H. P. Lovecraft

Titles in Short Stories category:

• Alchemist, The    

  High up, crowning the grassy summit of a swelling mount whose sides are wooded near the base with the gnarled trees of the primeval forest stands the old chateau of my ancestors. For centuries its lofty battlements have frowned down upon the wild and rugged countryside about, serving as ...

• Beast in the Cave, The

  The horrible conclusion which had been gradually obtruding itself upon my confused and reluctant mind was now an awful certainty. I was lost, completely, hopelessly lost in the vast and labyrinthine recess of the Mammoth Cave. Turn as I might, In no direction could my straining vision seiz ...

• Beyond the Wall of Sleep

  I have often wondered if the majority of mankind ever pause to reflect upon the occasionally titanic significance of dreams, and of the obscure world to which they belong. Whilst the greater number of our nocturnal visions are perhaps no more than faint and fantastic reflections of our wak ...

• Cats of Ulthar, The    

  It is said that in Ulthar, which lies beyond the river Skai, no man may kill a cat; and this I can verily believe as I gaze upon him who sitteth purring before the fire. For the cat is cryptic, and close to strange things which men cannot see. He is the soul of antique Aegyptus, and bea ...

• Celephais

  In a dream Kuranes saw the city in the valley, and the seacoast beyond, and the snowy peak overlooking the sea, and the gaily painted galleys that sail out of the harbour toward distant regions where the sea meets the sky. In a dream it was also that he came by his name of Kuranes, for whe ...

• Crawling Chaos, The

  Of the pleasures and pains of opium much has been written. The ecstasies and horrors of De Quincey and the paradis artificiels of Baudelaire are preserved and interpreted with an art which makes them immortal, and the world knows well the beauty, the terror and the mystery of those obscure ...

• Dagon    

  I am writing this under an appreciable mental strain, since by tonight I shall be no more. Penniless, and at the end of my supply of the drug which alone, makes life endurable, I can bear the torture no longer; and shall cast myself from this garret window into the squalid street below. Do ...

• Doom That Came to Sarnath, The

  There is in the land of Mnar a vast still lake that is fed by no stream, and out of which no stream flows. Ten thousand years ago there stood by its shore the mighty city of Sarnath, but Sarnath stands there no more.

• Ex Oblivione    

  When the last days were upon me, and the ugly trifles of existence began to drive me to madness like the small drops of water that torturers let fall ceaselessly upon one spot of their victims body, I loved the irradiate refuge of sleep. In my dreams I found a little of the beauty I had v ...

• Facts Concerning the Late Arthur Jermyn and His Family

  Life is a hideous thing, and from the background behind what we know of it peer daemoniacal hints of truth which make it sometimes a thousandfold more hideous. Science, already oppressive with its shocking revelations, will perhaps be the ultimate exterminator of our human species—if separ ...

• Herbert West: Reanimator    

  Of Herbert West, who was my friend in college and in after life, I can speak only with extreme terror. This terror is not due altogether to the sinister manner of his recent disappearance, but was engendered by the whole nature of his life-work, and first gained its acute form more than se ...

• Hypnos

  Apropos of sleep, that sinister adventure of all our nights, we may say that men go to bed daily with an audacity that would be incomprehensible if we did not know that it is the result of ignorance of the danger.

• Lurking Fear, The

  I. THE SHADOW ON THE CHIMNEY

• Memory

  In the valley of Nis the accursed waning moon shines thinly, tearing a path for its light with feeble horns through the lethal foliage of a great upas-tree. And within the depths of the valley, where the light reaches not, move forms not meant to be beheld. Rank is the herbage on each slop ...

• Music of Erich Zann, The

  I have examined maps of the city with the greatest care, yet have never again found the Rue d’Auseil. These maps have not been modem maps alone, for I know that names change. I have, on the contrary, delved deeply into all the antiquities of the place, and have personally explored every re ...

• Nameless City, The

  When I drew nigh the nameless city I knew it was accursed. I was traveling in a parched and terrible valley under the moon, and afar I saw it protruding uncannily above the sands as parts of a corpse may protrude from an ill-made grave. Fear spoke from the age-worn stones of this hoary sur ...

• Nyarlathotep

  Nyarlathotep... the crawling chaos... I am the last... I will tell the audient void...

• Picture in the House, The    

  Searchers after horror haunt strange, far places. For them are the catacombs of Ptolemais, and the carven mausolea of the nightmare countries. They climb to the moonlit towers of ruined Rhine castles, and falter down black cobwebbed steps beneath the scattered stones of forgotten cities in ...

