Short Fiction

by H.P. Lovecraft

Howard Phillips Lovecraft was one of the most influential writers of horror fiction in the early 20th century. His fame is mostly posthumous—he was only published in pulp magazines, and never saw financial success. Despite that, Lovecraft’s unique blend of gothicism, horror, and supernatural, set in an imagined but eerily-real New England, marked a gold standard for horror fiction for decades to come.

Readers of modern fantasy and horror fiction will certainly recognize Cthulhu, the tentacle-mouthed god who lies asleep in a sunken Atlantean ruin; the Necronomicon, a grimoire of unspeakable power and horror penned by the “mad Arab” Abdul Alhazred; and the dark, twisted New England countryside of the Miskatonic Valley. These and other features take shape in Lovecraft’s stories, creating a backdrop of the bizarre and horrible behind seemingly day-to-day lives.

This edition is small because verifying the U.S. public domain status of Lovecraft’s corpus is a difficult, if not impossible, academic exercise, and finding first-edition copies to transcribe is also difficult. This edition will be updated as more transcriptions become verified and available.

Included in this edition are some of Lovecraft’s juvenalia—in particular, The Alchemist was written when he was just seventeen or eighteen.

Genres: Fiction

250 pages, ebook

Published April 3, 2018

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

Reviews

[Jasmine · Rating 4 out of 5]

Lovecraft writes better when he isn't trying to strike terror into the heart of his audience—a task he fails miserably with this reader. As such, Ex Oblivione, The White Ship, and Nyarlathotep take the spots for my favourite stories in this collection. His was a bizarre imagination, and I sorely wish to see it at work again in his non-horror oeuvre.

[Daniel · Rating 3 out of 5]

A collection of Lovecraft short stories in the public domain. Some of his earlier or lesser known work. The best two are the last two and the longest: “The Dunwich Horror”
and “Shunned House.” Readers looking for the “Call of Cthulu” will not find it here.

[Brandon Parman · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was my long overdue intro to Lovecraft and I really enjoyed it. Call of Cthulhu is indeed in the Standard Ebooks edition that this is referencing. He throws in some words every now and then that I had to look up but overall it's a pretty quick read. I think his worlds are quite unique and very descriptive. I think if you like the strange and bizarre you will definitely like it.

[Sean · Rating 3 out of 5]

Glad I finally got around to it. As I suspected, no great writer, but his descriptions are evocative, forelorn, and well worth a quick reading.