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The H. P. Lovecraft Collection: Deluxe 6-Volume Box Set Edition: 3 (Arcturus Collector's Classics, 3): Deluxe 6-Book Hardcover Boxed Set

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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. I guess I could go on like this forever, as there are many other stories in this collection that are worth reading and rereading, but I will stop here for now. It’s late, and I think I heard something scurrying in the walls. Wonder what it is… These errors are clearly not resulting of sloppy OCR-scanning which are issues based on similar letter forms, but actual human errors like missing an "h" in "hair": somebody has indeed been typing them in, line by line, creating the most mistake-ridden HPL collection of all time. Barnes & Noble don't impress in this sense, as it was hardly their first book. If you want a Lovecraft primer, this is a good start. I'd read all these stories before, but many of them I had not read for years, so I enjoyed going through the classics again even if they don't bring me quite the same feeling of existential horror they did when I was a teenager.

All of the stories within being placed chronologically, it is apparent that Lovecraft improved upon both his writing abilities and his cosmological mythos, which is not to say that some of his early stories, in their simplicity, don't hit home just as powerfully. The tales gradually grow longer as one reads through the book, with Lovecraft's three novellas appearing in the middle and end of the book. It was these tales that I found to be the most enjoyable, the most thorough in their ability to draw me in and engage me in the alternate universe that Lovecraft structured. It is also these three short novels that one can use to divide Lovecraft's entire collection of fiction into three categories of theme: men stumbling through the realm of dreams, men meddling in necromancy and dark arts, and men confronting the godless, Darwinian truths of the universe, hints of which lie hidden in obscure corners of the earth.The Quest of Iranon: The closest thing to a fable yet encountered in this collection, and rather lovely, but inconsequential. It could be considered a Dreamlands tale.

However, the reader needs to be prepared for the moral vacuity and hate which they will encounter in the work of HPL. Not to mention, the horrific writing, which is often responsible for some of the worst published writing I have ever come across. The Members of the Men's Club of the First Universalist Church of Providence, R.I., to Its President, About to Leave for Florida on Account of His Health [c. 1908–12]The Strange High House in the Mist: Intriguing, surprisingly more joyous than menacing, with beautiful poetic descriptions and phrases. The Shadow over Innsmouth - creepy, creepy, creepy. The tension and dread is built and sustained for the majority of this one, and it also has one of my favourite endings.

Before Lovecraft, horror was about killers, kidnappers, ghosts - human faults and sins and divine (or other) punishment in the sense of you reap what you sow. Lovecraft instead creates a vision of a vast cosmos completely indifferent to humans, and their earthly bullsh*t, filled with forces before which we are helpless, which we cannot hope to understand, and which would destroy our minds if we only saw or knew. We could categorize him as a writer of cosmic horror. The Dunwich Horror and Others (9th corrected printing), S. T. Joshi (ed.), 1984. ( ISBN 0-87054-037-8) The Lurking Fear is a bit different than others on the list, and consequentially, I found it refreshing. For one thing, it’s less of a frame story. The narrator is the one who actually experienced the events of the story, which grants it a much better immediacy than the other stories. For another, instead of the horrors coming from outside of us, this is more about the horrors that dwell within us.H.P. Lovecraft: The Complete Fiction (Barnes & Noble Leatherbound Classics Series) ( ISBN 978-1435122963)

I love this collection. It's one of those Barnes & Noble editions they feature in-store. I don't know if later editions were made with the same quality. I bought it at a time when I virtually never bought new books (I raided the library instead) and only because I received a gift card from a workplace holiday exchange and this was the only thing to capture my interest at the time.Joshi, S. T. (2009). H.P. Lovecraft: A Comprehensive Bibliography. Tampa, FL: University of Tampa Press. ISBN 9781597320689.

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