• Poetry and the Gods

  A damp gloomy evening in April it was, just after the close of the Great War, when Marcia found herself alone with strange thoughts and wishes, unheard- of yearnings which floated out of the spacious twentieth-century drawing room, up the deeps of the air, and eastward to olive groves in ...

• Polaris

  Into the North Window of my chamber glows the Pole Star with uncanny light. All through the long hellish hours of blackness it shines there. And in the autumn of the year, when the winds from the north curse and whine, and the red-leaved trees of the swamp mutter things to one another in t ...

• Statement of Randolph Carter, The

  Again I say, I do not know what has become of Harley Warren, though I think--almost hope--that he is in peaceful oblivion, if there be anywhere so blessed a thing. It is true that I have for five years been his closest friend, and a partial sharer of his terrible researches into the unknow ...

• Street, The

  There be those who say that things and places have souls, and there be those who say they have not; I dare not say, myself, but I will tell of the Street.

• Terrible Old Man, The    

  It was the design of Angelo Ricci and Joe Czanek and Manuel Silva to call on the Terrible Old Man. This old man dwells all alone in a very ancient house on Water Street near the sea, and is reputed to be both exceedingly rich and exceedingly feeble; which forms a situation very attractive ...

• Tomb, The    

  In relating the circumstances which have led to my confinement within this refuge for the demented, I am aware that my present position will create a natural doubt of the authenticity of my narrative. It is an unfortunate fact that the bulk of humanity is too limited in its mental vision t ...

• Tree, The

  On a verdant slope of Mount Maenalus, in Arcadia, there stands an olive grove about the ruins of a villa. Close by is a tomb, once beautiful with the sublimest sculptures, but now fallen into as great decay as the house. At one end of that tomb, its curious roots displacing the time-staine ...

• What the Moon Brings

  I hate the moon - I am afraid of it - for when it shines on certain scenes familiar and loved it sometimes makes them unfamiliar and hideous.

• White Ship, The

  I am Basil Elton, keeper of the North Point light that my father and grandfather kept before me. Far from the shore stands the gray lighthouse, above sunken slimy rocks that are seen when the tide is low, but unseen when the tide is high. Past that beacon for a century have swept the ma ...

About the Author

American poet and author of macabre short novels, who was virtually unknown most of his career. Lovecraft's posthumous fame, particularly in America and France, rests on his 'Cthulhu Mythos' stories, referring to a "race who, in practicing black magic, lost their foothold and were expelled, yet live on outside ever ready to take possession of this earth again." H.P. Lovecraft has become a cult figure in the genre of horror stories; he is considered a true successor of Edgar Allan Poe. Lovecraft's imaginary town in his tales, Arkham, was based on his home town of Providence.

"For after all, the victim was a writer and painter wholly devoted to the field of myth, dream, terror, and superstition, and avid in his quest for scenes and effects of a bizarre, spectral sort. His earlier stay in the city - a visit to a strange old man as deeply given to occult and forbidden lore as he - had ended amidst death and flame, and it must have been some morbid instinct which drew him back from his home in Milwaukee. He may have known of the old stories despite his statements to the contrary in the diary, and his death may have nipped in the bud some stupendous hoax destined to have a literary reflection." (from 'The Haunter Of the Dark', 1951)

Howard Phillips Lovecraft was born in Providence, Rhode Island. He was of predominantly of British stock on both sides of his family, consumed by eccentricity. His mother keep his son from contact with the outside world. She treated him like a girl, and made him wear his hair long until the age of six. Lovecraft's father, named after the hero Winfield Scott, was a traveling salesman, who went mad, probably from syphilis, was institutionalized, and died when his son was five. Lovecraft suffered from terrifying nightly disturbances and nightmares which lasted until his own death. This deeply personal material also clinged to his stories, such as The Case of Charles Dexter Ward (1928). "From a private hospital for the insane near Providence, Rhode Island, there recently disappeared an exceedingly singular person. He bore the name of Charles Dexter Ward, and was placed under restraint most reluctantly by the grieving father who had watched his aberration grow from a eccentricity to a dark mania involving both a possibility of murderous tendencies and a peculiar change in the apparent contents of his mind."

Lovecraft grew up as a fringe member of the conservative New England aristocracy. He was educated at local schools, although often he was kept away from school by his overprotective mother. Lovecraft's poor health as a young boy led him to read voluminously from his grandfather's old library. During this time he found the works of Edgar Allan Poe, who had visited several times the library in Province, and whose model inspired Lovecraft in his literary aspirations. He also read works by Ambrose Bierce, Arthur Machen, Algernon Blackwood, M.R. James, and Lord Dunsany (1878-1957), who inspired him to write the short novel The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath (1926-27). "The most poignant sensations of my existence are those of 1896, when I discovered the Hellenic world, and of 1902, when I discovered the myriad suns and worlds of infinite space," Lovecraft once said to his friend. In his early career Lovecraft struggled to assimilate all these literary influences he encountered, finding his own voice after years of writing.

