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The Illustrated Complete Works of H.P. Lovecraft
The weird fiction short stories of H.P. Lovecraft from 1917-1935. Excludes collaborations.
The eBook’s table of contents is listed below. It includes the year each story was written.
The Tomb (1917)
Dagon (1917)
Polaris (1918)
Beyond the Wall of Sleep (1919)
Memory (1919)
Old Bugs (1919)
The Transition of Juan Romero (1919)
The White Ship (1919)
The Doom That Came to Sarnath (1919)
The Statement of Randolph Carter (1919)
The Terrible Old Man (1920)
The Tree (1920)
The Cats of Ulthar (1920)
The Temple (1920)
Facts Concerning the Late Arthur Jermyn and His Family (1920)
The Street (1920)
Celephaïs (1920)
From Beyond (1920)
Nyarlathotep (1920)
The Picture in the House (1920)
Ex Oblivione (1921)
The Nameless City (1921)
The Quest of Iranon (1921)
The Moon-Bog (1921)
The Outsider (1921)
The Other Gods (1921)
The Music of Erich Zann (1921)
Herbert West — Reanimator (1922)
Hypnos (1922)
What the Moon Brings (1922)
Azathoth (1922)
The Hound (1922)
The Lurking Fear (1922)
The Rats in the Walls (1923)
The Unnamable (1923)
The Festival (1923)
The Shunned House (1924)
The Horror at Red Hook (1925)
He (1925)
In the Vault (1925)
The Descendant (1926)
Cool Air (1926)
The Call of Cthulhu (1926)
Pickman’s Model (1926)
The Silver Key (1926)
The Strange High House in the Mist (1926)
The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath (1927)
The Case of Charles Dexter Ward (1927)
The Colour Out of Space (1927)
The Very Old Folk (1927)
The Thing in the Moonlight (1927)
The History of the Necronomicon (1927)
Ibid (1928)
The Dunwich Horror (1928)
The Whisperer in Darkness (1930)
At the Mountains of Madness (1931)
The Shadow Over Innsmouth (1931)
The Dreams in the Witch House (1932)
The Thing on the Doorstep (1933)
The Evil Clergyman (1933)
The Book (1933)
The Shadow out of Time (1934)
The Haunter of the Dark (1935)
The eBook’s table of contents is listed below. It includes the year each story was written.
The Tomb (1917)
Dagon (1917)
Polaris (1918)
Beyond the Wall of Sleep (1919)
Memory (1919)
Old Bugs (1919)
The Transition of Juan Romero (1919)
The White Ship (1919)
The Doom That Came to Sarnath (1919)
The Statement of Randolph Carter (1919)
The Terrible Old Man (1920)
The Tree (1920)
The Cats of Ulthar (1920)
The Temple (1920)
Facts Concerning the Late Arthur Jermyn and His Family (1920)
The Street (1920)
Celephaïs (1920)
From Beyond (1920)
Nyarlathotep (1920)
The Picture in the House (1920)
Ex Oblivione (1921)
The Nameless City (1921)
The Quest of Iranon (1921)
The Moon-Bog (1921)
The Outsider (1921)
The Other Gods (1921)
The Music of Erich Zann (1921)
Herbert West — Reanimator (1922)
Hypnos (1922)
What the Moon Brings (1922)
Azathoth (1922)
The Hound (1922)
The Lurking Fear (1922)
The Rats in the Walls (1923)
The Unnamable (1923)
The Festival (1923)
The Shunned House (1924)
The Horror at Red Hook (1925)
He (1925)
In the Vault (1925)
The Descendant (1926)
Cool Air (1926)
The Call of Cthulhu (1926)
Pickman’s Model (1926)
The Silver Key (1926)
The Strange High House in the Mist (1926)
The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath (1927)
The Case of Charles Dexter Ward (1927)
The Colour Out of Space (1927)
The Very Old Folk (1927)
The Thing in the Moonlight (1927)
The History of the Necronomicon (1927)
Ibid (1928)
The Dunwich Horror (1928)
The Whisperer in Darkness (1930)
At the Mountains of Madness (1931)
The Shadow Over Innsmouth (1931)
The Dreams in the Witch House (1932)
The Thing on the Doorstep (1933)
The Evil Clergyman (1933)
The Book (1933)
The Shadow out of Time (1934)
The Haunter of the Dark (1935)
- GenresClassics
Kindle Edition
First published March 1, 2011
4 people are currently reading
24 people want to read
About the author
H.P. Lovecraft
6,283 books19.4k followersHoward 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
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
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
December 30, 2015
I read most of Lovecraft's fiction back when I was a teen, initially drawn to his work not by his reputation or fame but by the lurid Michael Whelan cover art found on the 1981 paperback editions published by Del Rey. The art is fantastically creepy, even if it doesn't particularly relate to Lovecraft's stories. You can see the two pieces (chopped up to span seven paperbacks) at Whelan's site here and here.
