by S. T. Joshi
“Ah,” exclaimed Annette, upon emerging, after many days, from those great depths, “I am still alive! Why did not Mr. Reiferth keep his promise? Have I been asleep long?”
Ay, more than a year, Annette; but the hideous dreams of that black and terrible time have left no stamp upon your memory!
* * * *
The sweet, cool western wind and the generous sunshine come to California, bringing their blessings to the rich and the poor, the prosperous and the unfortunate, the happy and the despairing; but I think that the gentle winds and the shining years bless with a special grace one happy home, which, born of suffering, of strange misunderstandings, of crime, of darkness, has issued forth into the broad yellow light that heaven sends, grateful, humble, inexpressibly content. That home is ours—Annette’s and mine; for not alone have the church and the law made us man and wife.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
S. T. Joshi is a widely published critic and editor. He is the author of such critical studies as The Weird Tale (1990), H. P. Lovecraft: The Decline of the West (1990), and The Modern Weird Tale (2001). For Penguin Classics, he has prepared three annotated editions of Lovecraft’s tales, as well as editions of the works of Lord Dunsany, Algernon Blackwood, and M. R. James, and the anthology American Supernatural Tales (2007). His exhaustive biography, H. P. Lovecraft: A Life (1996), won the British Fantasy Award and the Bram Stoker Award from the Horror Writers Association. He is coeditor of Ambrose Bierce’s Collected Short Fiction (2006; 3 vols.), and has edited several editions of the work of H. L. Mencken. He is coeditor of Supernatural Literature of the World: An Encyclopedia (2005; 3 vols.) and the editor of Documents of American Prejudice (1999), Atheism: A Reader (2000), In Her Place: A Documentary History of Prejudice against Women (2006), Icons of Horror and the Supernatural (2006; 2 vols.), The Agnostic Reader (2007), and other volumes. Among his writings on politics and religion are God’s Defenders: What They Believe and Why They Are Wrong (2003) and The Angry Right (2006). He has compiled bibliographies of H. P. Lovecraft (1981; rev. 2009), Ambrose Bierce (1999), Gore Vidal (2007), H. L. Mencken (2009), and other authors. He lives with numerous cats in Seattle, Washington.
BORGO PRESS BOOKS BY S. T. JOSHI
Conspiracy of Silence: A Joe Scintilla Mystery
H. P. Lovecraft: The Decline of the West
Junk Fiction: America’s Obsession with Bestsellers
Potash & Perlmutter: Stories of the American Jewish Experience, by Montague Glass, edited by S. T. Joshi
The Removal Company: A Joe Scintilla Mystery
A Subtler Magick: The Writings and Philosophy of H. P. Lovecraft
Tragedy at Sarsfield Manor: A Joe Scintilla Mystery
The Weird Tale