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More Annotated H.P. Lovecraft
Explore the marvelous complexity of Lovecraft's writing—including his use of literary allusions, biographical details, and obscure references in this rich, in-depth exploration of great horror fiction from the acknowledged master of the weird, including the stories "Herbert West—Reanimator", "Pickman's Model", "The Call of Cthulhu", "The Thing on the Doorstep", "The Horror at Red Hook" and more.
Did Lovecraft believe in ghosts or paranormal phenomena? In what story does the narrator fear riding the Boston T?
A pathfinder in the literary territory of the macabre, H.P. Lovecraft is one of America's giants of the horror genre. Now, in this second volume of annotated tales, Lovecraft scholars S. T. Joshi and Peter Cannon provide another rare opportunity to look into the mind of a genius. Their extensive notes lift the veil between real events in the writer's life—such as the death of his father—and the words that spill out onto the page in magnificent grotesquerie. Mansions, universities, laboratories, and dank New England boneyards appear also as the haunts where Lovecraft's characters confront the fabulous and fantastic, or—like the narrator in "Herbert West—Reanimator"—dig up fresh corpses.
Richly illustrated and scrupulously researched, this extraordinary work adds exciting levels of meaning to Lovecraft's chilling tales... and increases our wonder at the magic that transforms life into a great writer's art.
Did Lovecraft believe in ghosts or paranormal phenomena? In what story does the narrator fear riding the Boston T?
A pathfinder in the literary territory of the macabre, H.P. Lovecraft is one of America's giants of the horror genre. Now, in this second volume of annotated tales, Lovecraft scholars S. T. Joshi and Peter Cannon provide another rare opportunity to look into the mind of a genius. Their extensive notes lift the veil between real events in the writer's life—such as the death of his father—and the words that spill out onto the page in magnificent grotesquerie. Mansions, universities, laboratories, and dank New England boneyards appear also as the haunts where Lovecraft's characters confront the fabulous and fantastic, or—like the narrator in "Herbert West—Reanimator"—dig up fresh corpses.
Richly illustrated and scrupulously researched, this extraordinary work adds exciting levels of meaning to Lovecraft's chilling tales... and increases our wonder at the magic that transforms life into a great writer's art.
312 pages, Paperback
First published August 10, 1999
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471 people want to read
About the author
H.P. Lovecraft
6,110 books19.2k 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 - 21 of 21 reviews
May 20, 2020
While reading annotated editions can, at times, be distracting from the original narrative, they can offer insights and perspectives that the reader might otherwise miss. That's the case with this volume annotated by S.T. Joshi & Peter Cannon. There were a few occasions when the footnotes frustrated the mounting tension of the stories, but for the most part they were well positioned and provided additional material to reward the diligent reader. The stories themselves range from some solid reliable H.P. Lovecraft selections to at least a couple of his best.
While I wouldn't recommend an annotated edition to everyone, this is a well researched volume for anyone interested in digging a little deeper into Lovecraft's canon.
While I wouldn't recommend an annotated edition to everyone, this is a well researched volume for anyone interested in digging a little deeper into Lovecraft's canon.
August 5, 2011
I'm neither pleased nor entirely displeased with "More Annotated H.P. Lovecraft". I feel a melancholic listlessness. There was some very insightful annotations, and some which only give the dictionary definition of such words as "cyclopean". That which was insightful, was quite so, and I only wish there were even more. Noteworthy were the notes on Pigafetta's "Regnum Congo", the Symbolists, the pre-Raphaelites, Bauldelaire, Huysmans, Arthur Machen, Algernon Blackwood, such artists as Goya, Dore, Angarola, Sime and Fuseli, Lovecraft's family, historical places and pictures, historical names, and excerpts from Lovecraft's letters.