I picked up this particular collection because it assembles all of Lovecraft's stories in chronological order, allowing the reader to experience both the growing skill of Lovecraft as a writer and the expansion and iteration of his favorite themes, settings and tentacles. The included illustrations are merely serviceable but given the price of the volume, that's a non-issue.
I read the collection over the course of many months, usually taking in a story or two between novels. Not to get all up in the puns, but this is probably the sanest way to read his work. Lovecraft wrote some frightful horror but most of it is delivered in the form of dense, baroque prose that feels as antiquarian as the tombs and ruins his narrators stumble upon. His characters are also strangely mute, with little in the way of spoken dialogue--but this turns out to be a good thing, because as elaborate as Lovecraft's phrasing could get, he had an undeniable style and facility with language that was completely absent when he presented characters talking to each other. No actual person would ever speak the way a Lovecraft character does. It's like watching an early rehearsal of a high school play in 1915. A bad high school play.
But if you tackle his body of work with some restraint there are some great stories in here, and any horror buff would be remiss in not sampling at least the better-known works, ranging from the mythos-establishing "The Call of Cthulhu" to the short novel "At the Mountains of Madness," which eschews most of Lovecraft's excessive flourishes and in turn stands as one of his most chilling stories, as an expedition explores and uncovers the horrors found in ancient cyclopean ruins deep in the Antarctic.
Lovecraft is at his best when he paints surreal landscapes, often literal dream worlds that his protagonists wander through, sometimes emerging mad, sometimes not emerging at all. Conversely, he is at his worst when his racism and classism comes through, with villains typically described as "swarthy," "thick-lipped" or otherwise not white and more specifically, not English. You could argue that he lived in a less-enlightened time but that's really no excuse.
And don't ask about the cat*.
Still, his influence and unique voice make him one of the essential horror authors and this collection allows one to experience his growth, if not as a person, then as a storyteller.
* the cat in his 1924 story "The Rats in the Walls" is named Nigger Man, after a cat Lovecraft himself owned
I picked up this particular collection because it assembles all of Lovecraft's stories in chronological order, allowing the reader to experience both the growing skill of Lovecraft as a writer and the expansion and iteration of his favorite themes, settings and tentacles. The included illustrations are merely serviceable but given the price of the volume, that's a non-issue.
I read the collection over the course of many months, usually taking in a story or two between novels. Not to get all up in the puns, but this is probably the sanest way to read his work. Lovecraft wrote some frightful horror but most of it is delivered in the form of dense, baroque prose that feels as antiquarian as the tombs and ruins his narrators stumble upon. His characters are also strangely mute, with little in the way of spoken dialogue--but this turns out to be a good thing, because as elaborate as Lovecraft's phrasing could get, he had an undeniable style and facility with language that was completely absent when he presented characters talking to each other. No actual person would ever speak the way a Lovecraft character does. It's like watching an early rehearsal of a high school play in 1915. A bad high school play.
But if you tackle his body of work with some restraint there are some great stories in here, and any horror buff would be remiss in not sampling at least the better-known works, ranging from the mythos-establishing "The Call of Cthulhu" to the short novel "At the Mountains of Madness," which eschews most of Lovecraft's excessive flourishes and in turn stands as one of his most chilling stories, as an expedition explores and uncovers the horrors found in ancient cyclopean ruins deep in the Antarctic.
Lovecraft is at his best when he paints surreal landscapes, often literal dream worlds that his protagonists wander through, sometimes emerging mad, sometimes not emerging at all. Conversely, he is at his worst when his racism and classism comes through, with villains typically described as "swarthy," "thick-lipped" or otherwise not white and more specifically, not English. You could argue that he lived in a less-enlightened time but that's really no excuse.
And don't ask about the cat*.
Still, his influence and unique voice make him one of the essential horror authors and this collection allows one to experience his growth, if not as a person, then as a storyteller.
* the cat in his 1924 story "The Rats in the Walls" is named Nigger Man, after a cat Lovecraft himself owned
May 4, 2017
How much can one man drown a good story under so many words?
While a lot of his stories seem to have a great tagline, his old writing style shows with overextended descriptions of things that are meant to be indescribable which, in essence, ends up draining a lot of the interest from them.
The worst is not all of the stories suffer from this. As you read this book, you find a few narratives who are pleasing to read, with the impending horror being wonderfully weaved (one finds that these also tend to be short). Their number, however, is not enough to compensate for all others.
If anything, this anthology served to teach me two things:
* Lovecraft is to be read one short story with some days in between
* It is time for me to leave Lovecraft and head for other things.
While a lot of his stories seem to have a great tagline, his old writing style shows with overextended descriptions of things that are meant to be indescribable which, in essence, ends up draining a lot of the interest from them.
The worst is not all of the stories suffer from this. As you read this book, you find a few narratives who are pleasing to read, with the impending horror being wonderfully weaved (one finds that these also tend to be short). Their number, however, is not enough to compensate for all others.
If anything, this anthology served to teach me two things:
* Lovecraft is to be read one short story with some days in between
* It is time for me to leave Lovecraft and head for other things.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews