At this essay's start, Lovecraft presents his view of cosmic horror as the ultimate distillation of primal humanity's fear, which I found similar to Terry Pratchett's description of the roots of fantasy in the introduction to The Ultimate Encyclopedia of Fantasy. It goes on to describe trends in the genre, highlighting popular and notable works in horror from the 18th century to Lovecraft's present day. Much like Stephen King, HP Lovecraft set most of his stories in New England, where he lived all of his life. His knowledge of its towns, history, and geography comes through strongly and confidently. The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath: I read this in recent years and didn’t love it, but I enjoyed it more now. It marvelously pulled in places and events from years-ago prior stories, ever more firmly establishing a Cthulhuverse. Lovecraft's first (short) novel-length fiction. his "at the mountains of madness", origin of the shoggoths, centers around a geological impossibility (extremely high mountains in a low-deposition, high-erosion environment) read up on eolian processes.

Now, Easton Press is proud to present these landmark horror masterpieces in an exceptional deluxe volume: LOVECRAFT TALES, an exclusive leather-bound Collector's Edition. We’ve also included “The Very Old Folk” which is arguably not a story. Lovecraft had a very vivid dream set in Roman times and he described the dream in letters to several of his friends, elaborating more and more each time he wrote it out. The final version that he sent to Donald Wandrei is more of a story than a letter. We’ve included it as it is not typically included in collections of Lovecraft’s fiction — we thought fans might enjoy hearing it. Interestingly, “History of the Necronomicon” is included in most complete collections of Lovecraft stories despite the fact that it is not a story in a traditional sense. If you’re academically inclined and want to hear the development of HPL as an author, this Chronological List can be an interesting way to approach the stories. The Loved Dead is mentioned as missing but is not listed in the bibliography on Wikipedia and was actually written by C.M. Eddy, Jr.

Y no solo hay repetición en sus protagonistas. Cuando llevas leidas muchas novelas y muchos cuentos ves que la mayor parte son variaciones de otras, sin que cambien muchas cosas, pues, al fin de al cabo, están relacionadas unas con otras. Y para redondear la guindilla el estilo literario de este escritor es muy lento la mayor parte del tiempo, si bien esto tiene su explicación y ha sido lo que menos me ha chocado de todo lo que he dicho anteriormente, ya que al final esto último se le perdona. Y por fin termine de leer las obras completas de H.P.Lovecraft, una de mis grandes asignaturas pendientes desde hace muchos años, desde la adolescencia. Si he tardado tanto ha sido porque estaba obcecada con hacerme con un tomo de sus obras completas, pese a que existen cientos de recopilaciones con solo algunas de las mismas. Pero yo quería tenerlas todas. Me alegro de haberme hecho con la edición de la editorial Plutón, pues no solo está muy bien de precio, también cuenta con una excelente traducción y el tomo esta estupendamente editado. Si tuviera que ponerle algún pero sería que me hubiera gustado que hubiera contado con algún pie de nota más para tratar con mayor profundidad las historias, el contexto histórico, las influencias que más incidieron en estas obras y como se escribieron, y que en el prólogo inicial se hubieran dado más datos sobre la vida y obra de Lovecraft. Pero como he dicho, por ese precio esta edición me parece más que meritoria (ya que otros tomos con las obras completas de este autor tienen un precio casi prohibitivo) y estoy muy satisfecha con ella.

Wentworth's Day (1957), The Gable Window (1957), and The Horror From The Middle Span (1967) are mentioned as missing but these are not included on the bibliography list on Wikipedia, but are actually written by August Derleth anyway. The Tomb: Another jump to age 27; this is when Lovecraft started writing in earnest. It's a wonderfully creepy story, with only a questionable supernatural element, focused on the narrator's possible madness as he recounts his obsession with a certain abandoned family tomb from his asylum.The HPL Omnibus Collection - all stories principally attributed to Lovecraft, plus his collaborations with other authors for more than 100 stories in all. Shipped on our custom USB drive in a great new faux book

Cosmic horror is where it’s at, and this collection includes at the end an essay by Lovecraft on supernatural horror where he describes what he means by the term. And we align perfectly in our conception of the truly horrifying: As has been pointed out (many times, I'm certain), much of Lovecraft's work tends to ignore the character on the personal level and focus on the overarching plot, especially in the Cthulhu Mythos stories. Antes de enfrentarme a la reseña de este gran tomo, me parece importante señalar para los que no lo sepan que la prosa de Lovecraft se divide en tres temas fundamentales: están las historias de corte más clásico o macabro, las que se relacionan con el mundo de lo onírico, y las que tratan del terror cósmico o lovecraniano, donde se incluiría el famoso ciclo de los mitos de Cthulhu.

