbert West - Reanimator" is the source story for what is probably the most well-known Lovecraft adaptation, Reanimator, and though many of the details differ between text and film, the premise remains the same:Herbert West seeks a method for bringing life to the dead (a la Frankenstein) and becomes one of Lovecraft's victims to the pursuit of forbidden knowledge.

"Imprisoned with the Pharaohs" is a collaboration with Harry Houdini (of which Lovecraft did most of the work) featuring the celebrated magician trapped in an Egyptian tomb."At the Mountains of Madness" - by far the longest story at nearly 100 pages, follows an Antarctic excursion that unearths an ancient city that hints at a dark history from many years past.This novella is the most Lovecraftian story in the collection, with plenty of references to Cthulhu and the Old Ones.On the other hand, perhaps the most atypical in the bunch is "In the Walls of Eryx", a straight science fiction story dealing with a treasure hunter on Venus lured into a sophisticated trap by the locals; there are a few Lovecraftian touches, but for the most part, this is old-fashioned sci-fi, probably a change of pace due to the collaborator, Kenneth Sterling.

Just because you might enjoy authors like Stephen King, Clive Barker or F. Paul Wilson (all of whom have been influenced by Lovecraft) does not mean you will enjoy this book or Lovecraft's other works.Lovecraft's narrative style has a definite Nineteenth Century feel, with an emphasis on description over action, dialogue or even character.Lovecraft is also a product of his era with racial views that are, to say the least, not politically correct, and females have almost no presence at all in his stories.In short, you may need patience to enjoy Lovecraft, but - even if this collection is not his "greatest hits" - there is definitely some material to enjoy in this book.

come for The Beast, stay for At The Mountains of Madness
This collection features some of the stories that would later serve to define Lovecraft's subtle and suspenseful stories. The Beast is a great example of a last second twist that makes you think long after you've finished the short tale. At The Mountains of Madness is exquisitely creepy and mysterious, introducing us to the infamous Elder Things and the Shoggoth.

However, most other stories are underwhelming and as mentioned by many, The Street is a racist screed by a devout xenophobe. However, I must give Lovecraft a little leeway on this because during his time, it was fashionable to be a eugenicist, xenophobia and nationalism ruled and it was even ok to be a racist. He was brought up with very different, more close minded values than we have today and we need to keep that in mind when we look at his societal views which he later learned to keep to himself. He certainly couldn't do it in most stories collected here.

The Road to Madness is a book to get familiar with Lovecraft's early writings and catch the several glimpses of superb storytelling he would perfect later. But if you're looking for the creme de la creme, I'd suggest another Lovecraft collection from Del Ray.

Creepy early stories from the master of his craft, Lovecraft
Fascinating.Shows the development of a master from his earliest writing days.Lovecraft's style is purple at times, but matures nicely.

A must read for Halloween
Years ago I found a tattered old paperback of Lovecraft's work in a used book store. I took it with me up to my uncle's cabin in New Hampshire and, After everyone else had gone to bed, I stretched out on the couch, in a dimly lit room, with a deer's head hanging over me, and read The Lurking Fear.I was hooked, if not more than a little creeped out.Lovecraft's style has a slightly pulpy feel to it, and he frequently uses punch-line endings, but his mastery of atmosphere and mood, coupled with his skill with language, make his stories nothing less than genius.This volume offers a wonderful over view of his history and is certainly a great place to start on your exploration of his work.If you can get yourself to some secluded, and darkened room it will only further add to the effect, especially if there's a deer's head involved. Trust me.

DEL REY ANTHOLOGY OF LOVECRAFT'S BEST
This is an anthology of some of the best works of Howard Philips Lovecraft (HPL), a pulp horror- and science fiction- writer of the 1920s and 30s.Lovecraft had a distinctive style of writing, meant to convey through description an atmosphere of awe and wonder of the universe, which he believed a rational mind would experience as horror.His works have influenced generations of writers including Stephen King, Brian Lumley, Ramsey Campbell, and Robert Howard.The content of THE ROAD TO MADNESS is some of HPLs most evocative, chilling, and enduring tales.And I almost missed them.

