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.
In this first volume, Lovecraft's earliest stories are printed in chronological order by date of writing. Included are such early triumphs as "Dagon" and "The Outsider," along with the many tales Lovecraft wrote under the inspiration of Lord Dunsany. The celebrated "Herbert West-Reanimator" and "The Rats in the Walls" show Lovecraft experimenting with longer narratives-a tendency that will culminate in the novelettes and novellas of his final decade of writing.
Howard Phillips Lovecraft, August 1890 - March 1937, was an American author who achieved posthumous fame through his influential works ofhorror fiction. Virtually unknown and only published in pulp magazines before he died in poverty, he is now regarded as one of the most significant 20th-century authors in his genre. Lovecraft was born inProvidence, Rhode Island, where he spent most of his life.
S.T. Joshi is a leading authority on H.P. Lovecraft, as well as other writers mostly in the realms of supernatural and fantasy fiction. He is the author of The Weird Tale (1990), The Modern Weird Tale (2001), and Unutterable Horror: A History of Supernatural Fiction (2012). His award-winning biography H. P. Lovecraft: A Life (1996) was later expanded as I Am Providence: The Life and Times of H. P. Lovecraft (2010).