The publication in 2001 of The Ancient Track: The Complete Poetical Works of H. P. Lovecraft was a landmark. For the first time, all of Lovecraft’s 500 or more poems—including hundreds of Christmas greetings, untitled poems, fragments, and poems embedded in his published and unpublished letters—were gathered in accurate texts, with critical commentary and full bibliography.

Since that time, a dozen or more poems or poetic fragments have been discovered by scholars and researchers, and this new edition prints these items along with several other works of interest. Poems that Lovecraft revised for various authors are included, along with (where extant) the original poems that served as the basis for the revisions. The original versions of poems by Ovid, Horace, and other classical poets that Lovecraft translated are provided. And the commentary and bibliography have been thoroughly overhauled.

It can well be said that this second edition of The Ancient Track is the definitive collection of Lovecraft’s entire poetic output. It has been edited by S. T. Joshi, a leading authority on Lovecraft and the editor of Lovecraft’s collected fiction, revisions, essays, and letters.

The remarkable cover painting, The Sphinx and the Milky Way, was completed in 1946 by Charles E. Burchfield (1893-1967). Lovecraft admired Burchfield's work and spoke enthusiastically about it in his letters. Reproduced with permission from the Charles E. Burchfield Foundation.

604 pages
Oversized Paperback

H. P. Lovecraft’s "Supernatural Horror in Literature," first published in 1927, is widely recognized as the finest historical survey of horror literature ever written. The product of both a keen critical analyst and a working practitioner in the field, the essay affords unique insights into the nature, development, and history of the weird tale. Beginning with instances of weirdness in ancient literature, Lovecraft proceeds to discuss horror writing in the Renaissance, the first Gothic novels of the late 18th century, the revolutionary importance of Edgar Allan Poe, the work of such leading figures as Nathaniel Hawthorne, Ambrose Bierce, and William Hope Hodgson, and the four “modern masters” -- Arthur Machen, Lord Dunsany, Algernon Blackwood and M. R. James.

In this annotated edition of Lovecraft’s seminal work, acclaimed Lovecraft scholar S. T. Joshi has supplied detailed commentary on many points. In addition, Joshi has supplied a comprehensive bibliography of all the authors and works discussed in the essay, with references to modern editions and critical studies.

For the new 2012 edition, Joshi has exhaustively revised and updated the bibliography and also revamped the notes to bring the book in line with the most up-to-date scholarship on Lovecraft and weird fiction. The entire volume has also been redesigned for ease of reading and reference. This latest edition will be invaluable both to devotees of Lovecraft and to enthusiasts of the weird tale.

Contents:
* Preface, by S. T. Joshi
* Introduction, by S. T. Joshi
* Supernatural Horror in Literature
- Introduction
- The Dawn of the Horror-Tale
- The Early Gothic Novel
- The Apex of Gothic Romance
- The Aftermath of Gothic Fiction
- Spectral Literature on the Continent
- Edgar Allan Poe
- The Weird Tradition in America
- The Weird Tradition in the British Isles
- The Modern Masters
* Appendix
- The Favourite Weird Stories of H.P. Lovecraft
* Notes
* Bibliography of Authors and Works
* Index

228p

Discovering the amateur press in 1914, Lovecraft immediately flooded the many small papers of his friends and colleagues with contributions discussing the nature, purpose, and future of amateur journalism. He also edited his own magazine, The Conservative (1915-23), filling it with additional essays.

In these articles Lovecraft discusses the conflict between the United and the National Amateur Press Associations; the "halcyon days" of the amateur movement (1885-95); and the "needs and betterment" of the amateur cause. We read of Lovecraft's bitter feuds with his fellow amateurs; his exhaustive critiques of their writing; and, most poignant of all, his touching affirmation of "What Amateurdom and I Have Done for Each Other," in which he concludes simply: "What Amateur Journalism has given me is, life itself."

H. P. Lovecraft has belatedly received world renown as the twentieth century's premier author of supernatural fiction; but during his lifetime he wrote far more essays than stories. This edition gathers Lovecraft's complete nonfictional output for the first time, arranged in broad thematic groupings. S. T. Joshi, the world's leading authority on Lovecraft, exhaustively annotates all texts, also providing critical and bibliographical notes.

444p

Lovecraft's writings in the realm of literary criticism are unfailingly acute and cover a surprisingly wide range. Besides his authoritative early essay on "The Literature of Rome" (1918), other works condemn free verse and simple spelling, and devote attention to neglected poets. Discovering weird fiction as his chosen field, he produced such scintillating essays as "Lord Dunsany and His Work" (1922) and "Supernatural Horror in Literature" (1927), along with essays on Frank Belknap Long and Clark Ashton Smith.

