LIBRARY OF ESSENTIAL WRITERS H. P. LOVECRAFT 9 THE FICTION O COMPLETE AND UNABRIDGED . . The Outsider The Callof Cthulhu The CaseofCharles . . DexterWard The Colour out ofSpace The Dunwich . Horror At the Mountains ofMadness andmore BARNES & NOBLE NEW YORK Compilation©2008byBarnes86Noble,Inc. IntroductionbyS.T.Joshi©2008byBarnes& Noble,Inc. All rightsreserved.Nopartofthispublicationmaybereproduced,storedinaretrieval system,ortransmitted,inanyformorbyanymeans,electronic,mechanical,photocopying, recording,orotherwise,withoutpriorwrittenpermissionfromthepublisher. Barnes8:Noble,Inc. 122FifthAvenue NewYork,NY 10011 ISBN-13:978-1-4351-0793—9 PrintedandboundinChina 13579108642 CONTENTS Introduction IX The BeastintheCave TheAlchemist TheTomb 14 Dagon 23 A ReminiscenceofDr.SamuelJohnson 28 Polaris 33 BeyondtheWallofSleep 37 Memory 46 OldBugs 47 TheTransition ofjuanRomero 54 TheWhite Ship 60 The Street 65 The DoomThat CametoSarnath 70 The StatementofRandolphCarter 76 TheTerrible OldMan 81 TheTree 84 The CatsofUlthar 88 TheTemple 91 FacrsConcerningthe LateArthurJermynandHisFamily 102 Cclepha’is 110 FromBeyond 115 Nyarlathorep 121 The Pictureinthe House 124 ExOblivione 131 Sweet Ermengarde 133 The NamelessCity 141 The QuestofIranon 151 The Mooanog 157 The Outsider 164 The OtherGods 170 OVIO H.P. LOVECRAFT TheMusic ofErichZann 174 HerbertWest—Reanimator 181 Hypnos 206 What theMoonBrings 212 Azathorh 214 The Hound 216 The LurkingFear 223 The RatsintheWalls 240 The Unnamable 256 The Festival 262 Underthe Pyramids 270 The ShunnedHouse 292 The HorroratRedHook 314 He 332 IntheVault 341 CoolAir 348 The CallofCthulhu 355 Pickman’sModel 380 TheSilverKey 391. The Strange HighHouseintheMist 401 The DreavauestofUnknownKadath 409 TheCaseofCharles DexterWard 490 The ColouroutofSpace 594 The Descendant 61.7 HistoryoftheNecronomz'con 621 TheVery OldFolk 623 Ibid 629 The DunwichHorror 633 TheWhisperer inDarkness 668 At theMountains ofMadness 723 The Shadowover Innsmouth 807 The DreamsintheWitch House 859 ThroughtheGatesofthe SilverKey 889 TheThingonthe Doorstep 919 The EvilClergyman 941 The Book 945 The ShadowoutofTime 948 The Haunterofthe Dark 999 . . CONTENTS v11 Appendixzjuveniliu The LittleGlass Bottle 1018 The SecretCave 1020 TheMystery ofthe Grave—yard 1022 The Mysterious Ship [shortversion] 1027 The MysteriousShip [longversion] 1030 Discardeddraftof"TheShadow over Innsmouth” 1034 SupernaturalHorrorinLiterature 1041 About theAuthor 1099 INTRODUCTION .P.LOVECRAFTWOULD HAVE BEENAS SURPRISED AS ANYONE IF HECOULD havewitnessed the tremendousposthumoustriumphheandhiswork have achieved. His tales—~fewer than seventy in number, and only three of short- novellength—havebeenpublishedincountlesseditions rangingfromprestigious academic volumes to mass-market paperbacks; they have been translated into at least twenty-five languages around the world, from Bengali to Serbo-Croatian; in the pastthirtyyears hisstories havebeenscrutinizedas meticuouslyas if they were biblicaltexts,and somecritics have rankedhimamongtheworld’s greatest writers. Most interestingof all,Lovecrafthimselfhasbecomeacultural icon,his gaunt, lantern-jawedcountenance immediately recognizable as the fitting visage of one whose imagination populated the world with a legionof cosmic horrors thatbleaklyunderscoredtheinsignificanceofhumanityandallitsworksinablind, godless universe.Some features of the myththatis H.P.Lovecraftare seriously inerror,butthemainoutlinesof hislifeandwork havenowbeenestablishedwith faircertainty. HowardPhillipsLovecraftwasbornonAugust20, 1890,inProvidence,Rhode Island.Hismaternallinewas aproudanddistinguishedone,reachingbackto the seventeenthcentury;hispaternallineextendedtotheMiddleAgesinEngland,and some membersof the Lovecraftfamily hademigrated to the UnitedStatesinthe early nineteenth century. Lovecraft’s family experienced early turmoil when, in 1893,hisfather,WinfieldScottLovecraft,Sufferedaparalyticattackandhadtobe confined to Butler Hospitalin Providence;hedied there five years later,of “pa— resis” (tertiary syphilis). Traumatized, Lovecraft’s mother, Sarah Susan Phillips Lovecraft,returnedto the family homeand,inher treatment of heronly son,al— ternatedbetweenoverprotectiveness