H. P. Lovecraft: A Critical Study (Classics of Lovecraft Criticism Book 1)

by Donald R. Burleson

  In general, Lovecraft’s career in fiction is one that sees him steadily grow as an artist, from promising but relatively unsophisticated beginnings to works of stunning conceptual and stylistic power in the end. He proves himself capable of reworking cherished themes over and over with freshness and ever-mounting intrigue, and capable of transcending those influences that have shaped him. Although his work is somewhat uneven, as the work of virtually all writers must be, it enjoys continuous crescendo strains of genius; through his unique mentality we derive a new cosmic vision of “dreams no mortal ever dared to dream before.” To the extent that readers and critics are perceptively attentive to him, it is probable that H. P. Lovecraft will endure as one of the most remarkable fantaisistes in the annals of literature.

  Selected Bibliography

  Beckwith, Henry L. P., Jr. Lovecraft’s Providence & Adjacent Parts. West Kingston, R.I.: Donald A. Grant, 1979. A photographic survey of Lovecraft’s home environs.

  Burleson, Donald R. “At the Mountains of Madness” (with Dirk W. Mosig), “The Lovecraft Mythos,” and “The Short Fiction of H. P. Lovecraft.” Survey of Science Fiction Literature. Ed. Frank N. Magill. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Salem Press, 1979. pp. 97–101, 1284–88, and 1973–77, respectively. The same publisher is due in 1983 to bring out Survey of Modern Fantasy Literature, containing three other articles on Lovecraft by Donald R. Burleson.

  ———. “H. P. Lovecraft: The Hawthorne Influence.” Extrapolation, Vol. 22, No.3 (Fall 1981),262–69.

  Carter, Lin. A Look Behind the Cthulhu Mythos. New York: Ballantine Books, 1972. As an editorial history of Lovecraft’s works and their publication, this is interesting; as criticism, substandard.

  Cook, W. Paul. In Memoriam: Howard Phillips Lovecraft. West Warwick, R.l.: Necronomicon Press, 1977. Reprint of 1941 memoir by Lovecraft friend.

  De Camp, L. Sprague. Lovecraft: A Biography. New York: Doubleday, 1975. Thoroughly researched; oddly opinionated in spots.

  Dunsany, Lord. The Book of Wonder. Boston: John W. Luce & Company, n.d.

  ———. A Dreamer’s Tales. Boston: John W. Luce & Company, n.d.

  ———. The Gods of Pegana. Boston: John W. Luce & Company, n.d.

  Faig, Kenneth W., Jr. H.P. Lovecraft: His Life, His Work. West Warwick, R.l.: Necronomicon Press, 1979. Useful and perceptive; contains a valuable chronology of Lovecraft works, compiled by S. T. Joshi.

  Gatto, John Taylor. The Major Works of H. P. Lovecraft: A Critical Commentary. New York: Monarch Press, 1977. Monarch Notes; qualitatively uneven criticism, and sins of omission.

  Hawthorne, Nathaniel. The Complete Novels and Selected Tales of Nathaniel Hawthorne. Ed. Norman Holmes Pearson. New York: Modem Library, 1937.

  Joshi, S. T. H. P. Lovecraft. Mercer Island, Wash.: Starmont House, 1982. Starmont Reader’s Guide 13. A brief but splendidly insightful survey of Lovecraft’s works, with emphasis on philosophical implications. ———. H. P. Lovecraft and Lovecraft Criticism: An Annotated Bibliography. Kent, Ohio: Kent State University Press, 1981. A scholarly compilation of great value; monumental.

  ———. An Index to the Selected Letters of H. P. Lovecraft. West Warwick, R.I.: Necronomicon Press, 1980. Invaluable to the student of Lovecraft. ———, ed. H. P. Lovecraft: Four Decades of Criticism. Athens: Ohio University Press, 1980. Many excellent essays, with scholarly introduction and annotation by the editor.

  ———, ed. Lovecraft Studies, all issues (published twice yearly; Vol. I, No. I was Fall 1979). The first professional journal devoted entirely to serious Lovecraft criticism.

  ——— and Marc Michaud. Lovecraft’s Library: A Catalogue. West Warwick, R.l.: Necronomicon Press, 1980. Indexed catalogue of 922 of the books in Lovecraft’s personal library.

