The Complete Works of H.P. Lovecraft

The Complete Works of H.P. Lovecraft

4.31 of 5 stars 4.31  ·  rating details  ·  1,087 ratings  ·  63 reviews
The weird fiction short stories of H.P. Lovecraft from 1917-1935. Excludes collaborations.

I compiled this eBook as a free release on my site CthulhuChick.com. I've added it to the Kindle store for convenience, and because someone else was trying to sell it here, but you can always get it for free on the site.

The eBook’s table of contents is listed below. It includes the ye...more
Kindle Edition, 1305 pages
Published March 1st 2011 (first published November 1st 1983)
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Larry Kollar
A complete collection of H.P. Lovecraft's solo works (no collaborations), arranged by date. It's a huge work, no doubt.

My only gripe about the stories is that Lovecraft was overfond of a narrative style. If dialogue were water, I'd have died of thirst. And yet, the best of them read like a confession whispered through the cell door bars of an insane asylum.

One thing that surprised me was that Cthulhu was a prominent character in only one story… and from that has been built a massive edifice of f...more
Alex
First of all, if I was rating the work that Ruth at cthulhuchick.com has done in compiling this collection, I'd give it a full 5 stars. She did an excellent job creating the e-book.

I had some very good memories of reading Lovecraft, and most of the stories still hold up well. What I could not get over though was the blatant racism. I realize that it was written in a different time, but it left me unable to fully appreciate the stories.

It was great to finally read the full Cthulhu mythos in order...more
Batgrl
Best ebook version of Lovecraft with contents linked such that you can easily hop to the story you need. Other Lovecraft compilations on Amazon (at the time I bought this) don't have that linked contents, and you don't want to have to page through an entire book of this size just to get to one story.

Also worth the purchase because it was given away free (and you can still find it) - but I'd urge you to kick some money over to the woman who did the formatting (CthulhuChick), it's worth it.

As for...more
Palindrome Mordnilap
Feb 13, 2013 Palindrome Mordnilap marked it as to-read
Shelves: horror-books
In defence of the early stories, I've read "The Tomb" and "Dagon" and enjoyed both. I agree that stories like "The Dunwich Horror" (for example) are superior, but that's no reason to write off the early works. The image of the immense, slippery fish-god wrapping its arms around the stone monolith and the dark simplicity with which Lovecraft writes "I think I went mad then." gave me a shudder.

I shall continue with interest.

UPDATE: "Polaris" was very good indeed, and once again demonstrates what g...more
Steve Goble
This Kindle edition is great. Well done, ChthulhuChick.com.

I run hot and cold on Lovecraft. His protagonists are dull and mostly interchangeable. He avoids dialogue like mice avoid cats. He loves antiquated words. He tells stories obliquely, often through the voice of someone relaying things that purportedly happened to someone else.

On the other hand, his vision of horror is more applicable to real life than the vampires, werewolves and ghosts of old -- it is a better metaphor for the doom we al...more
D.M. Dutcher
The complete works of a master at the price of 99 cents. A steal at ten times the price.

Seriously, if you have a Kindle, get this. It's formatted near perfectly for an insane amount of content, and the stories are arranged by date so you get the entire feel of Lovecraft's work. There's a lot of repetition if you try and read the entire thing, but you can trace the development of the Mythos, and appreciate all the self-referencing each of his works has. If you've just read Dream-Quest of Unknown...more
Steve Cran
HP Lovecraft is just awesome. He takes you literally to another world and sometimes he will bring you back and at other times he will leave you. Lovecraft's writing go beyond horror. He seem to have intimate knowledge of the occult and witchcraft and he applies that well to his own mythos. After reading this collection I personally believe that Mr. Lovecraft was a prophet of sorts and that he in fact really has traversed to these other worlds. I would also like to thank Cthullhu Chick for puttin...more
Graziano
Apr 28, 2013 Graziano is currently reading it
Shelves: kindle
The Tomb (1917)
"... echoes of a forgotten prehistoric past beat insistently upon the enthralled consciousness." (location 101)