I did notice several spelling errors--they were not archaic spellings, but actual printing errors. This, together with the several seemingly asinine and sometimes redundant annotations, gave the work a sense of being hastily constructed. I believe this would be an very nice introduction for the Lovecraftian neophyte. There is quite a lot of good information here, which has given me a long list of referenced tomes which I would love to add to my shelves, such as Lord Dunsany's "The Book of Wonder" and W. Scott-Elliot's "The Story of Atlantis" and "The Lost Lemuria", Fiske's "Myths and Myth Makers", Miss Murray's "Witch-Cult in Western Europe" and Del Rio's "Disquisitionum Magicarum Libri Sex".
I am fascinated by the fact that Lovecraft, a confessed "mechanist materialist", was totally obsessed with the supernatural. Jack Vance's character, Gartover, in "Ports of Call" said that "'skepticism' is sometimes known as 'dogmatic ignorance'.
I would have to say that my favorite Lovecraft piece within this collection is "Pickman's Model"--"But by God, Eliot, it was a photograph from life"--wheels within wheels, the profound paradoxical. I too cannot get William Blake's "The Ghost of a Flea" out of my mind's eye.
I did notice several spelling errors--they were not archaic spellings, but actual printing errors. This, together with the several seemingly asinine and sometimes redundant annotations, gave the work a sense of being hastily constructed. I believe this would be an very nice introduction for the Lovecraftian neophyte. There is quite a lot of good information here, which has given me a long list of referenced tomes which I would love to add to my shelves, such as Lord Dunsany's "The Book of Wonder" and W. Scott-Elliot's "The Story of Atlantis" and "The Lost Lemuria", Fiske's "Myths and Myth Makers", Miss Murray's "Witch-Cult in Western Europe" and Del Rio's "Disquisitionum Magicarum Libri Sex".
I am fascinated by the fact that Lovecraft, a confessed "mechanist materialist", was totally obsessed with the supernatural. Jack Vance's character, Gartover, in "Ports of Call" said that "'skepticism' is sometimes known as 'dogmatic ignorance'.
I would have to say that my favorite Lovecraft piece within this collection is "Pickman's Model"--"But by God, Eliot, it was a photograph from life"--wheels within wheels, the profound paradoxical. I too cannot get William Blake's "The Ghost of a Flea" out of my mind's eye.
April 28, 2008
Ohh- I read it anytime. When there´s nothing else to read.To keep my mind alive, some horror fiction helps. And I claim that Lovecraft founded and helped modern SF to develop. Contradict me as you will. Try. HPL is the Master, though he of course couldn´t know. Try to think in his timeframe. HPL it is. Do you know his famous citation...
"We live on a placid Island of Ignorance in the midst of black seas of Infinity, and it was not meant that we should voyage far. The sciences, each straining in its own direction, have hitherto harmed us little; but some day the piecing together of dissociated knowledge will open up such terrifying vistas of reality, and our frightful position therein, that we shall either go mad from the revelation or flee from the deadly light into the peace and safety of a new dark age."
That´s what HPL told in the late 1920´s. Now contradict it, and me.
"We live on a placid Island of Ignorance in the midst of black seas of Infinity, and it was not meant that we should voyage far. The sciences, each straining in its own direction, have hitherto harmed us little; but some day the piecing together of dissociated knowledge will open up such terrifying vistas of reality, and our frightful position therein, that we shall either go mad from the revelation or flee from the deadly light into the peace and safety of a new dark age."
That´s what HPL told in the late 1920´s. Now contradict it, and me.
October 21, 2011
I've read several Lovecraft anthologies and I suppose I could add just about any of them to my list, but I chose this one because it was one I actually owned, and because I bought it in Salem, Massachusetts. We had just been in Boston the day before and so I made sure to read "Pickman's Model" that very night.
What can I say about H.P. Lovecraft that hasn't already been said? I can only add how he moves me personally. The first Lovecraft story I ever read was "The Outsider" and I was hooked. Now I write my own Mythos-based fiction (like about a million others out there, probably), play Cradle of Filth's "Cthulhu Dawn" on an endless loop on my ipod as I stand out under the stars, and copy pages of the Necronomicon by hand on ancient paper under the light of a guttering candle in the draftiest corner of my basement.