  Long, Frank Belknap. Howard Phillips Lovecraft: Dreamer on the Nightside. Sauk City, Wis.: Arkham House, 1975. A valuable and insightful memoir by one of Lovecraft’s closest friends.

  Lovecraft, H. P. At the Mountains of Madness and Other Novels. Sauk City, Wis.: Arkham House, 1964. Lovecraft’s novels and some other works.

  ———. The Best of H. P. Lovecraft: Bloodcurdling Tales of Horror and the Macabre. New York: Ballantine Books, 1982. A large paperback collection of most of Lovecraft’s best short works, with an excellent critical introduction by Robert Bloch. A few textual corrections have been made in this edition. However, some new errors occur.

  ———. Beyond the Wall of Sleep. Sauk City, Wis.: Arkham House, 1943. A large miscellany of Lovecraft fiction, including the four prose poems. Rare.

  ———. Collected Poems. Sauk City, Wis.: Arkham House, 1963. Most of Lovecraft’s best poetry; illustrated by Frank Utpatel.

  ———. Dagon and Other Macabre Tales. Sauk City, Wis.: Arkham House, 1965. Early and minor works, for the most part.

  ———. Dreams and Fancies. Sauk City, Wis.: Arkham House, 1962. Lovecraft letters about dreams, and assorted fiction.

  ———. The Dunwich Horror and Others. Sauk City, Wis.: Arkham House, 1963. Most of the best short works.

  ———. History of the Necronomicon. West Warwick, R.I.: Necronomicon Press, 1980. Reprint of early limited edition; afterword by S. T. Joshi.

  ———. The Horror in the Museum and Other Revisions. Sauk City, Wis.: Arkham House, 1970. Lovecraft’s major ghostwriting.

  ———. Marginalia. Sauk City, Wis.: Arkham House, 1944. A compendium of Lovecraft essays and minor pieces, with various memoirs and photographs.

  ———. The Notes and Commonplace Book. West Warwick, R.I.: Necronomicon Press, 1978. Reprint of the 1938 Futile Press publication. ———. The Outsider and Others. Sauk City, Wis.: Arkham House, 1939. A large miscellany of Lovecraft fiction. Very rare.

  ———. Selected Letters. Five volumes, I–III edited by August Derleth and Donald Wandrei, IV–V edited by August Derleth and James Turner. Sauk City, Wis.: Arkham House, 1965–1976. Centrally valuable and fascinating, but unindexed by the publisher.

  ———. Something About Cats and Other Pieces. Sauk City, Wis.: Arkham House, 1949. Various Lovecraft essays, revisions, poems, and fiction notes, with assorted memoirs.

  ———. Supernatural Horror in Literature. New York: Dover Publications, 1973. Introduced by E. F. Bleiler; indexed.

  ———. To Quebec and the Stars. Ed. L. Sprague de Camp. West Kingston, R.1.: Donald M. Grant, 1976. Contains Lovecraft’s lengthy Quebec travelogue and assorted Lovecraft essays.

  ———. Uncollected Prose and Poetry. Ed. S. T. Joshi and Marc Michaud. West Warwick, R.1.: Necronomicon Press, 1978. Contains “The Night Ocean” and various previously unpublished Lovecraft essays.

  ———. Uncollected Prose and Poetry, Vol. 2. Ed. S. T. Joshi and Marc Michaud. West Warwick, R.I.: Necronomicon Press, 1980. Contains various previously unpublished Lovecraft essays, poems, and other pieces.

  ———. Uncollected Prose and Poetry, Vol. 3. Ed. S. T. Joshi and Marc Michaud. West Warwick, R.I.: Necronomicon Press, 1982. Contains the discarded draft of “The Shadow over Innsmouth” and various other scarce Lovecraft pieces.

  ———. A Winter Wish and Other Poems. Ed. Tom Collins. Chapel Hill, N.C.: Whispers Press, 1977. Grievously misprinted.

  ——— and Willis Conover. Lovecraft at Last. Arlington, Va.: Carrollton Clark, 1975. Lovecraft’s correspondence with Conover during the last months of Lovecraft’s life, with some reproduced holograph material done in faithful colours of ink; a labour of love.

  ——— and Divers Hands. The Dark Brotherhood and Other Places. Sauk City, Wis.: Arkham House, 1966. Lovecraft miscellany; essays by Andrew Rothovius, Fritz Leiber, and others.