You see, I thought I had everything by Lovecraft.But I would catch allusions to things like the "Martense kin", "the U-Boat", and Arthur Jermyn.I couldn't find these references in any of my books, when I realized I was missing THE TOMB.Rather than buy this out-of-print book, I picked up ROAD TOMADNESS.It has served me well as a general collection of the most enduring elements of Lovecraft's fiction.The 3 Del Rey collections (ROAD TO MADNESS, BEST OF HP LOVECRAFT, DREAM CYCLE OF HP LOVECRAFT) are pretty comprehensive of HPLs corpus.I am posting below a list of the contents of THE ROAD TO MADNESS under the heading ofother sources for the same stories, to let you decide how much overlap it has with other anthologies you might own.

AT THE MOUNTAINS OF MADNESS AND OTHER TALES
"At the Mountains of Madness "
"The Evil Clergyman"
"The Shunned House"

THE DOOM THAT CAME TO SARNATH
"The Crawling Chaos"
"The Festival"
"In the Walls of Eryx"
"memory"
"Nathicana"
"The Tomb"
"The Tree"
"Under The Pyramids"

THE LURKING FEAR AND OTHER STORIES
"Dagon"
"Arthur Jermyn"
"The Lurking Fear"
"The Moon-Bog"
"The Temple"
"The Unnameable"
"The White Ship"

THE TOMB AND OTHER TALES:
"The Alchemist"
"The Beast in the Cave"
"The Book"
"The Festival"
"He"
"The Horror at Red Hook"
"In the Walls of Eryx"
"Poetry and the Gods "
"The Street"
"The Tomb"
"The Transition of Juan Romero"
"Under the Pyramids"

[Possibly no other source]
"Cool Air"
"Herbert West, Reanimator" ... Read more

Product Description
A complete short novel, AT THE MOUNTAINS OF MADNESS is a tale of terror unilke any other. The Barren, windswept interior of the Antarctic plateau was lifeless--or so the expedition from Miskatonic University thought. Then they found the strange fossils of unheard-of creatures...and the carved stones tens of millions of years old...and, finally, the mind-blasting terror of the City of the Old Ones. Three additional strange tales, written as only H.P. Lovecraft can write, are also included in this macabre collection of the strange and the weird.
... Read more

Customer Reviews (53)

AT THE MOUNTAINS OF MADNESS by H. P. Lovecraft
At the Mountains of Madness and Other Tales of Terror collects H. P. Lovecraft's eponymous novella (originally published in 1936) and three short stories: "The Shunned House" (1937), "The Dreams in the Witch-House" (1933), and "The Statement of Randolph Carter" (1920).

In At the Mountains of Madness, an Antarctic survey team discovers the ruins of an ancient city, whose creators have conveniently left an easily-deciphered complete history of their civilization illustrated on the walls. This is one of Lovecraft's later works, and in it, he substantially demythologizes his Cthulhu mythos, which previously had often featured a supernatural focus but here receives a rather thorough science fiction explanation.

If you've read any quantity of Lovecraft before, you'll find this novella fairly predictable. And if you've read a lot of Lovecraft, you realize you can't go anywhere in his world without stumbling over some infestation of trans-worldly evil.

This is one of Lovecraft's longer works, and it's a bit of a slow builder, although it does pick up nicely as it goes. Lovecraft's strength here is the usual one: atmosphere. Because of its isolation and severe environment, Antarctica lends itself particularly well to horror, and on top of that Lovecraft does a great job of depicting the atmosphere of the lost city.