andacuriousemotional distance.Lovecraft, forhispart,foundinhisgrandfather,thewealthyindustrialistWhipplePhillips,an admirablereplacementforhisfather.Heengagedinliteraryandscientificpursuits (witha particular enthusiasm for chemistry and astronomy) from an early age, makingupforvery spottyformalschoolingattheSlaterAvenue SchoolandHope StreetHighSchool.Hebeganwritingasearlyastheageofseven,producingboth short horrortales (laterinspiredbyEdgarAllan Poe,whose discovery at the age of eight thrilled him) and scientific treatises. Butill health—chiefly,it seems,of . + x H.P. LOVECRAFT a psychologicalvariety—dogged him,and hewas forced towithdraw from high schoolin 1908without adiploma. For the next five years, Lovecraft retreatedinto hermitry,seeing few of his friends anddoinglittlesave readingbooks.Heemergedfromthiscocooninape— culiar manner.Havingtakento readingsome of thepopularfiction magazinesof theday,hewassodisgustedbythesentimentalromancesofawriter,FredJackson, inArgosy that hewrote a long letter criticizingJackson’s productions.Jackson’s many supporters came to his defense, and Lovecraft responded with more let— ters——thistimeinverse,adoptingtheeighteenth—centurysatirestyleofAlexander Pope.ThiscontroversywasobservedbyEdwardF.Daas,anofficialofthe United Amateur PressAssociation (UAPA),and he invited Lovecraft to join. Lovecraft didsowithalacrity. . The UAPA (andanolder organization,the NationalAmateur PressAssocia— tion,which Lovecraft also later joined) was a relatively small group of amateur writers from around the country (anda few from overseas) who publishedsmall journals and circulated them to other members. Lovecraft found this intimate, non-threateningsociety exactly thecure for hissocial timidity,andhebombarded the journals of the UAPAwith his contributions—chiefly poetryand essays. He publishedthirteenissuesof hisownamateurjournal,the Conservative—reflecting bothhispoliticalandliteraryconservatism,asbefittedonewho felthebelongedin the eighteenth century. Gradually,however,Lovecraftallowedsome of his early talestobepublished;receivingencouragementfromafewfriends,notablyW Paul Cook,hebeganwriting more.Hisdiscovery of the Irishfantasist LordDunsany in 1919lentatremendousimpetustohiswork,andLovecraftproducedadozenor moreimitationsofthelapidaryfantasyof hisnewidol. Up to this point,Lovecrafthadnothoughtof professionalpublicationof his work; but,after two of histales appeared in a crude semi-professional magazine entitledHomeBrew,hewasintriguedbythefoundingin 1923ofthepulpmagazine LVez'rd Tales. Several colleagues—including Clark Ashton Smith, the poet who wouldattaincelebrityinthe 19303forfantasytalesofhisown—~—urgedhimtocon- tribute,and Lovecraftat lastdidso. Histaleswere readilyaccepted,and he soon becameafixtureinthemagazine.Indeed,in 1924hewasapparentlyaskedtobeits editor;butthe job would have requiredrelocationto Chicago,a move Lovecraft was,forseveralgoodreasons,notwillingtomake. OneofthosereasonshadtodowiththefactthathehadrecentlymarriedSonia H.Greene,aRussianJewishimmigrantwho hadjoined theamateurmovementin 1921.Afterasomewhatlanguidromance,theymarriedandsettledinSonia’sapart- mentinBrooklyn.However,troublesofvarious sortsbesetthecouplealmostim— mediately,chiefofthembeingasuddendeficiencyofincomeasaresultofSonia’s . INTRODUCTION » xx losingherpositionasahighlypaidexecutiveataNewYork departmentstore.She wasforcedtopursueacareerasamillinerintheMidwest,leavingLovecraftalone inacitywhose immensity,modernity,and“foreigners”weresodifferentfromthe placid,history-richcityof hisbirth. At last,Lovecraftdecided for the sake of hissanity to returnto Providence, andhedid so inthe springof 1926.Where Sonia fit into these planswas noten- tirely clear;Lovecraft’stwo aunts—who hadnurturedhimafter the deathof his motherin 1921—madeitclear thattheycouldnot“afford”tohavetheirnephew’s wifebeatradeswomaninthetownwheretheyrepresentedaninformalaristocracy. Lovecraftacquiescedinthisdecision,andSoniaknewthat themarriagewas over. They divorcedin 1929. Lovecraft’sreturntoProvidenceunleashed3Spareofwritingsuchashenever eXperiencedbeforeorsince.Inninemonthsheproducedsuchworks as “TheCall of of of Cthulhu,” The Dream-Quest UnknownKaa’at/z, Tne Case