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H.P. LOVECRAFT SUPERNATURAL HORROR in LITERATURE A Pulp-Lit Annotated Edition By H.P. LOVECRAFT Edited and Annotated by FINN J.D. JOHN Copyright ©2016 by Finn J.D. John. All rights reserved, with the exception of all text written by Howard Phillips (H.P.) Lovecraft or published in his original works, on which copyright protections have expired. For information about permission to reproduce selections from this book, write to Pulp-Lit Productions, Post Office Box 77, Corvallis, OR 97339, or e-mail [email protected]. First edition: Interactive PDF ISBN: 978-1-63591-298-2 Dust jacket art: Front cover based on the cover art from November 1936 issue of Weird Tales magazine, by Margaret Brundage; back cover art based on the cover art from the June 1936 issue of Weird Tales, also by Margaret Brundage. Dust jacket design by Fiona Mac Daibheid. Pulp-Lit Productions P.O. Box 77 Corvallis, Oregon http://pulp-lit.com Other Pulp-Lit Productions titles The JOHN CARTER of MARS Trilogy of Edgar Rice Burroughs. you might enjoy: •Hardcover (636 pages) •6x9 softcover H.P. LOVECRAFT: The Complete Omnibus, Vol. I: 1917-1926: •E-book •Hardcover (558 pages) •Audiobook (19.5 hours) •Pulp-sized 7x10 softcover •E-book TARZAN of the APES and THE RETURN of TARZAN •Audiobook (23.5 hours) by Edgar Rice Burroughs. •6x9 softcover (590 pages) H.P. LOVECRAFT: The Complete •E-book Omnibus, Vol. II: 1927-1935: •Audiobook (16.5 hours) •Hardcover (606 pages) •Pulp-sized 7x10 softcover •E-book THE LISTENER and OTHER •Audiobook (27 hours) STORIES by Algernon Blackwood. •Hardcover (340 pages) FUNGI FROM YUGGOTH: THE •Pocket-size softcover SONNET CYCLE by H.P. Lovecraft. •E-book •Hardcover (102 pages) •Audiobook (8 hours) •Pocket-size softcover •E-book Robert E. Howard's CONAN the •Audiobook (1.3 hours) CIMMERIAN BARBARIAN: •Hardcover (860 pages) For our full catalog search “Pulp-Lit” (in quotation •Pulp-sized 7x10 softcover marks) on your favorite bookseller's Website, or •E-book see http://pulp-lit.com. •Audiobook (35 hours) This book is available in other formats: Audiobook, e-book, paperback, hardcover. CONTENTS. You are reading the complimentary electronic copy of Supernatural Horror in Literature in the Adobe PDF format — Pulp-Lit Productions’ version of Amazon’s “Look Inside” feature, only including Foreword (Audiobook Chapter 2) . ix the entire book. Whether you’re here checking it out to see if you might want to Supernatural Horror in Literature: own a copy, or doing a quick search, or even retrieving a clean digital I. Introduction. (Audiobook Chapter 3) ........1 copy of the story for a project of your own — welcome! II. The Dawn of the Horror-Tale. (Ch . 4) ....7 But, of course, PDF is hardly the most convenient format in III. The Early Gothic Novel. (Audiobook Ch . 5) 13 which to read a book. Here are a few other options, followed by a IV. The Apex of Gothic Romance (Ch . 6) ...21 link to follow for more information: V. The Aftermath of Gothic Fiction (Ch . 7) .29 • 5½ x8½ cloth-bound hardcover with dustjacket; VI. Spectral Literature on the Continent (Ch . 8) 39 • Pocket-size softcover; VII. Edgar Allan Poe (Audiobook Chapter 9) ....47 • E-book in EPUB and Kindle formats; (Ch . 10) • Audiobook (3 hours). VIII. The Weird Tradition in America . 57 IX. The Weird Tradition in the British Isles ... To learn more about these other formats, please click here to go (Audiobook Chapter 11) .................75 to the Supernatural Horror Book Support Page at http://pulp-lit. (Audiobook Chapter 12) com/290.html. X. Modern Masters ...87 Thank you for reading our books! ix Foreword. [return to table of contents .] hen most people think of H.P. Lovecraft, they think of his novellas and short stories— especially the weird-fiction works for which Whe’s most famous. In other words, they typically think of him as a creator, not a scholar. But if ever such a creature as a natural-born scholar existed, Howard Phillips Lovecraft was surely it. Throughout his life, from the earliest years, he was consistently and relentlessly chasing after new information, analyzing it, and sharing it in written form—whether it was crafting songs of the exploits of ancient Greek gods and heroes at age 6, or publishing his Rhode Island Journal of Astronomy and The Scientific Gazette as a high-school student, or submitting articles for publication in local newspapers. His fellow students called him “The Professor,” and throughout xi H.P. LOVECRAFT Foreword his life he was almost always the most erudite person in usefulness. It’s also suffused with Lovecraft’s characteristic the room at any given time. dry and occasionally cutting wit, which makes it an unex- And yet, as anyone reading his work would have been pectedly entertaining