The three short stories here have considerably more in common with one another than with Mountains, and they feel like padding to make this volume book-length (Additionally, this volume's stupid cover has nothing to do with any of the stories within). But briefly, "The Shunned House" takes too long to get going and falls somewhat flat once it does, "The Dreams in the Witch-House," something of a thematic bridge between the other two stories, is a disjointed mess, and "The Statement of Randolph Carter" is a vintage second-hand account of lurking horrors.

At the Mountains of Madness is hardly Lovecraft's best story, but it may be some of the best atmosphere he's ever done. I recommend the novella, whether you get it with extra mediocre stories or not.

influential
HP Lovecraft is the type of writer who is prominent because of his influence on other writers and the importance of his ideas to the genre, rather than for skill in writing. 'At the Mountains of Madness' is a perfect example of this. The ideas of the 'Old Ones' and other elements of the Cthulhu mythos, have had enourmous influence on other horror writers, but the writing itself can be a bit of a chore to wade through.

'At the Mountains of Madness' comprises the bulk of this volume; the other "tales of terror" are: 'The Shunned House', 'The Dreams in the Witch House' and 'The Statement of Randolph Carter'. I actually enjoyed the "The Shunned House' and 'The Dreams of the Witch House' more than 'At the Mountains of Madness' which I think just dragged too much at times.

Lovecraft's style can take some getting used to, but one can't deny the the importance and influence of his ideas.

At the Mountains of Madness: And Other Tales of Terror

As I have never read anything by H.P.Lovecraft this was indeed a treat.What got my attention was the recomendation of my favorite author, Stephen King.I figured if he gave such praise to an author, he must be pretty darn good.To my delight, I most certainly found this to be true.Not only was he "good," he was excellant.I can see why present day authors like King and Koontz say that he was their inspiration. In each story in this book, the suspense builds and builds until the very end and then you receive the shocking ending as well as a little unexpected "twist" thrown in.Completly enjoyable reading.

"Again came that insidious piping--"Tekeli-li!Tekeli-li!"
Man oh man, homework, I'm telling you that it never ends.I re-read this as homework so that I could read another book.That's not meaning that I didn't like reading it, or that I haven't read it before.I've been reading Lovecraft for over thirty years, and I've read these stories singularly before, in fact, I read the "At The Mountains Of Madness" story only a few years ago.Still, that story was the S. T. Joshi revised version that had been restored from Lovecraft's own manuscripts.I think.This is the Derleth version that originally appeared as an Arkham House hardback.

For those that don't know, Lovecraft was rescued from the obscurity of the under-appreciated pulps by Donald Wandrei and August Derleth.They did this by starting their own publishing house and reprinting his, and other under-appreciated authors in hardcover, allowing libraries to buy and put Arkham House's books and these authors on their shelves.This is the collection that was in and out of print for fifty or so years until S. T. Joshi corrected the texts.

*****But, since I'm not really interested in comparing the texts of the old and the corrected, that past history is neither here or there.This collection contains three short stories and one novella, all of which are some of Lovecraft's better or most important fictions.The first story IS "At The Mountains Of Madness", and what a great title for a story it is.It is also one of the more important of Lovecraft's Mythos stories.

It's also a topical story as Lovecraft based it on current events, as Artic expeditions were getting a lot of headlines during the early parts of the last century.Lovecraft writes his story using these current events as a cornerstone to tell of an expedition funded by the Nathaniel Derby Pickman Foundation to go to the Artic in general, and to Mt. Erebus in particular.Lovecraft often used nameless narrators for his stories, and he uses one here.Lovecraft doesn't skimp on details, giving this story a non-fiction feel to it.At times this story almost seems like it was reprinted from the "National Geographic" as the journey from Arkham to Mt. Erebus, the camp set-up, and the trek up the mountain to find the nameless city is described step-by-step, and detail-by-detail.One of the complaints about this story is that there are TOO many details, causing the story to move just too slow.And while the story can hard going at times, all of this detail begins to work for the story as the narrator starts describing the weird geometry and layout of the city, the bizarre murals, and the building dread that the original habitants didn't just leave the city, but were driven out by something even worse than they were.As the story slowly unfolds, we, along with the city's explorers begin to realize that in the darkness, and in these isolated ruins they may not be alone . . .

