H. P. Lovecraft's Best Gothic Horror Stories

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H. P. LOVECRAFT

THE OUTSIDER, THE RATS IN THE WALLS & MORE TALES

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For the first decade of his career, H. P. Lovecraft’s fiction – which would eventually become famous for its nihilistic disdain for the human experience – was fascinated by interior angst, using Gothic tropes to explore his characters’ moral, psychological, and spiritual degeneration. Influenced by the psychological Gothicism of Poe and his Victorian disciples, his tormented protagonists were placed at the center of their tragedies: instead of being tossed aside by contemptuous, Elder Gods – imaginary monsters from beyond – their downfalls were caused by internal entropy – genuine monsters lurking within.

These tales were redolent with forbidden knowledge, hereditary curses, vengeful spirits, haunted houses, psychopathic hermits, evil forces, encounters with otherworldly dimensions, the dormant dead, and terrible old men – brooding like hungry spiders – in lonely places. Above all, they involve dangers lurking in an underground or hidden space – spaces symbolic of the human personality (caves, cemeteries, castles, ruins, hovels, grottos, nightmares, and outer dimensions). These are hideouts where monsters are able to breed in privacy.

This annotated, illustrated anthology explores 27 of Lovecraft’s most imaginative stories from this Gothic Era, studying the motives of their characters and author alike. It aims to probe the tragic humanity of a man who detested his own species: his flaws, frustrations, and the manner in which they shaped this early, so-called Poe Cycle. While his fame would ultimately come from pointing us upward, toward the merciless stars, these Gothic tales provided him with a literary foundation – one which navel-gazing inward and downward, into the subterranean spaces – literal and metaphorical – which were the first shameful cradle of human consciousness.

They are tales of darkness, failure, and shame – dominated by hidden desires, repressed rage, and howling loneliness – crafted in the savage, introspective tradition of the Gothic. And (in spite of Lovecraft himself) they explore the rawest emotions of the human condition. While we will always esteem Lovecraft for the awe-inspiring sublimity of his cosmic misanthropy, the purpose of this particular collection is – at least in part – to explore a much less studied element of his less sophisticated (more vulnerable) Gothic Era: his tragic humanity.