Eldritch Tales
Authors: H.P. Lovecraft
Howard Phillips Lovecraft is probably the most important and influential author of supernatural fiction in the twentieth century. A life-long resident of Providence, Rhode Island, many of his tales are set in the fear-haunted towns of an imaginary area of Massachusetts, or in the cosmic vistas that exist beyond space and time. Since his untimely death, Lovecraft has become acknowledged as a master of fantasy fiction and a mainstream American writer second only to Edgar Allan Poe, while his relatively small body of work has influenced countless imitators and formed the basis of a world-wide industry of books, games and movies based on his concepts.
H.P. Lovecraft’s tales of the tentacled Elder God Cthulhu and his pantheon of alien deities were initially written for the pulp magazines of the 1920s and ’30s. These astonishing tales blend elements of horror and science fiction and are as powerful today as they were when they initially appeared. This companion volume to the best-selling
Necronomicon: The Best Weird Tales of H.P. Lovecraft
brings together in chronological order all of Lovecraft’s remaining major stories, his ‘Fungi from Yuggoth’ cycle and other important weird poetry, a number of obscure revisions and some notable nonfiction, including the seminal critical essay ‘Supernatural Horror in Literature’.
‘Lovecraft opened the way for me, as he had done for others before me’
Stephen King
‘H.P. Lovecraft built the stage on which most of the last century’s horror fiction was performed. As doomed as any of his protagonists, he put a worldview into words that has spread to infect the world. You need to read him – he’s where the darkness starts’
Neil Gaiman
‘As a writer he stands among the best in the field’
August Derleth
‘H.P. Lovecraft is not only the essential link between Edgar Allan Poe and the present day, he has become an almost unimaginably influential force throughout the whole of our popular culture’
Peter Straub
‘H.P. Lovecraft is the most important single writer of the weird . . . his achievement lies not so much in his influence as in the enduring qualities of his finest work’
Ramsey Campbell
‘In his case the highest literary genius was allied to the most brilliant and most endearing personal qualities’
Clark Ashton Smith
‘It’s hard to name a single modern writer of weird fiction who hasn’t to some extent, often profoundly, felt the influence of Howard Phillips Lovecraft . . . It’s possible that I personally would never have written anything if I hadn’t first read H.P. Lovecraft. And I fancy I’m but one of many . . .’
Brian Lumley
‘The thing that particularly drew me to Lovecraft as a young and innocent child was the way his stories and the concepts in them would – in a genuinely eerie way – activate the creative machinery in my head’
Gahan Wilson
‘One of the twentieth century’s most original writers’
Arthur C. Clarke
‘He’s an American original, whose influence on subsequent writers in the field is all-pervasive’
Joyce Carol Oates
‘In a genre blessed with many great stylists, H. P. Lovecraft’s baroque imagination and outrageous use of language still manages to stand head and shoulders above the rest. A timeless master of the macabre, and the true connoisseur of dread’
Michael Marshall Smith
‘There will never be another like him’
Edmond Hamilton
For
S.T. JOSHI
and
ROBERT M. PRICE
for also keeping the
Nightmares alive.
ELDRITCH TALES
A Miscellany of the Macabre by H.P. Lovecraft
SPECIAL COLLECTOR’S EDITION
Edited with an Afterword by
STEPHEN JONES
Illustrated by
LES EDWARDS
GOLLANCZ
LONDON
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Grateful acknowledgement is made to the following individuals, whose work was consulted (and in some cases quoted from) in the compilation of this volume: August Derleth, Victor Gollancz, Otis Kline Associates, Laurence Pollinger, Mr J.J. Jeffery, John Bush, E.D. Nisbet, Mr R. Denton, Giles Gordon, Forrest D. Hartmann, Les Edwards and Gahan Wilson.
Special thanks also go, as always, to my editor Jo Fletcher, Malcolm Edwards, Lail Finlay Hernandez, Val and Les Edwards, Charlie Panayiotou and Marcus Gipps for all their help and support.
‘History of the
Necronomicon
’, originally published in
A History of the Necronomicon
(1938).
‘The Alchemist’, originally published in
The United Amateur
Vo.16, No.4, November 1916.
‘A Reminiscence of Dr Samuel Johnson’, originally published (as by Humphry Littlewit, Esq.) in
The United Amateur
Vol.17, No.2, September 1917.
‘The Beast in the Cave’, originally published in
The Vagrant
No.7, June 1918.
‘The Poe-et’s Nightmare’, originally published in
The Vagrant
No.8, July 1918.
‘Memory’, originally published in
The United Co-operative
Vol.1, No.2, June 1919.
‘Despair’, originally published in
Pine Cones
Vol.1, No.4, June 1919.
‘The Picture in the House’, originally published in
The National Amateur
Vol.41, No.6, July 1919 (1921).
‘Beyond the Wall of Sleep’, originally published in
Pine Cones
Vol.1, No.6, October 1919.
‘Psychopompos: A Tale in Rhyme’, originally published in
The Vagrant
, October 1919.
‘The White Ship’, originally published in
The United Amateur
Vol.19, No.2, November 1919.
‘The House’, originally published in
National Enquirer
Vol.9, No.11, December 11, 1919.
‘The Nightmare Lake’, originally published in
The Vagrant
No.12, December 1919.
‘Poetry and the Gods’ originally published (as by Anna Helen Crofts and Henry Paget-Lowe) in
The United Amateur
Vol.20, No.1, September 1920.
‘Nyarlathotep’, originally published in
The United Amateur
Vol.20, No.2, November 1920.
‘Polaris’, originally published in
The Philosopher
Vol.1, No.1, December 1920.
‘The Street’, originally published in
The Wolverine
No.8, December 1920.
‘Ex Oblivione’, originally published (as by Ward Phillips) in
The United Amateur
Vol.20, No.4, March 1921.
‘Facts Concerning the Late Arthur Jermyn and His Family’, originally published in
The Wolverine
No.9, March 1921.
‘The Crawling Chaos’ originally published (as by Elizabeth Neville Berkeley and Lewis Theobald, Jr) in
The United Co-operative
Vol.1, No.3, April 1921.
‘The Terrible Old Man’, originally published in
The Tryout
Vol.7, No.4, July 1921.
‘The Tree’, originally published in
The Tryout
Vol.7, No.7, October 1921.
‘The Tomb’, originally published in
The Vagrant
No.14, March 1922.
‘Celephaïs’, originally published in
The Rainbow
No.2, May 1922.
‘Hypnos’, originally published in
The National Amateur
Vol.45, No.5, May 1923.
‘What the Moon Brings’, originally published in
The National Amateur
Vol.45 No.5, May 1923.
‘The Horror at Martin’s Beach’ originally published under the title ‘The Invisible Monster’ in
Weird Tales
, November 1923.
‘The Festival’, originally published in
Weird Tales
, January 1925.
‘The Temple’, originally published in
Weird Tales
, September 1925.
‘Hallowe’en in a Suburb’, originally published (as ‘In a Suburb’) in
The National Amateur
Vol.48, No.4, March 1926.
‘The Moon-Bog’, originally published in
Weird Tales
, June 1926.
‘He’, originally published in
Weird Tales
, September 1926.
‘Festival’, originally published (as ‘Yule Horror’) in
Weird Tales
, December 1926.