C/zarlesDexter Ward, and“TheColouroutof Space.” Lovecraftbythistime,perhapsasa result ofworkingonahistoricaltreatise,“SupernaturalHorrorinLiterature,”hadcome to have quite definite ideas of the nature and purpose of what he called “weird fiction.” Heoutlinedtheseideas ina letterto FarnsworthWright,editorof Weird Tales, in 1927: Now all my tales are based on the fundamental premise that common human laws and interests and emotions have no validity or significance inthevast cosmos-at-large....To achievetheessenceof realexternality, whether of timeorspaceordimension,onemustforgetthatsuchthingsas organiclife,goodandevil,loveandhate,andallsuchlocalattributesofa negligibleandtemporary racecalledmankind,haveany existence atall. What this means is that Lovecraft, in a major departure from the previous horror tradition—and,inmanyways,from the entire Western literarytradition, which habitually if unconsciously stressed the centrality of humanbeings to the cosmos—would emphasize the insignificance of humanity in a universe that ap- pearsto beboundleSsbothinspace andintime.Hewould do this chiefly by the depictionof immenseentities—called “gods”byhumanbeingswho cannotcom- prehendsuchcreatures exceptbyappeals to a deity—from the farthestdepths of space.ItcanbeseenfromthisthatLovecraftwascreatingafusionofsupernatural horrorwiththenewgenreofsciencefiction;itisnoaccidentthat“TheColourout of Space”appearedinthepioneeringsciencefictionpulp,Amagz'ng Stories. As Lovecraftdeveloped hispseudomythology from tale to tale—incorporat- ingsuchelementsasanentire fictional NewEnglandtopography,with suchcities .x11+ H. P. LOVECRAFT as Arkham, Kingsport,Dunwich,and Innsmouth;a growing library of “forbid- den”books,suchastheNecronomiconofthemadArabAbdulAlhazred,whichpro- videdglimpsesof thecosmicentitiesandtheirencounterswithhumanbeings;and a cadre of sober,scientific protagonistswhose encounterswith the unimaginably bizarre unhingedtheir minds—readers andfellow writers begannoticinga curi— ous coherence inthe mythicbackground.Itwas, however,only after Lovecraft’s death that his self-styled discipleAugust Derlethgave it a name—the “Cthulhu Mythos.”Writers suchasDerleth,FrankBelknapLong,ClarkAshton Smith,and RobertE.Howard,beganwriting tales develOpeduponthe Mythos or creatinga parallelMythosoftheirown.Lovecraftoftenwelcomedthesetakeoffsofhiswork, chieflybecausehefeltthatthecitationofhissynthetic monstersbydifferentwrit— erswouldlendthemgreatercredibility. As Lovecraft’swork progressed,hehimself beganeschewing traditional su- pernaturalismmoreandmore.Hehad,infact,neverusedsuchconventionaltrOpes asthevampire,theghost,orthewerewolf:averycuriouspsychicvampirefigures in “TheShunned House,”and Tlze Caseof CharlesDexter Wardisaskillfulhom- age to the old-time Gothicschool in itsuseof alchemy and the quest for eternal life;butinhismostcharacteristicwork Lovecraftdevisedconceptionsandentities entirely his own. By 1931,when he wrote the landmark Antarctic novelAt the MountainsofMadness, hewas readytoarticulatehisnewaestheticcreed: The time has come when the normal revolt against time, Space, 8c mat- ter mustassume a form notovertly incompatible with what is knownof reality—whenit mustbegratifiedbyimages formingsupplements rather thancontradictionsof thevisible &mensurableuniverse.Andwhat,if not aformOf non-supernaturalcosmicart, is topacifythissense of reVOlt—as well asgratifythecognate senseof curiosity? At tlteMountains ofMadness—in which it is madeplainthat the entities that humanbeingslikeAlhazred took tobe “gods”are nothingmorethanaliens from outerspace—embodiesthesenewconceptionsperfectly,andinmanywaysremains hisgreatestwork offiction.Andyet,Lovecraftcouldstillwrite sopowerfulatale as “The Shadow over Innsmouth,”which is largely lackingin the overt “cosmi- cism”oftheAntarcticnovel,insteadpaintinganunforgettablepictureOfthedecay of anagingNewEnglandbackwaterinvadedbyhybridentitiesfromthesea. The lastseveralyearsof Lovecraft’3careerwere,however,notentirelyhappy. In 1931hewas stunnedby FarnsworthWright’srejectionofAt t/zeMountains of Madness, which helateradmitted “didmorethan anything else to endmyeffec- tive fictional career.” Severalof the talesheproducedduringthis period,suchas