
The short story is often viewed as an inferior relation to the Novel. But it is an art in itself. To take a story and distil its essence into fewer pages while keeping character and plot rounded and driven is not an easy task. Many try and many fail. In this series we look at short stories from many of our most accomplished writers. Miniature masterpieces with a lot to say. In this volume we examine some of the short stories of HP Lovecraft. There are rather few masters of horror writing out of the many who write horror. HP Lovecraft along with Edgar Allan Poe have achieved fame because their work is of a standard of excellence that few if any can rival. Here we concentrate on HP Lovecraft, even the name has a sliver of the night about it. Born in 1890 in Providence, Rhode Island he was a prodigious youth but a sickly one. Raised mainly by his Grandfather and Aunts at 14 he contemplated suicide on the death of his grandfather and the crushing financial blow that brought to himself and his mother. A set of literary spats in a newspaper brought him attention away from his poetry writings. But until the last decade of his life the works for which we is so well know did not arrive. That last decade, writing again in Providence was prolific but with little income his life downgraded rented house by rented house and in 1936, often malnourished he was diagnosed with cancer and succumbed to it the following year. Index Of Stories Re-Animator The Lurking Fear The Thing On The Doorstep The Call Of Cthulhu
Author

Howard Phillips Lovecraft, of Providence, Rhode Island, was an American author of horror, fantasy and science fiction. Lovecraft's major inspiration and invention was cosmic horror: life is incomprehensible to human minds and the universe is fundamentally alien. Those who genuinely reason, like his protagonists, gamble with sanity. Lovecraft has developed a cult following for his Cthulhu Mythos, a series of loosely interconnected fictions featuring a pantheon of human-nullifying entities, as well as the Necronomicon, a fictional grimoire of magical rites and forbidden lore. His works were deeply pessimistic and cynical, challenging the values of the Enlightenment, Romanticism and Christianity. Lovecraft's protagonists usually achieve the mirror-opposite of traditional gnosis and mysticism by momentarily glimpsing the horror of ultimate reality. Although Lovecraft's readership was limited during his life, his reputation has grown over the decades. He is now commonly regarded as one of the most influential horror writers of the 20th Century, exerting widespread and indirect influence, and frequently compared to Edgar Allan Poe. — Wikipedia