What can I say about H.P. Lovecraft that hasn't already been said? I can only add how he moves me personally. The first Lovecraft story I ever read was "The Outsider" and I was hooked. Now I write my own Mythos-based fiction (like about a million others out there, probably), play Cradle of Filth's "Cthulhu Dawn" on an endless loop on my ipod as I stand out under the stars, and copy pages of the Necronomicon by hand on ancient paper under the light of a guttering candle in the draftiest corner of my basement.
January 10, 2011
Though I wouldn't recommend it as an intro to HPL (due to the inclusion of lesser stories, such as "The Shunned House" and "The Horror at Red Hook"), as a longtime Lovecraft fan I found it to be a real treat. Joshua and Cannon's notes help bring out the use of historical and literary allusions as well as the intertextuality of Lovecraft's tales. Includes such gems as "The Picture in the House," "Pickman's Model," and "The Call of Cthulhu."
March 12, 2008
More of Lovecraft's better work, annotated by S.T. Joshi.
October 6, 2008
Highly recommended for the serious Lovecraft fan, but not necessary for a casual reader. The numerous notes would be distracting for an introduction to the mythos.
September 22, 2011
Lovecraft is the epitome of weird!
November 23, 2023
Now that I've finished this, it's safe to say that I'm done with reading Lovecraft for a while. No doubt in a year or two I'll try him again, but a little of him goes a long way as far as I'm concerned. On the whole, I preferred the stories collected here to those collected in the first volume, but some of them were still not great. The best of them is "Pickman's Model," which I've read many times before and liked, but on the whole... the things that appear to scare Lovecraft do not raise a whole lot of chills for me. The more cosmic horror he trends, the less I care.
Of this particular edition: most of the footnotes were helpful and illuminating, and I enjoyed the short opening essay. As with the previous volume in the series, though, there is inexplicably no table of contents.
Otherwise, I read and reviewed the stories included here separately so don't feel much need to go over them again. No penguins this time, unfortunately, but there were bats instead, and it's not like the penguins were made as much of as I would have liked anyway. Which I suppose can also be said for the bats...
Of this particular edition: most of the footnotes were helpful and illuminating, and I enjoyed the short opening essay. As with the previous volume in the series, though, there is inexplicably no table of contents.
Otherwise, I read and reviewed the stories included here separately so don't feel much need to go over them again. No penguins this time, unfortunately, but there were bats instead, and it's not like the penguins were made as much of as I would have liked anyway. Which I suppose can also be said for the bats...
November 19, 2017
You know what's kind of a bummer? Revisiting an author who inspired so much of what you love, and finding his work overwhelmingly xenophobic, even after trotting out the "It was a different time" justification. Lovecraft remains relevant in 2017, partially for the wrong reasons.
Also, please remind me to never ever buy an annotated version again. I don't need the persistent whisper of footnote typography at the bottom of the page luring my attention away from the story in order to tell me what an amulet is.
Favorite stories: "The Call of Cthulhu", "Pickman's Model", "The Thing on the Doorstep"
Also, please remind me to never ever buy an annotated version again. I don't need the persistent whisper of footnote typography at the bottom of the page luring my attention away from the story in order to tell me what an amulet is.
Favorite stories: "The Call of Cthulhu", "Pickman's Model", "The Thing on the Doorstep"
October 22, 2024
i really loved how the stories chosen for this collection were by their setting/sense of place--it was an interesting way to move through lovecraft's work. the final story, "the Haunter of the Dark" was i think genuinely the spookiest story in the whole collection and an excellent one to end on.
April 1, 2025
I read this because all of my favorite horror writers listed Lovecraft as being an important influence on them. While I enjoyed the book, I found it more interesting as a time piece rather than horror greatness. I'm sure its just me tho.
June 27, 2024
Even though it isn't really subject matter I enjoy, the writing is fantastic.
Read
November 20, 2024Czytanie tego po polsku to strata czasu. Użyto starych tłumaczeń, które są fatalne. Tłumacze mają ciągłe problemy z układaniem sensownych zdań po polsku. Pomijają fragmenty. Zmieniają sens na przeciwny: w oryginale bohater czeka, według tłumacza ucieka.