There is no graphic horror here, it's one of Lovecraft's more quiet horror stories as the horror mostly comes across from the sense of place, the shifting shadows, and the idea that this is a city older than mankind.Yes, it's slow, but those that stick with it will realize why it is one of the more influential Lovecraftian stories.It's telling that this story was originally printed in "Astounding Stories", not "Weird Tales", meaning that Lovecraftwas trying to appeal to a different audience than the horror audience that comprised his regular readership.

*****The next story is the ghost story "The Shunned House".Now, Lovecraft could never do anything like anybody else, as his horror stories often read like science fiction stories.The same is here, as Lovecraft drenches this story in a sense of gothic ominousness.There are no stunning apparitions here, just a building creepiness.While the denouement is supposedly based on local legends, it comes across as rather hard to believe, still, this story just gets better every time that it's read.

*****"The Dreams In The Witchhouse" is another story that has a great title that it has to live up to.Walter Gilman is haunted by strange fevered dreams.And he's doing it in one of the worst places to do so, as he's losing his mind in the " . . . legend haunted city of Arkham . . . ".Gilman is also a student at the Miskatonic, and he's rooming in the refurnished old Witchhouse, in the infamous Keziah Mason's room, a notorious witch, who had mysteriously disappeared.Again, Lovecraft is again taking a different riff on the haunted house theme as Gilman starts seeing, dreaming, and experiencing things. This story features one of Lovecraft's more famous creations, and that is Nyarlathotep.A good story, this is the only story that I was unfamiliar with when I read this collection.

*****"The Statement Of Randolph Carter" is a story that I read as a kid, and is perhaps the most traditional of the four stories here.As Lovecraft stand-in Randolph Carter and Harley Warren decide to stick their noses into something that they shouldn't and pay the price for it.They decide to investigate a crypt and despite the fact that the expected happens it is still a shock."The Statement Of Randolph Carter" was a short ten-page shock horror story that showed that when he wanted to, Lovecraft could do the traditional.So if you are a fan of Robert Bloch's short stories with their snappy last lines, then you will like this one."The Statement Of Randolph Carter" is more than a gag story as this story has a high re-readable factor with the twist ending always able to deliver, despite knowing how the story was going to end.

Lovecraft didn't write much dialogue in his stories, as his stories were mostly told in straight narrative making them tough going at times for modern readers who are more used to the quicker paced storytelling of today.Only "The Shunned House" is a stand-alone story, as the three other stories are part of his famous Mythos Cycle, although "The Statement Of Randolph Carter" may be borderline, but knowing Lovecraft, we know what lurks beneath Lovecraft's graveyards.If you like Lovecraft and you haven't read this collection, then you're missing out, even if this collection has one of the ugliest covers that I have ever seen on a paperback.Shot from the forehead down with a bubble lens it shows a man's face with a false bulging eye on one side of the face, and an eyepatch on the other side.Ugh!

It's impossible to really grade these stories.In one form or another they're classics, major or minor, but I loved them, and after all this time, they're essentially critic proof.It's also ironic that for an author that still gets no respect from some academics, his material are NOW TAUGHT IN COLLEGES!Ha!Looks like Lovecraft has had the last laugh, if he were alive he'd be amused.Still . . . I personally give them, and this collection, but not this collection's cover, five stars, and essential for Lovecraftians.

Perfect story, Defective Book
I loved this book. For me, I was not really terrified, but I just love Myths and things like that, so I just kept on reading and loved every minute of it. However, I would find a different book that contains these stories because I was only half way through At the Mountains of Madness when the pages started to come off of the Spine of the book. But trust me, you will be missing out on a great read if you do not read these stories.

