The Call of Cthulhu and Other Weird Tales (Vintage Classics)

An introduction to the weird and unsettling world of H.P. Lovecraft, master and pioneer of horror. Between these pages you will find things that lurk, things that scurry in the walls, things that move unseen, things that have learnt to walk that ought to crawl, unfathomable blackness, unconquerable evil, inhuman impulses, abnormal bodies, ancient rites, nameless lands best left undiscovered, thoughts best left unspoken, doors best left closed, names best forgotten. You have been warned.

Stephen King

The twentieth century's greatest practitioner of the classic horror tale."

New York Times

"Dark, weird tales about tentacled beasts, ancient artifacts that ooze unidentifiable slime and baby-eating cultists eager to bring about the end of the world."

Independent

"Lovecraft is the crucial link between Victorian Gothic and post-Sixties Horror, as well as a palpable influence on the mythology of Buffy the Vampire Slayer."

About the Author

H. P. Lovecraft (1890-1937) was born in Providence, Rhode Island, where he lived most of his life. He wrote many essays and poems early in his career, but gradually focused on the writing of horror stories, after the advent in 1923 of the pulp magazine Weird Tales, to which he contributed most of his fiction. His relatively small corpus of fiction--three short novels and about sixty short stories--has nevertheless exercised a wide influence on subsequent work in the field, and he is regarded as the leading twentieth-century American author of supernatural fiction. S. T. Joshi is a freelance writer and editor. He has prepared comprehensive editions of Lovecraft's collected fiction, essays, and poetry. He is also the author of The Weird Tale (1990), The Modern Weird Tale (2001), and Unutterable Horror: A History of Supernatural Fiction (2012). His award-winning biography H. P. Lovecraft: A Life (1996) was later expanded as I Am Providence: The Life and Times of H. P. Lovecraft (2010). He has also prepared Penguin Classics editions of the work of Arthur Machen, Lord Dunsany, Algernon Blackwood, M. R. James, and Clark Ashton Smith, as well as the anthology American Supernatural Tales (2007).

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