Late in life Lovecraft codified his grasp of weird literature by writing such trenchant pieces as "Notes on Writing Weird Fiction" (1933) and "Some Notes on Interplanetary Fiction" (1934). One of his last writings, "Suggestions for a Reading Guide" (1936), is a comprehensive discussion of world literature.

252p

A self-proclaimed "mechanistic materialist," Lovecraft took an unremittingly scientific view of reality. This perspective informed the whole of his literary output, but is nowhere so clearly seen as in this assemblage of his writings on science.

Beginning with the scientific journals, treatises and astronomy columns of his early years, and continuing throughout his life, these writings illuminate Lovecraft's thought in a unique, and until now, largely unappreciated way.

As a bonus, almost two-dozen of HPL's hand lettered star maps are reproduced.

360p

This fourth volume of Lovecraft’s collected essays contains his complete travel writings, one of the most distinctive and heartwarming segments of his work.

During the last decade of his life, Lovecraft devoted nearly every summer to extensive travels up and down the eastern seaboard, from Quebec to Key West, in search of antiquarian oases. He came to love the town of Charleston, South Carolina, second only to his native city of Providence, Rhode Island. His trip to Vermont in 1927, recorded in his essay “Vermont—A First Impression,” was instrumental in the writing of “The Whisperer in Darkness” three years later. “Observations on Several Parts of America” (1928) and “Travels in the Provinces of America” (1929) reveal, in a flawless replication of eighteenth-century English, his fascination with such locales as Philadelphia, Maryland, and Virginia. “A Description of the Town of Quebeck” (1930–31) is his single longest work, longer than any of his tales; it is printed here for the first time in a corrected text. Also included is the curious pseudo-travelogue “European Glimpses” (1932), ghostwritten for his ex-wife, Sonia, and a previously unpublished travelogue telling of his trip to the Fairbanks house (1636) and the Red Horse Tavern in Massachusetts.

All texts are exhaustively annotated, with critical and bibliographical notes, by S.T. Joshi.

304p

In this fifth and final volume of Lovecraft’s Collected Essays will be found a rich vein of Lovecraft’s philosophical writings. A lifelong student of metaphysics, ethics, aesthetics, and other branches of philosophy, Lovecraft early declared himself a forthright materialist and atheist, and defended his views in numerous controversies with colleagues.

Such essays as “Idealism and Materialism—A Reflection” and the In Defence of Dagon essays outline the essentials of Lovecraft’s philosophical thought, including such issues as free will, the improbability of theism, and cosmic pessimism. In his later years the problems of politics and economics came to the forefront of his attention, and in the essays “Some Repetitions on the Times,” “A Layman Looks at the Government,” and the unpublished “The Journal and the New Deal” Lovecraft vigorously argues for a moderate socialism to relieve the widespread unemployment brought on by the Depression.

The problem of art in the modern age also concerned Lovecraft, and in the unpublished essay “A Living Heritage: Roman Architecture in Today’s America” Lovecraft condemns modern “functionalist” architecture as inherently ugly and the product of sterile theory. This volume also contains Lovecraft’s autobiographical essays, including the delightful “A Confession of Unfaith,” telling of his shedding of religious belief, and the piquant “Cats and Dogs,” in which cats stand as sybols for the abstract beauty of a boundless cosmos.

All texts are extensively annotated, with critical and bibliographical notes, by S. T. Joshi.

384p

H. P. Lovecraft's "New York Exile" of 1924-26 was perhaps the unhappiest period of his entire life: living in a city whose giganticism and heterogeneity he loathed, unable to find work and forced to economize drastically on food and other necessities, and trapped in an uncongenial marriage, Lovecraft could only express his anger and despair in his work.

This volume, which gathers the five stories he wrote during this period, shows how Lovecraft sought refuge by returning imaginatively to his native New England ("The Shunned House," "In the Vault"), lashing out at the many "foreigners" occupying the city ("The Horror at Red Hook"), seeking the antiquarian havens that still remained in the metropolis ("He"), or boldly confronting New York's clangor and stridency ("Cool Air").

Editors S. T. Joshi and David E. Schultz supply a lengthy biographical introduction as well as exhaustive notes to each story, supplying information on their background, influences, and use of the history and topography of New York City. As a result, these five stories present an underlying unity beyond their varied themes and locales: they show how Lovecraft came to terms with America's only true megalopolis.

