An Introduction to the Fiction of H.P. Lovecraft
His Classic Horror Fiction Set New Standards
Jun 25, 2009
Framed with a materialist’s view of cosmic indifference, his visions of alien entities worshipped as gods, of horrors lurking in the forgotten by-ways of big cities or the remoteness of rural New England, have achieved worldwide fame. Stephen King said, in a 1995 American Heritage magazine interview, that “it is his (Lovecraft’s) shadow, so long and gaunt, and his eyes, so dark and puritanical, which overlie almost all of the important horror fiction that has come since.”
Lovecraft’s fiction can be broken down roughly into four broad categories: Dunsanian tales, styled after the English fantasist, Lord Dunsany; macabre tales, unrelated to one another, influenced to greater or lesser degree by Edgar Allan Poe; ‘revisions’ done for other writers; and, most famously, the loose aggregation of tales dealing with his cosmic mythology, termed the “Cthulhu Mythos” by writer and friend, August Dereleth.
Dunsany's Influence on Lovecraft
Though he would always claim Poe as his major influence, Lovecraft came under the spell of Lord Dunsany in 1919. Dunsany’s poetic, dreamlike fancies of ancient cities and long-forgotten gods were imitated and echoed by Lovecraft, as in “The Doom that Came to Sarnath,” which chronicles the revenge of fallen god; “The Cats of Ulthar,” the story behind the reason that no one may kill a cat in Ulthar; and “The Quest of Iranon,” a fable about the power and sadness of dreams.
After a few years, Lovecraft would more or less abandon this type of story, though certain fundamental concepts would be developed in new directions.
Lovecraft's Classic Horror Tales
During this Dunsanian period, Lovecraft also wrote some of his first true horror stories. “Dagon” is the tale of a sailor stranded on an unknown island, facing an ancient god; “Facts Concerning the Late Arthur Jermyn and His Family” expresses Lovecraft’s fears of miscegenation; “Herbert West-Reanimator” is an updated if awkward take on Frankenstein, while “The Lurking Fear” performs the same favor for werewolves.
Later stories, such as “The Shunned House”, “Pickman’s Model” and “The Colour Out of Space” strike off in new and startling directions, confronting the horrors that stand in the shadows of the commonplace. His only novel, The Case of Charles Dexter Ward, was unpublished in his lifetime, but is a fantastic tale of an 18th century sorcerer’s return to the then-modern world.
Toward his own work Lovecraft had a certain art for art’s sake attitude, taking his time with stories until he was satisfied with them. With no employable skills and strapped for cash, he began to advertise his services as a revisionist. This work consisted primarily of editing amateurish poetry and occasional vanity pieces, etc., but his growing expertise with weird and fantastic tales attracted a number of would-be writers.
Some of the stories involved only minor editorial input or advice; with others, however, he often rewrote the entire story, keeping only the germ of the idea. “The Mound” by Zealia Bishop, “The Horror in the Museum” by Hazel Heald, and “The Diary of Alonzo Typer” by William Lumley are just a few examples of stories that are essentially Lovecraft originals. All of his important revisions are collected in The Horror in the Museum (Arkham House).
The Cthulhu Mythos
“The Call of Cthulhu” first appeared in the February 1928 issue of the pulp magazine, Weird Tales. This seminal tale codified elements from earlier Lovecraft stories such as ancient unknown races, the Necronomicon, and dark occult rites performed in hidden places, but mixed them with a bleak vision of a gargantuan life-form, a being so far beyond our comprehension that it can only be acknowledged as a god.
Without setting up a rigid mythological framework, Lovecraft developed the idea in the last decade of his life. “At the Mountains of Madness” details the discovery of an ancient lost city in the Antarctic, once ruled by extra-terrestial beings; “The Shadow Over Innsmouth” and “The Dunwich Horror” reveal dark secrets about the inhabitants of remote corners of New England; “The Whisperer in Darkness” finds insect-like aliens haunting the sparsely populated Vermont hills.
All of Lovecraft’s fiction remains in print, from various publishers, in many languages, some of it even annotated. The first editions of his works, published by Arkham House, are now valuable collector’s items.
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