Five stars for the Stories
One star for the Book's quality ... Read more

Product Description
This Halcyon Classics ebook contains sixty-seven of celebrated horror and occult writer H.P. Lovecraft's best works central to his 'Cthulhu mythos.'Although Lovecraft's (1890-1937) readership was limited during his life, his reputation has grown over the decades, and he is now regarded as one of the most influential horror writers of the 20th century.

This book is DRM free and includes at active table of contents for easy navigation.

Contents:

The Nameless City
The Festival
The Colour out of Space
The Call of Cthulhu
The Dunwich Horror
The Whisperer in Darkness
Dreams in the Witch-house
The Haunter of the Dark
The Shadow over Innsmouth
The Shadow out of Time
At the Mountain of Madness
The Case of Charles Dexter Ward
Azathoth
Beyond the Wall of Sleep
Celephais
Cool Air
Dagon
Dream House
Ex Oblivione
Facts Concerning the Late Arthur Jermyn and His Family
From Beyond
He
Herbert West: Reanimator
Hypnos
Imprisoned with the Pharaohs
In the Vault
Medusa's Coil
Memory
Nyarlathotep
Pickman's Model
Poetry of the Gods
The Alchemist
The Beast in the Cave
The Book
The Cats of Ulthar
The Crawling Chaos
The Descendant
The Doom That Came to Sarnath
The Dream Quest of Unknown Kadath
The Evil Clergyman
The Horror at Martin's Beach
The Horror at Red Hook
The Hound
The Lurking Fear
The Moon Bog
The Music of Erich Zann
The Other Gods
The Outsider
The Picture in the House
The Quest of Iranon
The Rats in the Walls
The Shunned House
The Silver Key
The Statement of Randolph Carter
The Strange High House in the Mist
The Street
The Temple
The Terrible Old Man
The Thing on the Doorstep
The Tomb
The Transition of Juan Romero
The Tree
The Unnamable
The White Ship
Through the Gates of the Silver Key
What the Moon Brings
Polaris
The Very Old Folk
Darkness
... Read more

Customer Reviews (7)

It Made Me the Man I Am......
Read HPL's work throughout my childhood -- scared the hell out of me, but also opened my mind to the possibility of different realities -- might be different for today's kids, since there's so much more stuff around now, but I bet that anyone who sits down in a room at night with only one light on and reads a few of these stories will feel... something --- maybe not outright fear, but disquiet, as if something were slowly creeping up behind you, and you couldn't see it, no matter how quickly you turned around..... I thoroughly commend his stuff.

Great - Lots of Gods, Hate to be Bias and Just Shout Cthulhu - is Waiting!
Talk about a collection - when i saw the size of this beast i wondered if I had seen a glitch, if my eyes were giving out after all the horror I had read, or if Kindle was giving me yet another taste of the good life. I had already collected Dracula and a few others for next to nothing, and this seemed like I was doing the same. So i clicked, checked, and was a happy camper.

While you have a lot of small things here, the 67 alone is enough to send a reader into some mind-altered vortex that says, "Danger, Will Robinson." That danger was not danger at all, however, but was something that was good to the last drippy drop. you really can't beat the size of the beast you get here and, honestly, you can't keep from admiring just how lovely this thing is. It is horror at its finest and it is beautiful in the way you find it coming up and devouring your Kindle.

Maybe that's what was meant by waking the sleeping Cthulhu. He's a Kindle man and he's been waiting for someone to download this sea of sexy stories and find him there, waiting.

All joking aside, though, get this!

CAN"T USE IT (but now I can, hah!)
I have a Nook and i was hoping to be able to buy this from Amazon and load it onto my Nook. No go. Amazon's DRM is a nightmare. So now I have a book and I can't read. Great.

EDIT: I was able to eventually convert it to EPUB and use Adobe Digital Editions to sink it to my Nook. Apparently this book doesn't have any DRM so this was a legal procedure. Cthulhu be praised!