150p

In this final volume, the tales of Lovecraft’s final years are presented. The Antarctic novella At the Mountains of Madness is perhaps Lovecraft’s most finished work, a superb fusion of weirdness and science fiction that he referred to as “cosmicism.” “The Shadow over Innsmouth” is a chilling evocation of the terrors inherent in a lonely New England backwater, while “The Thing on the Doorstep” and “The Haunter of the Dark” feature physical horrors with cosmic implications. “The Shadow out of Time” is the culmination of Lovecraft’s portrayal of the vast vistas of space and time—his signature contribution to literature.

In the thirty years since S. T. Joshi prepared revised editions of H. P. Lovecraft’s stories for Arkham House, Joshi has continued to do research on the textual accuracy of Lovecraft’s stories, and this comprehensive new edition is the result.

For the first time, students and scholars of Lovecraft can see at a glance all the textual variants in all relevant appearances of a story—manuscript, first publication in magazines, and first book publications. The result is an illuminating record of the textual history of the tales, along with how Lovecraft significantly revised his stories after initial publication.

The result is the definitive text of Lovecraft’s fiction—an edition that supersedes all those that preceded it and should endure as the standard text of Lovecraft’s stories for many years.

S. T. Joshi is a leading Lovecraft scholar and author of H. P. Lovecraft: The Decline of the West (1990), I Am Providence: The Life and Times of H. P. Lovecraft (2010), Lovecraft and an Age in Transition (2014), and other critical and biographical works. He has also done significant research on such writers as Lord Dunsany, Ambrose Bierce, Arthur Machen, and Ramsey Campbell.

522p

Following S. T. Joshi’s acclaimed three-volume variorum edition of Lovecraft's fiction, this final collection includes all known revisions and collaborations undertaken by Lovecraft on behalf of his friends and clients. As with previous volumes in this series, the texts preserved herein scrupulously follow archival manuscripts, typescripts, or original publications, and constitute the definitive edition of these stories.

Since Lovecraft’s customary procedure as a revisionist was to discard his client’s draft and entirely rewrite the story in his own words, much of the fiction in this collection represents original work by Lovecraft, including such notable contributions to the Cthulhu Mythos as “The Electric Executioner,” “Out of the Aeons,” and “The Diary of Alonzo Typer.” Supreme among the revisions in this volume is the brilliant novella “The Mound,” which embodies Lovecraft’s satirical commentary on the Machine Age “decadence” of his era.

For the first time, students and scholars of Lovecraft can see at a glance all the textual variants in all relevant appearances of a story—manuscript, first publication in magazines, and first book publications. The result is an illuminating record of the textual history of the tales, in an edition that supersedes all those that preceded it.

As a bonus, this fourth volume contains the index to all four volumes of H. P. LOVECRAFT'S COLLECTED FICTION: A VARIORUM EDITION.

718p

H. P. Lovecraft did not have a great many female correspondents, but among the most notable was Elizabeth Toldridge, a poet living in Washington, D.C., who began corresponding with Lovecraft in the late 1920s. Over their decade-long exchange of letters, Lovecraft discussed at length the aesthetic basis of poetry and the methods by which poetic expression could be made relevant in an age of science. He came to recognize that his earlier attempts at writing eighteenth-century-style verse were aesthetic failures, and he attempted to put his new poetic theories into practice with Fungi from Yuggoth (1929–30) and other poems. Lovecraft also extensively discussed the current political and economic situation, recognizing that the onset of the Great Depression necessitated a political shift—one that ultimately led him to moderate socialism.

Anne Tillery Renshaw was a colleague of long standing, having known Lovecraft during his amateur journalism period in the 1910s. Late in life she commissioned Lovecraft to work on her treatise on English usage, Well-Bred Speech (1936). This edition publishes for the first time several chapters that Lovecraft wrote for that book that were dropped before publication.

Exhaustively annotated by leading Lovecraft scholars David E. Schultz and S. T. Joshi, this volume illuminates one of the great literary personalities of his time—and in his own words. The letters are presented in unabridged form and with detailed notes and commentary.

475p

Lovecraft’s correspondents were scattered all over the country, and he found it engaging to be in touch with individuals from those areas of the United States where he had never been. Letters to two correspondents from the Pacific Northwest, Duane W. Rimel and F. Lee Baldwin, fill the bulk of this volume, and they reveal Lovecraft’s customary role of tutor and mentor to young devotees of weird fiction in the 1930s.