After two and half years of high school, he had a 'nervous collapse' and failed to leave secondary school with a diploma. However, he was fascinated by science and by the age of 16 he wrote on astronomy for local newspapers. At the age of 27 he was still at home, writing gloomy tales for amateur publications. The published of Weird Tales magazine, Clark Henneberger, become interested in the work of the Rhode Island hermit, a character not far from his stories, and published 'Dragon' in the Octobor 1923 issue. Henneberger bought everything he wrote. For Harry Houdini, the famous magician who "contributed" to the magazine, Lovecraft ghostwrote 'Imprisoned with the Pharaohs' (1924). Eventually Lovecraft was offered the job of editor at Weird Tales, but he turned the offer down.

Lovecraft's mother died when the author was 31 - at the same insane asylum as his father. Lovecraft continued to live with his two aunts. His marriage in 1924 with Sonia Greene, who was seven years his senior, lasted only until 1926. Sonia was a Jew and she has recalled that her husband hated Jewish immigrants, but he was an "adequately excellent lover." After two miserable year in New York, "a babel of sound and filth," he moved back to Providence, where he spent the rest of his life with his aunts. Social contacts Lovecraft maintained mainly by mail - Lovecraft's letters to Clark Ashton Smith (1893-1961) alone averaged about 40,000 words a year. While still in his thirties he began referring to himself as an "old gentleman" and signing his letters as "Grandpa". L. Sprague de Camp has claimed in Lovecraft: A Biography (1975) that the author wrote over 1000,000 letters.

"Nyarlathotep is a nightmare - an actual phantasm of my own, with the first paragraph written before I fully awakened. I had been feeling execrably of late - whole weeks have passed without relief from head-ache..." (from Lovecraft by Lin Carter, 1972)

After gaining some success as a writer Lovecraft started to travel. His later works show that he was beginning to outgrow from the genre of horror in the direction of science fiction - among others 'The Color Out of Space' and 'The Shadow Out of Time' from his mature period were first published in science fiction magazines. Lovecraft died from a combination of intestinal cancer and Bright's disease on March 15, 1937. He was buried in the family plot in the Swan Point Cemetary. Lovecraft's friends August Derleth and Donald Wandrei set up in 1939 a publishing house for his work, Arkham House, and the author's books have remained in print ever since.

Most of Lovecraft's short stories appeared in the magazine Weird Tales, beginning in 1923. His works from the early phase include 'The Tomb', 'The Statement of Randolph Carter', 'The Outsider', 'The Rats in the Walls', 'The Shunned House', 'From Beyond', and 'Cool Air', all written with more or less conventional scenarios. Lovecraft often used the first-person narrator, who is a scientist or scholar. The narrator witnesses events that contradict his beliefs and completely change his view of the world. "Trouble with memory. I see things I never knew before. Other worlds and other galaxies... Dark... The lightning seems dark and the darkness seems light..." (from 'The Haunter of the Dark') Going gradually insane, Lovecfaft's characters must face ultimate horrors, prepared or not: "The end is near. I hear a noise at the door, as of some immense slippery body lumbering against it. It shall not find me. God, that hand! The window! The window!" (from 'Dragon', 1919)

After returning to his native Providence, Lovecraft became interested in his own New England heritage, evoking its topography, history and society. This mature period produced such stories as 'The Color Out of Space', 'The Dunwich Horror', 'The Shadow over Innsmouth', 'The Thing on the Doorstep', 'The Dreams in the Witch House'. Many of Lovecraft's tales utilize a pseudo-mythical framework, termed the 'Cthulhu Mythos.' The first installment in the series, 'The Call of Cthulhu' appeared in the February 1928 issue of Weird Tales, where he created his basic myth of the Elder Race. 'The Dunwich Horror' was partly inspired by Lovecraft's trip to western Massachusetts in the area of Athol. He tranformed it into the home of decadent Wheateleys. In the story cycle, humans are hapless victims, not important for the incomprehensible cosmic forces. The view was based on his philosophical idea of 'cosmicism', the insignificance of all human affairs in the vastness of the universe. Religion Lovecraft had rejected early but used it myth and images, among others the scene of the crucifixion. "He hated modern civilization, particularly in its confident belief in progress and science," wrote Colin Wilson in The Strength to Dream, 1962.

Author biographies courtesy of Author's Calendar. Used with permission.