One part of his writings though, that I didn't enjoy were many his dream cycle stories. Most of the time they seem to be nothing more than shot glimpses into a dream world narrating forgettable stories if stories at all. The longest of these works 'The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath' was one of the most tedious things I read in my life. The story was (apart from a few parts and the ending) boring, repetitive and forgettable and the work consisted mostly of descriptions of fabulous places with strange names that had no importance of the story. As for the stories I liked most of them. Many of his earlier works that were not yet of his typical cosmic horror genre were still quite enjoyable as short scares or twisted tales. In fact, hey wow, actually, what? Did I just roll a 20 with that phrase, that ‘horrific wonder’? Was that a critical hit? Si hay algo que caracteriza el estilo narrativo del bueno de nuestro Howard Philip es su pesadez. Tiene una prosa densa y tupida a más no poder, árida la mayor parte de las veces. Apenas hay diálogos, y la mayor parte de las veces se tratan de largos monólogos o escritos en los que un personaje aporta información a otro. Y esto lo suple con descripciones, con muuuuuuuchísiiiiiiiimas descripciones todas ellas muy detalladas y minuciosas (en ese sentido me ha recordado mucho a su coetáneo Tolkien). Pero que muy detalladas, en serio. De hecho, en muchas de sus obras hay más descripciones que trama propiamente dicha. A todo ello hay que sumarle muy poca variedad en sus personajes: todos son estudiosos interesados en las fuerzas del más allá y con gran bagaje cultural, hombres de pocas palabras y carácter cercano a lo flemático que acaban siendo arrastrados a un mundo de personajes inconcebibles y deidades prehistóricas que conviven con criaturas que parecen sacadas de un bestiario medieval. Y todos ellos acaban siendo un trasunto de del propio Lovecraft (pero en ello nos centraremos un poco más adelante). All but eight of the stories were written before "the Call of Cthulhu" in 1927, but a number of these earlier ones written in typical Lovecraft fashion contain marked foreshadowings of the Cthulhu Mythos in both themes and details. The tie-ins with stories like "Nyarlathotep" and "The Nameless City" are particularly obvious, as are references to the Necronomican, etc. ("History of the Necronomican" was written post-1927; it's simply a pseudo-nonfiction account of the imaginary author and origins of the sinister book, and its translation/printing "history," but adds enjoyable texture to the Mythos for committed fans.) As I've commented before, Lovecraft's own perception of his main fictional corpus was probably much more unified than that of later critics who carve it up into "Mythos" vs. "non-Mythos," and he never coined the term "Cthulhu Mythos" himself; there's a great degree of similarity of conception in many stories on both sides of the supposed divide. One can definitely say, though, that "The Very Old Folk" is certainly a Mythos tale (and as eerie and chilling as any I'd read before), as well as one which reflects HPL's fascination with ancient Rome.

Howard Phillips Lovecraft, of Providence, Rhode Island, was an American author of horror, fantasy and science fiction. LOVECRAFT TALES collects in a single grand volume virtually all of the master's work, over sixty short stories, novellas, and novels, including the classics “At the Mountains of Madness,”“The Dunwich Horror,”“The Call of Cthulhu,” The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath, and The Case of Charles Dexter Ward. Y además, como escritor su estilo tiene cosas también bastante positivas. Como he dicho antes es muy lento, sí, pero al mismo tiempo cuando coge carrerilla crea escenas que dejan al lector en tensión constante y le impiden parar de leer, haciendo de la lectura una montaña rusa de emociones. Y gracias a sus minuciosas descripciones uno no necesita mucha imaginación para sentirse en los escenarios que nos presenta y poder introducirse en la historia y en su contexto. Por todo ello es capaz de componer momentos en los que al lector se le acelera el pulso y nota como la piel se le pone de gallina y los escalofríos le suben por la espalda. Es, sin duda alguna, un autor del genero del miedo en todas sus variantes, del miedo tal y como podemos imaginarlo con criaturas terroríficas y escenas sangrientas, pero también trata el terror más sutil y psicológico. In the Juvenilia section of the Wikipedia bibliography it also lists The Alchemist and The Beast in the Cave - these are actually listed under main fiction section in the volume.HP Lovecraft’s stories consistently use a literary technique called the Frame Narrative, which was popular at the time but is now rather antiquated. Most of HP Lovecraft’s stories actually consist of an outer framing narrative, within which the (outer) narrator encounters someone who relates the inner, usually more interesting story. The result is that each story is actually being told AFTER THE FACT. This technique makes Lovecraft’s stories more philosophical/reflective, but at the cost of drastically lowering the tension. In the story, the evil creature that haunts the church can't function except in complete darkness (hence the story's title), so it kind of reminded me of the vampire novels I've been reading recently. I'm unaware of Lovecraft ever writing about vampires, so I guess this is as close as it gets. It follows his common theme of deep time and elder gods, with a little bit of a twist that most of his stories have. Although Lovecraft's readership was limited during his life, his reputation has grown over the decades. He is now commonly regarded as one of the most influential horror writers of the 20th Century, exerting widespread and indirect influence, and frequently compared to Edgar Allan Poe. The Beast in the Cave: This was written by Lovecraft at age 13-14, and for that is impressive. It only starts to touch the horror of being trapped underground that, say, the film The Descent shows fully, muted by the narrator's early resignation to his fate. Its youthful exuberance is captured in the final words, "... a MAN!!!", bold, caps, and triple-exclamation all original. This is a dumb story, but it's still quite atmospheric, so some of the writing I enjoy from his later stories is here, but it's still a dumb story.