From the Pest Zone: Stories from New York

by H.P. Lovecraft

H. P. Lovecraft's "New York Exile" of 1924-26 was perhaps the unhappiest period of his entire life: living in a city whose giganticism and heterogeneity he loathed, unable to find work and forced to economize drastically on food and other necessities, and trapped in an uncongenial marriage, Lovecraft could only express his anger and despair in his work. This volume, which gathers the five stories he wrote during this period, shows how Lovecraft sought refuge by returning imaginatively to his native New England ("The Shunned House," "In the Vault"), lashing out at the many "foreigners" occupying the city ("The Horror at Red Hook"), seeking the antiquarian havens that still remained in the metropolis ("He"), or boldly confronting New York's clangor and stridency ("Cool Air"). Editors S. T. Joshi and David E. Schultz supply a lengthy biographical introduction as well as exhaustive notes to each story, supplying information on their background, influences, and use of the history and topography of New York City. As a result, these five stories present an underlying unity beyond their varied themes and locales: they show how Lovecraft came to terms with America's only true megalopolis.

Genres: Horror, Lovecraftian

150 pages, Paperback

First published September 5, 2000

About the author

Howard Phillips Lovecraft, of Providence, Rhode Island, was an American author of horror, fantasy and science fiction.

Lovecraft's major inspiration and invention was cosmic horror: life is incomprehensible to human minds and the universe is fundamentally alien. Those who genuinely reason, like his protagonists, gamble with sanity. Lovecraft has developed a cult following for his Cthulhu Mythos, a series of loosely interconnected fictions featuring a pantheon of human-nullifying entities, as well as the Necronomicon, a fictional grimoire of magical rites and forbidden lore. His works were deeply pessimistic and cynical, challenging the values of the Enlightenment, Romanticism and Christianity. Lovecraft's protagonists usually achieve the mirror-opposite of traditional gnosis and mysticism by momentarily glimpsing the horror of ultimate reality.

Although Lovecraft's readership was limited during his life, his reputation has grown over the decades. He is now commonly regarded as one of the most influential horror writers of the 20th Century, exerting widespread and indirect influence, and frequently compared to Edgar Allan Poe.
See also Howard Phillips Lovecraft.

— Wikipedia