Polskie wydanie zrobiono w sposób mało przemyślany. Tam, gdzie angielski oryginał w przypisach objaśnia archaiczne słowa, polski tłumacz zostawił przypis i objaśnia angielskie słowo, którego nie ma przecież w wydrukowanym polskim tekście!
Polecam albo odpuścić sobie wydanie z przypisami i czytać jedyne dobre tłumaczenie, które zrobił Maciej Płaza. Albo czytać Petera Cannona w oryginale po angielsku.
Polskie wydanie zrobiono w sposób mało przemyślany. Tam, gdzie angielski oryginał w przypisach objaśnia archaiczne słowa, polski tłumacz zostawił przypis i objaśnia angielskie słowo, którego nie ma przecież w wydrukowanym polskim tekście!
Polecam albo odpuścić sobie wydanie z przypisami i czytać jedyne dobre tłumaczenie, które zrobił Maciej Płaza. Albo czytać Petera Cannona w oryginale po angielsku.
February 13, 2016
As someone who'd read only a couple of Lovecraft stories before, I bought this because it contains a couple of iconic works and seemed likely to give a good study of the man and his writing. It didn't disappoint: it provides interesting perspective on the stories and the author. It was good to get background on words that were familiar to me as a reader of horror: Cthulhu, Arkham, Necronomicon, etc.
I admit that I didn't read all the stories in the book because the intro actually said some of them weren't so good. I give the book three stars because of this overall unevenness, but the good parts were very good. "Cool Air" and "Hunter in the Dark" were both quite good, particularly the latter. I'd recently re-watched the film "Re-Animator", so it was fun to read it here (it was first published as a serial!) But the main draw was "The Call of Cthulhu", which I'd wanted to read for a long time. It was much more grand in scope than I'd imagined it would be: a pretty remarkable story.
I admit that I didn't read all the stories in the book because the intro actually said some of them weren't so good. I give the book three stars because of this overall unevenness, but the good parts were very good. "Cool Air" and "Hunter in the Dark" were both quite good, particularly the latter. I'd recently re-watched the film "Re-Animator", so it was fun to read it here (it was first published as a serial!) But the main draw was "The Call of Cthulhu", which I'd wanted to read for a long time. It was much more grand in scope than I'd imagined it would be: a pretty remarkable story.
May 28, 2025
This volume carries on the traditions – mostly good – established by its predecessor. My only real gripe here is that some of the annotations are a little on the trivial side, sometimes defining common words that can easily be looked up in a dictionary if the reader so desires. However, for the most part the notes provide genuine, useful insight into Lovecraft’s writing. I also enjoyed the mix; if there had been one, the table of contents would have included some seminal examples of the author’s work (particularly the famous “Call of Cthulhu”), a couple of old friends (including “Pickman’s Model,” one of the first Lovecraftian stories I ever read), and a couple I’d never read before (including “The Horror at Red Hook” and “Herbert West: Reanimator,” though I didn’t especially care for the latter). Fans of the author’s work will want to include this book in their collections, and even those with a more casual interest in horror fiction should find this a fascinating read.
February 2, 2016
Written in a different time altogether. This was my first time reading Lovecraft's works, despite hearing his name & his creations pop up numerous times in other author's works. I was very satisfied by his short stories and the imagery he used in conjuring horror without delving into the gruesome blood spattered horror we see today. The only shortcoming, in my opinion, is the delirium which seems to overtake anyone witness to the abominable sights.
The annotations helped to give a deeper background on the author and the world which influenced him.
The annotations helped to give a deeper background on the author and the world which influenced him.
July 20, 2012
I absolutely love Lovecraft... some of the best "weird" fiction out there, and a great PG-13 gateway into the horror genre. Highly recommend this book - the annotations are great: they put the setting and story into real places and times. Read It!
November 5, 2012
Reanimator... Wow!! Could be an amazing movie. Definitely one of my favorites by Lovecraft.
November 21, 2013
I enjoyed this selection of stories much more than the original set.
June 13, 2015
The Greatest.
Displaying 1 - 21 of 21 reviews