Master of horror
Lovecraft has many imitators but no equals.No one can match him in creating and sustaining lurking, inescapable, indescribable horror.He is the all-time master of the genre. Fabulous collection!

Ditto...
I'll just add a third voice saying that this is a fantastic collection of one of the best gothic horror authors, well presented by the publisher. ... Read more

Product Description
Update 2/16/10 - Formatting issues in poetry and publishing history section have been corrected.

This ultimate collection of H. P. Lovecraft's works includes 101 short stories, novellas, novels, and 45 poems, all in one Kindle book. This beautifully formatted edition has a fully linked Table of Contents, with date written and full publishing information for each story and poem on the title pages.

Included is the bonus Lovecraft Wiki, with its own linked Table of Contents which includes a biography, themes in his works, influences, and much more.

Also in this edition is a complete bibliography of Lovecraft's works, including stories, poems. collaborations, philosophical works, and scientific works. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (6)

Great collection
This is a great collection of Lovecraft's work. Many stories and poems are included with dates of writing and dates of publishing. It's a great book at a good price but there is not an active table of contents, I have to scroll through each page to get to stories or poems I want to read. This is the reason I give it 4 stars instead of 5. Pain in the butt to go page by page, update the table of contents for Kindle and I will give it 5 stars!!

UPDATE:
For some reason when I first browsed the book's table of contents it wasn't clickable, but when I clicked "Menu" and "Go to" then "table of contents" on my Kindle the table was then active and works like it should. Yay! I changed my rating to 5 stars, what it deserves. :-) Awesome book, awesome price!

A Great collection
I very much enjoyed this book. The digital index was wonderful, wading through Lovecraft's earlier works (which could be comparable to the beasts he describes in terms of pleasantness) to get to his great later works would be generally unpleasant. The inclusion of a Biography, added a much needed touch of reality to the book although it was comparably short (it's a very large book).
The brilliance comes with the fact that the biography doesn't try to present Lovecraft as a good person. He was a disgusting, racist, and close minded man that has as many personality disorders as a mental hospital. The book admits it, and doesn't falter to show his worse books and more terrible poems. It embraces every aspect of H.P. Lovecraft's life, good and bad.
This collection of love crafts works (and biography) is s perfect combination of man and mythos. Not the cheapest but personally it's worth it for the index and a generally more complete collection. All I can say is that whether you're a long time fan or just getting into his works, this book is worth the $3.99.

Fantastic Collection for a couple bucks
Excellent collection of Lovecraft's work.This has to be one of the most complete collections I've found and it fantastically formatted for the kindle.It has a couple spelling errors around, but it is a solid product and by far the most complete one around.Every major and minor Lovecraft story is here and organized in chronological order, even those missing are simply listed in the Table of Contents with no link to the story, allowing the reader to keep track of everything he has written.

Having never read his earliest stuff, I was quite shocked with how horrid his writing was in the beginning, but by around 1906 it quickly turns into the excellent literary craftsmanship for which Lovecraft is known.It is entertaining to watch his evolution and see the brutal short-falls along the way.There are even some rather unique stories like "Sweet Ermengarde," an incredibly unique and bizarre Lovecraftian comedy.Well worth the $4.

Great collection
I find this to be an excellent Lovecraft collection. I read this on my Kindle and on my iPad with the Kindle for iPad app. This is a great buy at a very low price and is sure to keep fans of Lovecraft entertained and looking over their shoulders for some time.

An excellent collection
I compared this collection to the others, and while not the cheapest it seemed to contain the most content and more importantly was better organized and well formatted for reading on my Kindle.

Having read only the first 6% while having spent as much time with it I an afford, I've found only minor issues and most of those are simply with Lovecraft's preference to use older spellings (though, to a smaller extent the peculiarity of some words) and some minor formatting issues in the first story.

