Collected Fiction Volume 2 (1926-1930): A Variorum Edition

• Volume 2 (1926-1930)
• Edited by S. T. Joshi
• Cover artwork by Fergal Fitzpatrick
• ISBN 9781614981107

In this second volume, the tales that Lovecraft wrote immediately after returning to his native Providence, R.I., from two years of “exile” in New York are presented. The landmark tale “The Call of Cthulhu” was only the tip of the iceberg of a flood of stories he wrote in 1926–27, which include the two short novels The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath and The Case of Charles Dexter Ward. “The Colour out of Space” is a pioneering tale that initiates Lovecraft’s distinctive melding of horror and science fiction, while “The Dunwich Horror” and “The Whisperer in Darkness” are rich novellas simultaneously evoking terrors from outer space and the brooding darkness of the New England backwoods.

In the thirty years since S. T. Joshi prepared revised editions of H. P. Lovecraft’s stories for Arkham House, Joshi has continued to do research on the textual accuracy of Lovecraft’s stories, and this comprehensive new edition is the result.

For the first time, students and scholars of Lovecraft can see at a glance all the textual variants in all relevant appearances of a story—manuscript, first publication in magazines, and first book publications. The result is an illuminating record of the textual history of the tales, along with how Lovecraft significantly revised his stories after initial publication.

The result is the definitive text of Lovecraft’s fiction—an edition that supersedes all those that preceded it and should endure as the standard text of Lovecraft’s stories for many years.

S. T. Joshi is a leading Lovecraft scholar and author of H. P. Lovecraft: The Decline of the West (1990), I Am Providence: The Life and Times of H. P. Lovecraft (2010), Lovecraft and an Age in Transition (2014), and other critical and biographical works. He has also done significant research on such writers as Lord Dunsany, Ambrose Bierce, Arthur Machen, and Ramsey Campbell.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

VOLUME 2

Cool Air
The Call of Cthulhu
Pickman’s Model
The Silver Key
The Strange High House in the Mist
The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath
The Case of Charles Dexter Ward
The Colour out of Space
The Descendant
History of the “Necronomicon”
Ibid
The Dunwich Horror
The Whisperer in Darkness