As a novice writer of weird fiction, Rimel came in touch with Lovecraft to seek assistance on improving his work and getting it published in pulp or fan magazines. In the course of their relationship, Lovecraft helped Rimel on as many as three stories—“The Sorcery of Alphar,” “The Tree on the Hill,” and “The Disinterment.” He gave Rimel valuable advice on the technique of writing weird fiction.

Baldwin was a fan of weird fiction who assisted in the establishment of the first fantasy fanzine, the Fantasy Fan. Later he wrote one of the earliest biographical articles on Lovecraft (with a linoleum cut of Lovecraft by Rimel). Lovecraft wrote extensively to Baldwin about his writing, his attempts at drawing, and other matters that illuminate many aspects of his life and work.

A third correspondent in this volume, Nils Frome, was a Canadian fan of weird and science fiction whom Lovecraft instructed on matters ranging from astronomy to occultism.

As in all previous volumes in the Collected Letters series, these letters have been meticulously edited by David E. Schultz and S. T. Joshi, two of the leading authorities on Lovecraft. Included as well are many rare and pertinent writings by the various correspondents, which shed light on their relationship to Lovecraft. An extensive bibliography and a comprehensive index conclude the volume.

442p

This volume presents H. P. Lovecraft’s letters to three individuals—J. Vernon Shea, Carl Ferdinand Strauch, and Lee McBride White—who were not exclusively interested in weird fiction nor were involved in the realms of amateur journalism or fantasy fandom. Although Shea did come into contact with Lovecraft through Weird Tales, his interests, even as a young man, were far wider—current politics, general literature, film, and socio-cultural trends. As such, Lovecraft’s letters to him broach broad topics relating to aesthetics, philosophy, politics, and general culture. In one letter Lovecraft expounds on his fascination with the film Berkeley Square, a time-travel drama that markedly inspired one of his later stories, “The Shadow out of Time.”

Carl F. Strauch was a librarian and an academic—he wrote a dissertation on Ralph Waldo Emerson and taught for many years at Lehigh University—and Lovecraft was intrigued by Strauch’s recital of witch legendry from the Pennsylvania Dutch region of Pennsylvania where he resided. The young Lee White was a student at Howard College in Alabama when he came into contact with Lovecraft, and the ten letters they exchanged over several years cover a wide range of literary topics. In one of his last letters Lovecraft makes extensive revisions on a poem about John Donne that White had written.

These letters reveal Lovecraft to have as wide a range of intellectual and aesthetic interests as his diverse and multifaceted correspondents.

As in all previous volumes in the Collected Letters series, these letters have been meticulously edited by S. T. Joshi and David E. Schultz, two of the leading authorities on Lovecraft. Also included are many rare and pertinent writings by the various correspondents, which shed light on their relationship to Lovecraft. An exhaustive bibliography and a comprehensive index conclude the volume.

434p

James Ferdinand Morton was one of H. P. Lovecraft’s most learned and accomplished correspondents: the recipient of a B.A. and M.A. from Harvard, Morton served as a leading figure in the Esperanto Association of North America, the Thomas Paine Natural History Association, and other organizations, and was a longtime curator of the Paterson (New Jersey) Museum. Lovecraft’s correspondence with Morton reveals the full range of his and Morton’s intellectual interests, ranging from freethought to socialism, from amateur journalism to crossword puzzles, from race relations to the rise of Mussolini and Hitler. Along the way, Lovecraft provides engaging accounts—many times written in piquant slang—of his travels across New England, his diet, and other details that bring the dreamer from Providence to life.

A sampling of Morton’s own writings complements the letters, and includes his substantial essay “Fragments of a Mental Autobiography.” The volume concludes with many fascinating memoirs of Morton by friends and colleagues, including E. Hoffmann Price, W. Paul Cook, and Morton’s wife Pearl K. Merritt.

Extensively annotated by leading Lovecraft scholars David E. Schultz and S. T. Joshi, this volume illuminates one of the great literary personalities of his time – and in his own words. The letters are presented in unabridged form and with detailed notes and commentary.

500p

H. P. Lovecraft’s generous tutelage of younger literary colleagues earned him their lifelong devotion and admiration. Few profited more by his assistance than Robert Bloch, who went on to become the celebrated author of Psycho and other classic works of horror and suspense. Establishing a correspondence with Lovecraft when he was sixteen, Bloch learned so much about the craft of writing—and about other matters—that he later stated: “Lovecraft was my university.”