Definitely consider this edition if your looking for a collection of H.P. Lovecraft's works. ... Read more

Product Description

"The oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fear, and the oldest and strongest kind of fear is fear of the unknown."
--H. P. LOVECRAFT, "Supernatural Horror in Literature"

Howard Phillips Lovecraft forever changed the face of horror, fantasy, and science fiction with a remarkable series of stories as influential as the works of Poe, Tolkien, and Edgar Rice Burroughs. His chilling mythology established a gateway between the known universe and an ancient dimension of otherworldly terror, whose unspeakable denizens and monstrous landscapes--dread Cthulhu, Yog-Sothoth, the Plateau of Leng, the Mountains of Madness--have earned him a permanent place in the history of the macabre.

In Tales of the Cthulhu Mythos, a pantheon of horror and fantasy's finest authors pay tribute to the master of the macabre with a collection of original stories set in the fearsome Lovecraft tradition:

 ¸  The Call of Cthulhu by H. P. Lovecraft: The slumbering monster-gods return to the world of mortals.
 ¸  Notebook Found in a Deserted House by Robert Bloch: A lone farmboy chronicles his last stand against a hungering backwoods evil.
 ¸  Cold Print by Ramsey Campbell: An avid reader of forbidden books finds a treasure trove of deadly volumes--available for a bloodcurdling price.
 ¸  The Freshman by Philip José Farmer: A student of the black arts receives an education in horror at notorious Miskatonic University.

PLUS EIGHTEEN MORE SPINE-TINGLING TALES! ... Read more

Customer Reviews (31)

The master inspires other masters.
H.P. Lovecraft is one of my favorite horror authors if not my favorite depending on my mood. This book showcases the fact that he inspired so many great authors. Notebook found in a deserted house by Robert Bloch is a great example of a haunting environment with great, creepy implications which was what made Lovecraft the master of his trade. The Freshman by Philip Jose Farmer is amazing in the fact that an air of mystery, mystique, and evil are all wrapped in one. This is my favorite so far but Stephen King almost outshines him with Jerusalem's Lot which originally appeared in Night Shift. This story is so amazing at using Lovecraft's mythos with his own original writing style using letters to tell the story which allows for a foreboding and downright eerie series of events and locales. Some of the earlier stories seemed like they tried to hard to copy Lovecraft while not being to original. I'm looking at you August Derleth who scammed me by making me by his book by using Lovecraft's name. But stories by Ramsey Campbell who I find hard to like because some ofhis stories are hard to follow while making little sense unless you read them over and over. But his story is very good and I still like his stories very much. All in all, this book contains Lovecraft's masterpiece The Call of Cthulu while containing very good original stories. A must buy for fans of dark, atmospheric story telling.

Best stories:
Jerusalem's Lot
The Freshman
Notebook Found in a Deserted House
Cold Print

Out of date and narrow in scope
I read the Cthulhu Cult Lovecraft story by curiosity when I had the opportunity while taking a vacation at the beach; it is really short and took me less than an hour to read. The story is about extra-terrestrial creatures posing a threat to men via a voodoo type cult following. When I read the other reviews to this book, I wondered if indeed the readers are not under the influence of some voodoo Lovecraft cult. I found the style and the content somewhat outdated; these stories must have been written to captivate and frighten the young teens of the early part of last century before TV and the movies were invented. Without real violence or foul language it can be enjoyed by the older pre-teens or very young teens who still believe in fairy tales. Not a must read and there are a lot of much better and more current books for this age group.

A Amazing Collection of Weird Fiction
After buying Gollancz's massive "Necronomicon: The Best Weird Tales of H.P. Lovecraft" with its 878 pages, I started looking for another book of lovecraftian fiction that was more...portable.Thank God I chose this one.Its a great collection of stories by other authors that expand the Cthulhu mythos, and also includes Lovecraft's "The Call of Cthulhu" and "The Haunter of the Dark", two of his best stories.

The best stories in this book(in my opinion) which I recommend to anyone are:

"The Shambler From the Stars" by Robert Bloch
An author of weird fiction reads from the cursed "Des Vermiis Mysteris" and unleashes a vampiric being from another world.