  ——— and Divers Hands. The Shuttered Room & Other Pieces. Sauk City, Wis.: Arkham House, 1959. Various essays and memoirs, with Lovecraft juvenilia.

  ——— et al. The Spawn of Cthulhu. Ed. Lin Carter. New York: Ballantine Books, 1971. Lovecraft and Lovecraft-inspired or -related fiction.

  Machen, Arthur. Tales of Horror and the Supernatural. Ed. Phil
ip Van Doren Stern. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1948.

  Poe, Edgar Allan. The Complete Tales and Poems of Edgar Allan Poe. New York: Modern Library, 1938.

  St. Armand, Barton Levi. The Roots of Horror in the Fiction of H. P. Lovecraft. Elizabethtown, N. Y.: Dragon Press, 1977. Criticism less synoptic than the title suggests, since most of it focusses upon “The Rats in the Walls.”

  Schweitzer, Darrell, ed. Essays Lovecraftian. Baltimore: T-K Graphics, 1976. Contains several excellent essays by Dr. Dirk W. Mosig, Fritz Leiber, and others.

  Shea, J. Vernon. H. P. Lovecraft: The House and the Shadows. West Warwick, R.I.: Necronomicon Press, 1982. First published in May 1966 in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction. A perceptive biographical and critical essay by one of Lovecraft’s best correspondence-friends.

  Shreffler, Philip A. The H. P. Lovecraft Companion. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1977. Lovecraft works’ plot sketches, character glossary, and some light criticism.

  1 . H. P. Lovecraft, Selected Letters, 2.109, 3 March 1927, to Bernard Austin Dwyer.

  2 . Lovecraft textual scholar S. T. Joshi has shown this to be the case by making exhaustive comparisons with the manuscripts at the John Hay Library, Brown University.

  3 . Taught, beginning in 1976, by the author of the present study, at Middlesex Community College in Bedford, Massachusetts.

  4 . Ironically, Lovecraft remarked in a letter: “I think I shall have fewer & fewer readers as time passes. Fortunately I don’t give a hang whether or not anybody reads what I write.” Selected Letters, 3.147, 24 April 1930, to Elizabeth Toldridge.

  5 . Lovecraft, Selected Letters, 5.116, 6 March 1935, to Emil Petaja.

  6 . “. . . of the line of Leucippus, Democritus, Epicurus, and Lucretius, and in modem times, Nietzsche and Haeckel. “ Lovecraft, Selected Letters, 2.160,28 August 1927, to Zealia Brown Reed (Bishop).

  7 . It is thus eminently fitting that Fritz Leiber has called Lovecraft a “literary Copernicus.”

  8 . Lovecraft, Selected Letters, 2.150, 5 July 1927, to Farnsworth Wright.

  9 . Lovecraft, Selected Letters, 3.436, 20 November 1931, to Clark Ashton Smith.

  10 . Lovecraft, Marginalia, pp. 135–39.

  11 . Lovecraft, Selected Letters, 3.193, 17 October 1930, to Clark Ashton Smith.

  12 . Lovecraft, Marginalia, p. 135.

  13 . Lovecraft, Selected Letters, 5.218, 15 December 1935, to E. Hoffmann Price.

  14 . Lovecraft, Selected Letters, 2.143, 5 June 1927, to Zealia Brown Reed (Bishop).

  15 . H. P. Lovecraft, “The Tomb,” in Dagon and Other Macabre Tales, pp. 9–18.

  16 . Lovecraft, “Dagon,” in Dagon and Other Macabre Tales, pp. 3–8.

  17 . Lovecraft, “Polaris,” in Dagon and Other Macabre Tales, pp. 19–22.

  18 . Lovecraft, Selected Letters, 2.95, 25 December 1926, to August Derleth.

  19 . Lovecraft, “The White Ship,” in Dagon and Other Macabre Tales, pp. 41–46.

  20 . Lovecraft, “The Doom that Came to Sarnath,” in Dagon and Other Macabre Tales, pp. 34–40.

  21 . Lovecraft, “Beyond the Wall of Sleep,” in Dagon and Other Macabre Tales, pp. 23–33.

  22 . I am indebted to S. T. Joshi for pointing out to me that this story originally, in manuscript, carried an epigraph omitted in printed versions: “I have an exposition of sleep come upon me.” —Shakespeare.

  23 . Lovecraft, “Memory,” in Dreams and Fancies, pp. 59–60.

