H.P. Lovecraft: The Complete Fiction (Barnes & Noble Leatherbound Classics) [Hardcover]

This is a wonderful book that has been highly flawed by a curious incident wherein it was not proofread by Stefan at Barnes & Noble. S. T. Joshi was hired by Arkham House to edit the Corrected Text editions, which are based on S. T.'s examination of the actual Lovecraft mss at John Hay Library and thus restore the fiction exactly as Lovecraft originally wrote it. The amazing Martin Andersson has gone over the texts in this edition and corrected thousands of errors, and his corrections will be used in the newest edition of this book when it is reprinted around September of 2011.

With this book, the amazing leading expert on H. P. Lovecraft has assembled all of Lovecraft's fiction that he wrote on his own, with only one collaboration (with E. Hoffmann Price). S. T. has written a superb Introduction for the book, and then each tale is prefaced by a wee note concerning the writing of the story, date publish'd, &c. The contents of the books is:
The Beast in the Cave
The Alchemist
The Tomb
Dagon
A reminiscence of Dr. Samuel Johnson
Polaris
Beyond the Wall of Sleep
Memory
Old Bugs
The Transition of Juan Romero
The White Ship
The Street
The Doom That Came to Sarnath
The Statement of Randolph Carter
The Terrible Old Man
The Tree
The Cats of Ulthar
The Temple
Facts Concerning the Late Arthur Jermyn and His Family
Celaphais
From Beyond
Nyarlathotep
The Picture in the House
Ex Oblivione
Sweet Ermengarde
The Nameless City
The Quest of Iranon
The Moon-Bog
The Outsider
The Other Gods
The Music of Erich Zann
Herbert West--Reanimator
Hypnos
What the Moon Brings
Azathoth
The Hound
The Lurking Fear
The Rats in the Walls
The Unnamable
The Festival
Under the Pyramids
The Shunned House
The Horror at Red Hook
He
In the Vault
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 Descendent
History of the Necronomicon
The Very Old Folk
Ibid
The Dunwich Horror
The Whisperer in Darkness
At the Mountains of Madness
The Shadow over Innsmouth
The Dreams in the Witch House
Through the Gates of the Silver Key (with E. Hoffmann Price)
The Thing on the Doorstep
The Evil Clergyman
The Book
The Shadow out of Time
The Haunter of the Dark

APPENDIX: JUVINILIA
The Little Glass Bottle
The Secret Cave
The Mystery of the Grave-yard
The Mysterious Ship [short version]
The Mysterious Ship [long version, publish'd herein for the very first time]

Discarded draft of "The Shadow over Innsmouth"

Supernatural Horror in Literature

It's quite wonderful to have the rare and playful "History of the Necronomicon" now included in a definitive edition of Lovecraft's Tales. The stories here have been publish'd in the order that Lovecraft wrote them, and thus read in order they shew how he progress'd as an author. The discarded draft for "The Shadow over Innsmouth" is fascinating in that it provides the narrator's name and includes scenes that were not incorporated in the final story.

Many of the corrections in the texts are wee grammatical things, but Derleth and his scribes were very poor at reading Lovecraft's handwriting and many many errors of words were included in the Derleth editions. Also, Derleth would do strange things such as alter the paragraphing in stories such as "At the Mountains of Madness" and "The Shadow out of Time." And there is Derleth most infamous error, where at the climax of "The Haunter of the Dark" he has "titan blue" whereas Lovecraft wrote "titan blur." My one disagreement with S. T. is his insistence on not including "The Thing in the Moonlight." The tale as we have it is compos'd of a letter that Lovecraft wrote to Donald Wandrei. A young chap obtained this letter and wrote a beginning and end to Lovecraft's letter and sent it to Derleth as a newly found Lovecraft tale. But the main core of this wonderful story is indeed by Lovecraft, and is quite effective. It should be included, as was another letter that is printed as the story "The Evil Clergyman."

These are the tales that Lovecraft wrote on his own. Lovecraft's collaborations and revisions are a separate thing. S. T. has edited and annotated the revisions in two volumes for Arcane Wisdom Press, the first volume of which will be published this year.

The copy I received is the corrected edition. In the book, Barnes & Noble give thanks to Martin Andersson for his help in correcting the text. There is one glaring error still to be corrected and that is that the contents page states there is an "about the author" section on page 1099. Unfortunately, the book only goes up to page 1098 and so no such section is to be found. It doesn't really matter because S. T. Joshi's Introduction does the job very nicely.

There are some things to note.

Firstly, this is not strictly "the complete fiction" and it would have more accurate (truthful) to call it "The Collected Fiction" - because `Collected' usually denotes that items may have been omitted. As one reviewer has written, the story fragment "The Thing in the Moonlight" is missing. I've noted that the story "Poetry and the Gods" is missing too. The book includes one story written in collaboration with another writer and excludes all the other collaborations by Lovecraft. It hasn't been unusual for a book of Lovecraft's fiction to include a chronological list of his fiction. You won't find one here, perhaps because it would highlight what was missing from a book described as `complete.' No explanation is given for the omissions. Another reviewer here gives a useful full list of contents of this book.

Secondly, despite being part of Barnes & Noble's `leatherbound' classics the book is not leatherbound. It's not even clothbound. It appears to be boards covered in a thick, tough bookbinding paper. Because I didn't buy this book as a `collectable' item, but merely for the convenience of having one book with as many of Lovecraft's stories in it as possible, the points mentioned are not a big deal - but it might be for others so I have noted them here.

All in all, it's a handy convenient edition to read `most' of Lovecraft's fiction, especially as the price I bought it at was a greatly reduced one.

We all know Lovecraft so basically this book contains the "complete fiction" if you like lovecraft you'll be happy.

Generally this is a good quality leatherbound book on good quality paper, this appears to the "corrected" text, with an introduction by Sunand Joshi.

I bought this purely because it is HP lovecraft and to add to my collection of lovecraft volumes. From the images the book looks good however in the flesh (so to speak) I found the look of the book a bit garish, more-so than the pictures portray, also from the images it looks like the front decoration is printed directly onto the leather however "in the flesh" it is an inlay which appears to be glued to the front of the book.

I am quite happy with this volume and it is a nice addition to my collection, though I will admit I much prefer the recent "Necronomicon" by Gollancz (and have pre ordered the "Eldritch Tales" because of this) as it looks a more classic volume and is better presented (only in my personal opinion), I will admit I also much prefer the introduction by Stephen Jones for the necronomicon compared with this one.

If you are interested in Lovecraft, I would also recommend the H P Lovecraft Omnibuses (paperback) 1, 2 and 3 by voyager, the stories are grouped better as they are more closely arranged with Lovecrafts themes (dream cycles, mythos stories etc) rather than chronological order, they have the original text (which personally reads a lot better than the edited text) and have introductions by August derleth, which are a nice (short) read in themselves, as Derleth was a close friend of Lovecraft his introductions are more personal than either Joshi or Jones's.

Interestingly this volume is printed "with the express permission of the H P Lovecraft literary foundation" though I assumed Lovecrafts works had probably entered the public domain by now.

Overall a nicely presented volume, though there are "better" editions out there.