Tales of H.P. Lovecraft

by Oates, Joyce Carol

• ISBN13: 9780060957902
• ISBN10: 0060957905
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2000-08-31
• Publisher: HarperCollins Publications

Summary

When he died in 1937, destitute and emotionally and physically ruined. H.P. Lovecraft had no idea that he would come to be regarded as the godfather of the modern horror genre, nor that his work would influence an entire generation of writers, including Stephen King and Anne Rice. Now, at last, the most important tales of this distinctive American genious are gathered in one volume by National Book Award-winning author Joyce Carol Oates. Combining the nineteenth-century gothic sesibility of Edgar Allan Poe with a daring internal vision, Lovecraft's tales foretold a psychically troubled century to come. Set in a meticulously described, historically grounded New England landscape, his harrowing stories explore the collapse of sanity beneath the weight of chaotic events. Lovecraft's universe is a frightening shadow world where reality and nightmare intertwine, and redemption can come only from below. In her preceptive and penetrating introduction, Oates, herself a virtuoso of the Gothic style, explains how Lovecraft's singular talents fused the supernatural and mundane into a terrifying complex, exquisitely realized vision.

Author Biography

Joyce Carol Oates is the author of numerous works of fiction, poetry, criticism, and drama. Among her most recent books from Ecco are What I Lived For, The Perfectionist and Other Plays, George Bellows: American Artist, First Love, and The Essential Dickinson (for the Ecco Essential Poets Series). A past recipient of the National Book Award and a member of the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters, she is the Roger S. Berlind Distinguished Professor in the Humanities at Princeton University.

Table of Contents

Introduction	vii
The Outsider	1	(6)
The Music of Erich Zann	7	(7)
The Rats in the Walls	14	(16)
The Shunned House	30	(22)
The Call of Cthulhu	52	(25)
The Colour Out of Space	77	(24)
The Dunwich Horror	101	(36)
At the Mountains of Madness	137	(85)
The Shadow Over Innsmouth	222	(53)
The Shadow Out of Time	275