H. Lovecraft - Selected Stories

William Collins

An imprint of HarperCollins Publishers

1 London Bridge Street

London SE1 9GF

WilliamCollinsBooks.com

This William Collins eBook edition published in Great Britain in 2018

Life & Times section © HarperCollins Publishers Ltd

Silvia Crompton asserts her moral rights as author of the Life & Times section

Classic Literature: Words and Phrases adapted from

Collins English Dictionary

Cover by e-Digital Design.

Cover image © Writer Howard Phillips (HP) Lovecraft (1890-1937) surrounded by monsters (top: Cthulhu), engraving, 1981 / Bridgeman Images.

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

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Source ISBN: 9780008284954

Ebook Edition © 2018 ISBN: 9780008284961

Version: 2018-01-18

Contents

Cover

Title Page SELECTED STORIES H. P. Lovecraft

Copyright Copyright Copyright History of William Collins Life & Times Dagon The Statement of Randolph Carter Herbert West–Reanimator The Outsider The Colour Out of Space The Call of Cthulhu The Silver Key The Dunwich Horror The Haunter of the Dark The Thing on the Doorstep Classic Literature: Words and Phrases About the Publisher William Collins An imprint of HarperCollins Publishers 1 London Bridge Street London SE1 9GF WilliamCollinsBooks.com This William Collins eBook edition published in Great Britain in 2018 Life & Times section © HarperCollins Publishers Ltd Silvia Crompton asserts her moral rights as author of the Life & Times section Classic Literature: Words and Phrases adapted from Collins English Dictionary Cover by e-Digital Design. Cover image © Writer Howard Phillips (HP) Lovecraft (1890-1937) surrounded by monsters (top: Cthulhu), engraving, 1981 / Bridgeman Images. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins Source ISBN: 9780008284954 Ebook Edition © 2018 ISBN: 9780008284961 Version: 2018-01-18

History of William Collins

Life & Times

Dagon

The Statement of Randolph Carter

Herbert West–Reanimator

The Outsider

The Colour Out of Space

The Call of Cthulhu

The Silver Key

The Dunwich Horror

The Haunter of the Dark

The Thing on the Doorstep

Classic Literature: Words and Phrases

About the Publisher

In 1819, millworker William Collins from Glasgow, Scotland, set up a company for printing and publishing pamphlets, sermons, hymn books, and prayer books. That company was Collins and was to mark the birth of HarperCollins Publishers as we know it today. The long tradition of Collins dictionary publishing can be traced back to the first dictionary William co-published in 1825, Greek and English Lexicon . Indeed, from 1840 onwards, he began to produce illustrated dictionaries and even obtained a licence to print and publish the Bible.

Soon after, William published the first Collins novel; however, it was the time of the Long Depression, where harvests were poor, prices were high, potato crops had failed, and violence was erupting in Europe. As a result, many factories across the country were forced to close down and William chose to retire in 1846, partly due to the hardships he was facing.

Aged 30, William’s son, William II, took over the business. A keen humanitarian with a warm heart and a generous spirit, William II was truly ‘Victorian’ in his outlook. He introduced new, up-to-date steam presses and published affordable editions of Shakespeare’s works and The Pilgrim’s Progress , making them available to the masses for the first time.

A new demand for educational books meant that success came with the publication of travel books, scientific books, encyclopedias, and dictionaries. This demand to be educated led to the later publication of atlases, and Collins also held the monopoly on scripture writing at the time.

In the 1860s Collins began to expand and diversify and the idea of ‘books for the millions’ was developed, although the phrase wasn’t coined until 1907. Affordable editions of classical literature were published, and in 1903 Collins introduced 10 titles in their Collins Handy Illustrated Pocket Novels. These proved so popular that a few years later this had increased to an output of 50 volumes, selling nearly half a million in their year of publication. In the same year, The Everyman’s Library was also instituted, with the idea of publishing an affordable library of the most important classical works, biographies, religious and philosophical treatments, plays, poems, travel, and adventure. This series eclipsed all competition at the time, and the introduction of paperback books in the 1950s helped to open that market and marked a high point in the industry.

HarperCollins is and has always been a champion of the classics, and the current Collins Classics series follows in this tradition – publishing classical literature that is affordable and available to all. Beautifully packaged, highly collectible, and intended to be reread and enjoyed at every opportunity.

‘The oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fear, and the oldest and strongest kind of fear is fear of the unknown,’ wrote H. P. Lovecraft in a 1927 essay. ‘These facts few psychologists will dispute, and their admitted truth must establish for all time the genuineness and dignity of the weirdly horrible tale as a literary form.’

To modern readers it seems laughable that a writer of H. P. Lovecraft’s stature and popularity should feel it necessary to justify the value of his genre. Although he was one of the first to use the term ‘weird tale’, his name is nowadays synonymous with that mixture of horror, myth and fantasy . He introduced the world to Azathoth and Cthulhu, whose legacy has proven lucrative for successive generations of writers, artists and film-makers.

But not for Lovecraft himself. True success eluded him throughout his life, and by the time he died he was almost literally penniless.

Howard Phillips Lovecraft was born in Providence, Rhode Island in 1890, into circumstances that appeared more promising than they really were. His mother’s family was well off; her father, Whipple Van Buren Phillips, was a noted businessman who was happy to pander to his grandson, an only child. But Lovecraft’s father suffered from mental illness and was confined to an institution when the boy was just three. It was the last they saw of each other.