Okay, after having read all kinds of stuff ripping off Lovecraft, I’ve decided to go straight to the source. (This is related to my Verne and Wells thread elsewhere.) Problem is, there’s a LOT of source. I’d like to get a good paperback collection of Lovecraft, focusing mostly on the elder gods stuff, less on the generic horror stuff, though I’ll probably get to that eventually. And I don’t really want other peoples’ contributions - I just want Lovecraft at the moment. There’s a ton of collections out there, so I was wondering if people had a favorite to recommend.
And, as a bonus for reading this thread, here’s a preview of an upcoming thread:
“…I know there’s a lot of stuff out there, but I’m betting a lot of it is pretty bad, since it seems like something that’s easy to do poorly. So are there good collections of worthwhile S---- H---- stories?”
The two annotated volumes are good, but I’m a sucker for annotated books.
But the best thing to do is buy the updated, re-edited Arkham House 1980s editions of THE DUNWICH HORROR, THE MOUNTAINS OF MADNESS, and DAGON.
Lovecraft scholar/editor S.T. Joshi went back to the original holograph manuscripts in the Brown University collection and put everything back the way HPL supposedly wanted it. Earlier editions (the 1930s-40s Arkham originals THE OUTSIDER AND OTHERS and BEYOND THE WALL OF SLEEP, and the 1960s first editions of the three collections cited above) reprint text from WEIRD TALES magazine, and probably have August Derleth’s grimy editorial fingerprints all over the stories as well.
(Joshi is the guy behind the annotations too, BTW)
I also have a separate, slim edition of The Annotated Shadow over Innsmouth with annotations by Joshi. The story doesn’t appear in his two annotated collections.
If you can’t find the annotated editions, I believe there’s an omnibus edition entitled “The Best of H.P. Lovecraft”, put out by Del Rey.
One of my personal favorites, which you won;t find in any of these collections, is The Case of Charles Dexter Ward
In all cases, avoid the works of August Derleth, unless you’re really desperate for a fix.
It’s interesting that this question came up today, as I spent a good 40 minutes at the bookstore looking at Lovecraft yesterday afternoon. According to Joshi’s endnotes, the “definitive” editions are the ones from Arkham press from the 80’s mentioned above by Ukuelele Ike. (Actually, Joshi lists four volumes.) However, the more widely available volumes are the two annotated volumes plus two other Penguin volumes, “The Thing on the Doorstep and Other Weird Stories” and “The Call fo Cthulu and Other Weird Stories.” So without doing an extensive comparison of the Tables of Contents, it appears that Joshi has recollected (and annotated) the stories from the four Arkham editions into the two annotated volumes and the two Penguin volumes.
The fourth volume is THE HORROR IN THE MUSEUM, which is made up of HPL’s “revisions.” Stories that were ostensibly written by Hazel Heald, Zealia Bishop, Wilfred Blanch Talman, C.M. Eddy, Jr., and others, but which were heavily revised, re-written, or, in some cases, almost COMPLETELY composed by HPL himself.
Some of 'em are pretty good, particularly “The Mound” and the exquisitely sicko “The Loved Dead.” But it’s a book for the completist, not for someone who just wants a ramble through the Lovecraft garden of evil flowers.
The main appeal of the original 1970 edition is the very nifty jacket art by Gahan Wilson.
My daughter is a junior in high school and the mailbox is overflowing with invitations from colleges, but I forwarded a link to their site. If things work out and she stays a virgin I may only have to pay for the first semester.
<sniff!> It makes a father proud when his daughter considers going to his alma mater.
Let’s see how long it takes for her to figure out it’s fake. I knew it was but still almost got taken in by their website. It’s .net now, but I recall at one time it was a .edu site.
“The Rats in the Walls”
“The Colour Out of Space”
“The Dunwich Horror”
“At the Mountains of Madness” (short novel)
ANNOTATED No. TWO has
“The Picture in the House”
“Herbert West – Reanimator”
“The Hound”
“The Shunned House”
“The Horror at Red Hook”
“Cool Air”
“The Call of Cthulhu”
“Pickman’s Model”
“The Thing on the Doorstep”
“The Haunter of the Dark”
Tough call. Neither one has “The Whisperer in Darkness” or “The Shadow over Innsmouth,” two of my particular favorites…but of the two I’d opt for number two.
If you want to cough up a few bucks more and go for the Arkham House hardcover, THE DUNWICH HORROR includes
“In the Vault”
“Pickman’s Model”
“The Rats in the Walls”
“The Outsider”
“The Colour Out of Space”
“The Music of Erich Zann”
“The Haunter of the Dark”
“The Picture in the House”
“The Call of Cthulhu”
“The Dunwich Horror”
“Cool Air”
“The Whisperer in Darkness”
“The Terrible Old Man”
“The Thing on the Doorstep”
“The Shadow Over Innsmouth”
“The Shadow Out of Time”
I found a bunch of his stuff in TXT form online and everything I’ve looked at so far had a copyright before 1927. Are these stories really out of copyright or did the later publishers keep the copyright alive? Can it live that long or would the copyright only apply to the addenda and annotations the new publisher added?
I’m rather keen on “The Temple,” about a German officer on a doomed WWI U-boat. It’s like Das Boot on acid.
And while it isn’t horror, I also like “The White Ship,” which is loaded to the gills with symbolism. It’s also really short, so it can be read in a very short time.
Oh, I’m sorry, I read that as “Which collection?” not “Which story?”
I’d go for “The Colour Out of Space,” which most critics think is his single best tale. It was also chosen by Edward J. O’Brien for reprint in Best Short Stories of 1928, the highest literary honor HPL enjoyed during his lifetime.
