Starting Lovecraft - need some advice

[aurance]

I'm very intrigued about HP Lovecraft's stories, but I'd like to know if there are any opinions on a good collection/book to start with. He wrote a lot of stories!

(Sorry if this has been asked before.)

 

[your father is]

I picked up my collections long ago, so I'm not sure what's out there these days. There is an interesting article about Conan's relation to the Cthulu mythos (scroll down the page) I ran across recently:

The Hyborian Age, that time between the Fall of Atlantis and the rise of the world as we know it, is a vivid setting for the adventures of the Cimmerian who came down from the North to carve out an empire. But behind the Hyborian Age, as behind the worlds of Howard’s other characters, like Solomon Kane, Bran Mak Morn and King Kull rests a macabre shadow, a world vision that is largely inspired by Howard’s correspondent, fellow contributor to the famous Weird Tales, and friend, H. P. Lovecraft. The influence that Lovecraft had on the younger Howard was much greater than many recognize.

Recently at a convention I asked L. Sprague de Camp, biographer of both Howard and Lovecraft, if he considered the Conan series to be part of what Derleth called “The Cthulhu Mythos”?. Mr. de Camp only acknowledged a begrudged family resemble. Though no one has claimed the Conan stories as part of the Cthulhu Mythos, that group of stories by HPL and his friends centered on Cthulhu and his kin, it does by proxy exist next to them. One of the King Kull stories, “The Shadow Kingdom” (Weird Tales, August 1929) is a Mythos tale. Kull lived in the age before Conan, thus, they exist in the same world, though at different times. But this isn’t enough to place the Hyborian Age into the frame-work of the Mythos. Howard did write at least six undisputed Cthulhu Mythos stories, “The Worms of the Earth” and “The Black Stone” being two of the best. These tales name the beings of Lovecraft’s world, tell of new books and monsters, but none feature the beloved Cimmerian.

Howard’s concept of the supernatural in his fiction can be best summed up by this dialogue taken from “Shadows in the Moonlight” (Weird Tales, April 1934): “‘What gods?’ he muttered./‘The nameless, forgotten ones. Who knows? They have gone back into the still waters of the lakes, the quiet hearts of the hills, the gulfs beyond the stars. Gods are no more stable than men...’”

 

[aurance]

I never knew there was a Cthulu/Hyborian connection before... Interesting indeed.

 

[Cthulhudrew]

My personal favorite story of Lovecraft's is "The Rats in the Walls". That was pretty horrific.

For a really good selection, I'd recommend picking up "The Best of H.P. Lovecraft: Bloodcurdling Tales of Horror and the Macabre" (Del Rey, 1982. ISBN #0-345-35080-4). It's got 16 of his most famous stories in it, including "Rats" and "The Shadow Over Innsmouth", another really good yarn. "The Dunwich Horror" and "Pickman's Model" are also really good.

 

[frankthedm]

Start here

http://dagonbytes.com/thelibrary/lovecraft/thedunwichhorror.htm

http://dagonbytes.com/thelibrary/lovecraft/index.html

 

[Morpheus]

I'm very intrigued about HP Lovecraft's stories, but I'd like to know if there are any opinions on a good collection/book to start with. He wrote a lot of stories!

(Sorry if this has been asked before.)

Del Rey prints the Lovecraft paperbacks in collections, so just pick-up a couple of those and read the stories. Some of my favorite stories:

The Shadow Over Innsmouth
The Rats in the Walls
Dreams in the Witch-House
The Case of Charles Dexter Ward
The Horror at Red Hook
The Dunwich Horror
From Beyond

 

[Hand of Evil]

you may want to check out Algeron Blackwood, it is said he inspired Lovecraft. See the site www.blackmask.com

http://www.blackmask.com/cgi-bin/newlinks/page.cgi?g=Gothic_Tales/Algernon_Blackwood/index.html&d=1

 

[MonsterMash]

With Lovecraft my favourites are:
At the Mountains of Madness
The Colour out of Space
The Shadow over Insmouth
Rats in the Walls
The Call of Cthulhu

The quality can be patchy and a lot of the racial attitudes are definitely from the 1920s and 30s.

On the subject of Robert E. Howard and the Cthulhu Mythos - its probably more accurate to see some of Howard's horror stories as being connected as he did correspond with Lovecraft, and it was a conscious choice of theirs to mention the mythos.

The most Lovecraftian Howard stories are things like Worms of the Earth, Pigeons from Hell, and Children of the Night. The difference is that Howardian narrators or heroes tend to be much more active than those of Lovecraft matching the much more forceful prose.

 

[Cthulhu's Librarian]

Skip the Del Rey editions. While they may be the most popular editions, they have some bad edits in them and are not the definitive corrected texts that later printings of the stories use for publication. (I'm not trying to be disagreeable with others here, but if you want to read the stories, you might as well read them the way Lovecraft meant for them to be read without several generations of editors changes to the stories)

The two best books to start with (and also easily found) are both published by Penguin Books in their Twentieth Century Classics line.

The Call of Cthulhu and Other Weird Stories edited by S.T. Joshi
The Thing on the Doorstep and Other Weird Stories edited by S.T. Joshi

As for my favorite stories, I've always been fond of The Rats in the Walls, The Colour Out of Space, The Dunwich Horror, The Music of Erich Zann, The Shadow Over Innsmouth, The Call of Cthulhu, and At the Mountains of Madness.

 

[Andrew D. Gable]

I know you asked about Lovecraft, but another author who's along the same lines that might be worthwhile for you to check out is Arthur Machen. HPL loved Machen stories, and said he was one of the biggest influences on Cthulhu. Heck, "The Dunwich Horror" is "The Novel of the Black Seal" with some namechanges and additions. There's a few Chaosium collections of his stuff. The Three Impostors and The White People have the best stuff.