"Notebook Found in a Deserted House" also by Bloch
The chronicles of a farmboy who is terrorized by an ancient evil in the woods near his home.

"The Salem Horror" by Henry Kuttner
Strange things begin to occur after a writer discovers an underground chamber of a witch hanged in the Salem Witch Trials.

"Sticks" by Karl Edward Wagner
An artist is haunted by memory of mysterious figures made from sticks in the woods and gains the attention of an evil cult.

"Jerusalem's Lot" by Stephen King
Two men explore the deserted village of Jerusalem's Lot and discover that an ancient evil slumbers beneath it.

The Definitive Cthulhu Mythos Anthology
The first edition of TALES OF THE CTHULHU MYTHOS was published by August Derleth in 1969 -- this newer edition was edited by Jim Turner in 1990.Two stories from the original version, "The Haunter in the Graveyard" by J. Vernon Shea and "The Deep Ones" by James Wade were dropped from the book (the James Wade story will be reprinted this year in a Mythos anthology that S. T. Joshi has edited for Mythos Books).Vernon's tale was a lot of fun; he told me that he was in the middle of writing it when Derleth sent him a letter asking for a story for his original anthology, and so Vernon dragged in the Mythos/Lovecraftian element and sold the story to Arkham House.It's not a great story, but it's fun.Two of Robert Bloch's stories, "The Shambler from the Stars" and "The Shadow from the Steeple," form a trilogy with Lovecraft's "The Haunter of the Dark," and it was editorial genius to publish all three stories in sequence in this book.Bloch's first tale included a character based on Lovecraft, and thus when Lovecraft wrote his sequel, he dedicated "The Haunter of the Dark" to Bloch.Years later, Bob wrote one of his finest tales, "The Shadow from the Steeple," in memory of Lovecraft -- it remains my favourite Mythos tale by an author other than Lovecraft.The two tales by Derleth are among his better Mythos tales, and Robert E. Howard's "The Black Stone" remains a fine tale in this tradition.When Jim Turner re-edited the book, he included some tales not found in the original edition -- and two of these are extremely fine and important works: Fritz Leiber's "The Terror from the Depths" and Karl Edward Wagner's magnificent "Sticks."It was reading the original edition of this book that made me want to become a professional Mythos writer -- a dream that, coming true, has given the great joy.Mythos fiction that is authentic homage to Lovecraft, that pays tribute to him in an original way without ripping off his ideas, is a very cool thing.There is still so much that can be done within this genre -- but this is the book that shews how it all began, and it is a fantastic anthology.

Deliciously Dark
I knew very little about H.P. Lovecraft and his world when I purchased this book. I shamefully did not know a thing about Cthulhu and I admittedly believed that the "Necronomicon" was purely Sam Raimi's invention, well, maybe I thought Bruce Campbell helped make it, too.
I was actually playing the popular game World of Warcraft when my friend off-handedly said, "The boss is Yog-Saron? They keep stealing stuff from Lovecraft!" I didn't know who that was or what he wrote about, but decided to read into it on wikipedia. There I read "The Hound" and was quickly ready for more. It seemed so different than anything I had read before. There was no hero to aspire to, no fate that seemed desirable. It was a showcase of the reality of man's fleeting presence here delivered with pure fantasty. I really enjoyed it.
So I came to amazon.com to find the best starting point for this author and eventually determined that this was the one, despite the fact that it is not entirely H.P. Lovecraft originals. But it did deliver all the creeping darkness I had waited for, indeed. I found myself staring at the shadow's in the corner of my room on the nights that I read.
However, about three of the stories are just straight-up misses. "The Boat" comes to mind immediately. They left me slightly confused and not at all entertained.
HOWEVER (again), the vast majority are great, fitting like a puzzle-piece into Lovecraft's written world. ... Read more