This volume brings together Lovecraft’s complete extant correspondence with Bloch as well as with such other young writers, editors, and fans of the 1930s as Kenneth Sterling (who collaborated with Lovecraft on “In the Walls of Eryx”), Donald A. Wollheim (editor of the Phantagraph and a leading figure in science fiction in the decades that followed), Willis Conover (whose Lovecraft at Last is one of the most poignant books ever written about the Providence writer), and others.

As in all previous volumes in the Collected Letters series, these letters have been meticulously edited by David E. Schultz and S. T. Joshi, two of the leading authorities on Lovecraft. Also included are many rare and pertinent writings by the various correspondents, which shed light on their relationship to Lovecraft. An exhaustive bibliography and a comprehensive index conclude the volume.

548p

Wilfred B. Talman was a late member of the Kalem Club, the group of literati who gathered around H. P. Lovecraft during his years in New York (1924–26). In the 1920s Talman attempted to write weird fiction, and Lovecraft’s letters to him feature extensive advice on the story he revised for Talman, “Two Black Bottles”; Lovecraft also wrote a 6000-word synopsis for a story, “The Pool,” that Talman never wrote; the synopsis is here presented in an appendix. But Talman soon moved to other interests, and in his correspondence Lovecraft discusses such diverse subjects as Dutch settlement of the American colonies, the Greek calendar, and his wide-ranging travels.

Helen V. Sully is one of Lovecraft’s few women correspondents. A friend of Clark Ashton Smith, she made the long trip from California to Rhode Island to see Lovecraft, and he treated her with his customary old-world courtesy. In their subsequent correspondence, Lovecraft attempted to act as consoler to Sully (who had apparently lapsed into depression), and his sage words on ethics, values, and contemporary civilization are still of value. Lovecraft also exchanged a few letters with Helen’s mother, Genevieve Sully.

As with other volumes in the Letters of H. P. Lovecraft series, this volume prints all surviving letters unabridged and with extensive annotations by David E. Schultz and S. T. Joshi, along with numerous writings—prose, essays, and poetry—by Lovecraft’s correspondents.

576p

A new edition of all the correspondence between Lovecraft and future Arkham-House co-founder Donald Wandrei, augmented here with 120 new pages of Lovecraft's letters to Howard Wandrei and Emil Petaja. Large portions of this volume were previously published as Mysteries of Time and Spirit: The Letters of H. P. Lovecraft and Donald Wandrei, out of print now for many years.

It is safe to say that Donald Wandrei (1908–1987) was one of Lovecraft’s leading correspondents. In 1924 Wandrei came in touch with his literary idol, Clark Ashton Smith, and two years later Smith referred him to Lovecraft. There began a rich, expansive communication in which both sides of the correspondence are preserved largely intact, allowing for an unprecedented glimpse into the life and beliefs of the two authors. Wandrei began as a fiery, cosmic poet in the tradition of Smith, but later took to writing weird fiction. He persuaded Farnsworth Wright of Weird Tales to accept Lovecraft’s seminal tale “The Call of Cthulhu,” just as Lovecraft urged Wright to take Wandrei’s “The Red Brain.” Lovecraft introduced Wandrei to his fellow Midwesterner August Derleth, and after Lovecraft’s death they founded Arkham House to publish the work of Lovecraft and other writers of weird fiction.

Lovecraft came to believe that Donald Wandrei’s brother Howard was a weird artist of the first order, and this volume features the letters and postcards they exchanged in the 1930s. Another late colleague, Emil Petaja, was of Finnish ancestry, and Lovecraft’s letters to him are full of discussions into the fantasy fandom of that era along with his later beliefs on politics, society, and religion.

As with other volumes of the Letters of H. P. Lovecraft series, this book prints all surviving letters unabridged and with exhaustive annotations by S. T. Joshi and David E. Schultz. In addition, a rare interview of Donald Wandrei is included, along with poems, essays, and stories by Petaja.

552p

Voted one of the top ten Science Fiction and Fantasy Books of 2001 by Cinescape Magazine.

"The Shadow out of Time" is H. P. Lovecraft's last major story. It was first published in Astounding Stories for June 1936. And yet, this text has never been published as Lovecraft wrote it -- until now. The recent discovery of Lovecraft's handwritten manuscript allows readers to appreciate this magnificently cosmic story exactly as originally written.

All previous editions of the story contain hundreds of serious errors, including errors in paragraphing, omissions and mistranscriptions of many words and passages, and erroneous punctuation. Leading Lovecraft scholars S. T. Joshi and David E. Schultz have provided an exhaustive introduction and commentary on the story, elucidating names, places and other elements in this richly evocative story. A must for all devotees of Lovecraft and weird fiction!

136p