  24 . Lovecraft, “The Transition of Juan Romero,” in Dagon and Other Macabre Tales, pp. 327–34. Oddly enough, the Arkham House edition classes the story among the “early tales” (with, for example, “The Alchemist,” a 1908 bit of juvenilia), though it was written on 16 September 1919; ironically, Arkham House reproduces this date after the story’s final line, since the date was present in manuscript.

  25 . Richard L. Tierney has written a most penetrating, if tongue-in-cheek, essay called “Notes on the Worship of Yog-Sothoth Myth-Cycle Entities in the Amerind Civilisations,” printed in the amateur press journal Night Gaunts, No. 10, 2 August 1981, ed. Mollie L. Werba (later Mollie L. Burleson), for the Esoteric Order of Dagon Amateur Press Association; John Hay Library, Brown University. Mr. Tierney draws comparisons between Aztec deities and entities of the Lovecraft Mythos.

  26 . Lovecraft, “The Statement of Randolph Carter,” in At the Mountains of Madness and Other Novels, pp. 284–89.

  27 . Lovecraft, “Nemesis,” in Collected Poems, pp. 83–86.

  28 . Lovecraft, “The House,” in Collected Poems, pp. 72–73.

  29 . Lovecraft, “The City,” in Collected Poems, pp. 74–75.

  30 . H. P. Lovecraft, “The Terrible Old Man,” in The Dunwich Horror and Others, pp. 278–80.

  31 . L. Sprague de Camp, Lovecraft: A Biography, p. 148.

  32 . Lovecraft, “The Picture in the House,” in The Dunwich Horror and Others, pp. 121–29.

  33 . Lovecraft, Selected Letters, V, 180, 2 July 1935, to Catherine L. Moore (written from De Land, Florida, while visiting Robert Barlow).

  34 . Lovecraft, Selected Letters, 3.175–76, 4 October 1930, to Robert E. Howard.

  35 . I am indebted to S. T. Joshi for pointing out to me this detail from the manuscript at the John Hay Library, Brown University.

  36 . Lovecraft, “The Cats of UIthar,” in Dagon and Other Macabre Tales, pp. 56–59.

  37 . Lovecraft, “Celephaïs” in Dagon and Other Macabre Tales, pp. 60–65. The dieresis over the “i” in the name Celephaïs is missing in printings of the story but present in manuscript. Pronunciation of the name is uncertain; perhaps “Sell-eh-FAY-iss.”

  38 . Lovecraft, Selected Letters, 1.162, 14 December 1920, to Rheinhart Kleiner. In print the letter is misdated to 1921, and Kleiner’s first name (as throughout the Letters) is misspelled as “Reinhardt.”

  39 . Lovecraft, “The Quest of Iranon,” in Dagon and Other Macabre Tales, pp. 116–22.

  40 . Lovecraft, Selected Letters, 1.128, 23 April 1921, to Rheinhart Kleiner. Oddly enough, however, late in his life Lovecraft seems to have lost his enthusiasm for the story. In 1936 he remarks that this story, along with “The Hound,” “The Horror at Red Hook,” “He,” “The Moon-Bog,” “The White Ship,” “From Beyond,” and “The Tree,” might “if typed on good stock . . . make excellent shelf-paper but little else.” Selected Letters, 5.348, 10 November 1936, to Wilfred Blanch Talman. His self-criticism is obviously quite harsh; he makes this remark, however, after listing what he considers to be the best weird stories ever written: Blackwood’s “The Willows” first, Machen’s “The White People” a close second, and such runners-up as Poe’s “The Fall of the House of Usher.” Lovecraft never considered himself to be in a league with these people.

  41 . Lovecraft, “The Other Gods,” in Dagon and Other Macabre Tales, pp. 111–15.

  42 . Lovecraft, Selected Letters, 1.243, 30 July 1923, to Clark Ashton Smith.

  43 . Lovecraft, “The Outsider,” in The Dunwich Horror and Others, pp. 53–59.

  44 . Lovecraft, Selected Letters, 3.379, 19 June 1931, to J. Vernon Shea.

  45 . I am indebted to Dr. Dirk W. Mosig for his penetrating observations along these lines. See his brilliant article “The Four Faces of the Outsider,” in Essays Lovecraftian, ed. Darrell Schweitzer, pp. 17–34.