read. astonished to hear, Lovecraft didn’t even graduate from Scholars of Lovecraft’s weird-fiction work will be quick high school; he was taken out of school for medical reasons to notice something else about Supernatural Horror in (reportedly a nervous breakdown) and never bothered to Literature: Its position between his early weird-fiction work return. All his educational attainments were self-adminis- (that of the New York phase of his career and just before tered; Lovecraft was, in point of fact, an autodidact’s it; think The Outsider, Herbert West, Reanimator, and The autodidact. Shunned House) and the post-1925 era, after he returned to If, however, Lovecraft had sought a more traditional Providence and wrote the stories that almost everyone path to wisdom—say, a creative-writing MFA program at agrees are his best: The Call of Cthulhu, The Colour out of an Ivy League university—the slim volume you are holding Space, At the Mountains of Madness. Those early stories in your hands would probably have been his master’s thesis. were solid, competent stories, to be sure; but starting with Cool Air and The Call of Cthulhu, something seemed to upernatural Horror in Literature was a project happen to Lovecraft’s work—something great. Going from Lovecraft launched in 1925, during the last full year The Horror at Red Hook to The Call of Cthulhu is rather like he was still stuck in New York—having failed to going from hamburgers to rib-eye steaks. Something S“make it” as a working author there, but having not yet happened to Lovecraft’s overall level of mastery and compe- figured out how to return to his Providence, R.I., home. It tence at the end of 1925 and beginning of 1926. was undertaken for publication in a friend’s amateur-press That something, I would suggest, was the intensive journal; he never got paid for it; but then again, he never program of research, synthesis and articulation that resulted paid tuition for the privilege of writing it, either, so perhaps in the book you are about to read. that was all right. The project kept him busy with research and analysis here’s one more topic that must, unfortunately, be and drafting and rewriting for a full eight months. When brought up before we can turn to our reading of finished, it was just shy of 30,000 words in length—roughly Lovecraft’s thesis. There is, as has been pointed 120 manuscript pages long. It’s usually referred to as a “long Tout many times before, a flaw in much of Lovecraft’s essay,” but it’s better thought of as a short book. mid-1920s work, including Supernatural Horror in As an analogue to a master’s thesis, Supernatural Horror Literature—one that will be all too familiar to anyone in Literature is top-shelf work. It goes through the pedigree who’s delved deeply enough into Lovecraft’s literary canon of the horror story in European and English tradition from to encounter The Horror at Red Hook (which, not coinci- its earliest incarnations, with an unusual combination of dentally, was also written in 1925). That flaw is a persis- exacting throughness, heartfelt appreciation, and practical tent cultural chauvinism that occasionally develops into xii xiii H.P. LOVECRAFT outright racism—a heightened celebration of the literary skill and spiritualistic sensitivity of Lovecraft’s own Northern European ethnic brethren. It is important to keep in mind that 1925 was the nadir of Lovecraft’s xeno- phobia. Supernatural Horror in Literature is not horribly racist, but it’s sufficiently so to cause some discomfort in places among modern readers of all ethnic extractions. It’s also important to keep in mind that, in 1925, pseu- doscientific theories of biologically based racial differences were actually being taught in universities, and such destruc- tive fallacies as social Darwinism and eugenic theory were widely held by educated men and women—and regularly acted upon. Lovecraft was well within the bounds of the social norms that prevailed at that time. Still, one must be prepared to wade through a few awkward references to “the inherent mysticism of the Northern mind” and so forth. It just comes with the territory. With that caveat, readers interested in the pedigree of the supernatural-horror story of the type of which Lovecraft himself was a prominent producer will find this dissertation very helpful as well as, for the most part, delightful to read. —Finn J .D . John Corvallis, Oregon August 15, 2016 xiv I . Introduction. [return to table of contents .] he oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fear, and the oldest and strongest kind of fear is fear of the unknown. These facts few psycholo- Tgists will dispute, and their admitted truth must establish for all time the genuineness and dignity of the weirdly horrible tale as a literary form.