open
Upgrade to a better browser, please.

Search Worlds Without End

Advanced Search
Search Terms:
Author: [x] H. P. Lovecraft
Award(s):
Hugo
Nebula
BSFA
Mythopoeic
Locus SF
Derleth
Campbell
WFA
Locus F
Prometheus
Locus FN
PKD
Clarke
Stoker
Aurealis SF
Aurealis F
Aurealis H
Locus YA
Norton
Jackson
Legend
Red Tentacle
Morningstar
Golden Tentacle
Holdstock
All Awards
Sub-Genre:
Date Range:  to 

H. P. Lovecraft


At the Mountains of Madness

Cthulhu Mythos

H. P. Lovecraft

One of Lovecraft's longest works, this novella was turned into a graphic novel by British artist I. N. J. Culbard in 2010 (more on his work later). At the Mountains of Madness owes much of its creeping melancholy to not only Lovecraft's fascination with polar exploration, but also to the legacy of polar exploration in fiction, from Mary Shelley's Frankenstein to Edgar Allan Poe's The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket. Told in the first-person by Miskatonic geologist Dr. William Dyer, At the Mountains of Madness details a scientific expedition to Antarctica that unearths the ancient and ruined city of the Elder Things of the Necronomicon.

This Novel was originally serialized in 1936 February, March and April issues of Astounding Stories. It has been anthologized many times, including the anthology Foundations of Fear: An Exploration of Horror, edited by David G. Hartwell, and has also been included in a myriad of collections, including the collections Necronomicon: The Best Weird Tales of H.P. Lovecraft, At the Mountains of Madness and Other Tales of Terror and The The Thing on the Doorstep and Other Weird Stories.

At the Mountains of Madness by H.P. Lovecraft is available free on the Internet.

The Call of Cthulhu

Cthulhu Mythos

H. P. Lovecraft

This short story originally appeared in Weird Tales in 1928. It has been anthologized many times, including the anthology The Dark Descent, edited by David G. Hartwell, and has also been included in a myriad of collections, including the collections The Call of Cthulhu and Other Weird Stories and The Dunwich Horror and Others.

It was the basis for the 2005 featurette The Call of Cthulhu.

The February 1928 issue of Weird Tales containing "The Call of Cthulhu" is available free on Internet Archives.

The Dunwich Horror

Cthulhu Mythos

H. P. Lovecraft

Set in the rural wilderness of western Massachusetts, "The Dunwich Horror" follows one Wilbur Whateley, the bastard offspring of a family devoted to worshipping to "Great Old Ones" and to studying the Necronomicon, Lovecraft's fictional grimoire full of forsaken lore and magic. Whateley is ultimately defeated by Professor Warren Rice and Dr. Francis Morgan, two representatives of Lovecraft's many scholarly protagonists. "The Dunwich Horror" is notable not only for its use of anachronistic Yankee dialects, but also its numerous references to the fictional Miskatonic University and the superstition surrounding whip-poor-wills.

This short story originally appeared in Weird Tales in 1929. It has been anthologized many times, including the anthology Great Tales of Terror and the Supernatural, edited by Phyllis Fraser and Herbert A. Wise, and has also been included in a myriad of collections, including the collections Necronomicon: The Best Weird Tales of H.P. Lovecraft and The Dunwich Horror and Others.

The Dunwich Horror is the basis for several films of the same name.

The April 1929 issue of Weird Tales containing "The Dunwich Horror" is available free on Internet Archives.

The Shadow Out of Time

Cthulhu Mythos

H. P. Lovecraft

Like At the Mountains of Madness, The Shadow Out of Time is one of Lovecraft's longest and most involved novellas. Moreover, The Shadow Out of Time was also turned into a graphic novel by Culbard in 2013. After a protracted coma which saw him become a topic of fascination for psychologists and psychiatrists around the world, the former Miskatonic Professor Nathaniel Peaslee embarks on a journey through the Australian outback in order to discover the lost civilization of the Yithians, a race of brilliant extraterrestrials who can travel through both space and time. Like other great minds from different epochs, Peaslee once had his mind switched with that of a Yithian in order for the alien to learn as much as possible about human civilization during the early 20th century. A profoundly pessimistic tale, The Shadow Out of Time was published nine months before Lovecraft died of cancer in his hometown of Providence, Rhode Island. He was 46.

This Novella was originally published June 1936 issue of Astounding Stories. It has been anthologized many times, including the anthology Baker's Dozen: 13 Short Horror Novels, edited by Martin H. Greenberg and Charles G. Waugh, and has also been included in a myriad of collections, including the collections The Dunwich Horror and Others also Necronomicon: The Best Weird Tales of H.P. Lovecraft.

The novella "The Shadow Out of Time" is available free on the Internet.

The Shadow Over Innsmouth

Cthulhu Mythos

H. P. Lovecraft

As with "The Dunwich Horror," this short story is set in the fictional Massachusetts seaport of Innsmouth, yet another "strange, little town" in the history of American horror. As the narrator, an amateur genealogist named Robert Olmstead, goes deeper and deeper into town, he uncovers the unholy marriage between Innsmouth, the Marsh family and the weird creatures that live just out past the coastal waters. "The Shadow over Innsmouth" is a good example of another one of Lovecraft's favorite tropes: guilt inherited by tainted blood. As such, "The Shadow over Innsmouth" takes fears of miscegenation to the extreme.

This novella was originally published by Visionary Press as a limited run chapbook in 1937. The first major stand alone publication was in the January 1942 issue of Weird Tales. It has been anthologized many times, including the anthology H. P. Lovecraft and Others: Shadows Over Innsmouth, edited by Stephen Jones, and has also been included in a myriad of collections, including the collections The Dunwich Horror and Others and The Call of Cthulhu and Other Weird Stories.

The novella "The Shadow over Innsmouth" is available free on the Internet.

Can't find the H. P. Lovecraft book you're looking for? Let us know the title and we'll add it to the database.