Dagon (1917)
"I cannot think of the deep sea without shuddering at the nameless things that may at this very moment be crawling and floundering on its slimy bed, worshipping their ancient stone idols and carving their own detestable likenesses on submarine obelisks of water-soaked granite. I dream of a day when they may rise above the billows to drag down in their reeking...more
knig
A little daunted by the prolific proclivities of Lovecraft, I decided to cherry pick. General consensus pointed out the following five tales as being the cream of the crop:

1. The Dragon
2. The Outsider
3. The Lurking Fear
4. The call of Cthulu
5. The Colour of outerspace

And, from my GR friend Bennet I picked up on ‘The thing on the doorstep’ which otherwise gets few mentions but turned out to be my favourite of the bunch. Then I stopped, because GR Chris told me too. And, because Lovecraft simply ca...more
Joe
Last year I read "Tales," the H.P. Lovecraft collection put together by the Library of America. That was my first exposure to Lovecraft and it was fantastic. It included most of his best known and longer works. I figured the stories they had excluded were probably the best of the best. Were they? Well, for the most part, yes. But there are some gems out there. With that being said, here's my review of the rest of Lovecraft's writing:

The Tomb: Lovecraft's first published work. A creepy tale of a...more
Hydra Star
What can I say about H.P. Lovecraft and his work that hasn’t been said a million times before?...nothing most likely, but here we go with a review anyway.

Lovecraft is a must read for anyone with an appreciation for horror or science fiction. He was a master story teller and the mythoses he created are so inspiring that there are people who have actually built religions around them. That’s some powerful stuff and this collection bring together all his solo works in a powerful way.

Does that mean t...more
Miklos Hargitay
I was fortunate to find this for .99 in the nook store and I am so glad I did. I had no exposure to Lovecraft and got the full Lovecraftian universe in all its glory-from Arkham, MA to Miskatonic U. to Cthulhu and even the Mad Arab and more. It was fascinating to note the consistent appearance of various lore, settings, and even characters throughout his stories, in such a way that made his works more entrancing.
Most of the stories were good but not significant or frightening in any way. Others...more
Molly Ison
I am rating this as an entire book, rather than an opinion of the author in general or of any given stories. And that may be the main problem I had with this book, or the main problem I have as a reader. When I get a book, I like to read it cover to cover. I don't like to quit books that I've started. So I read every story. If you don't have my compulsions, this would be a good reference book to HP Lovecraft. As a complete collection, one quickly discovers that Lovecraft is quite repetitive, bot...more
Stephen
If ever you need some non-euclidian, Cyclopean, eldritch, madness-inducing, un-nameable horror in your life, then Lovecraft is the man for you!

I hadn't read Lovecraft since high school, but I dove back in after playing Elder Signs dice game. he has a very singular style, very dry and repetitive - a one-trick pony, but what a trick!

I recently heard that Guillaume del Toro's pet project was a film version of At the Mountains of Madness which he had been working on for decades, but recently gave up...more
Andrew Barger
Nov 19, 2012 Andrew Barger rated it 3 of 5 stars Recommends it for: Horror Fans
Lovecraft is often portrayed as the successor to Poe in the genre of short horror stories, but after reading Lovecraft's stories (and editing Edgar Edgar Allan Poe Annotated and Illustrated Entire Stories and Poems), I can tell you that he is no Poe. Lovecraft is much less a pioneer than Poe in both character and Gothic atmosphere. Lovecraft gave us the Cthulhu Mythos of cosmic horrors, of ancient horrors lying dormant, of horrors that transcend space and time and dimensions. He holds his rightf...more
Robin
I have finished as much as I can for now. It's a good read and since it is a collection, seems to work best in small sips and bites.
Aleina
This was really something else. I got this book and read this book because of its tie to the boardgame Arkham Horror.
I'm really glad I did get this and read this. It was well worth the time and money (though I spent more time reading it than I initially expected). the book I got was beautiful, the stories were great, though some were very slow to start. My favorites in particular would be the Cats of Ulthar, At the Mountains of Madness, the Shadow over Innsmouth, the Colour out of Space, and th...more
Lucas
Chronological gradient of some real awful early work and the best horror ever put to paper.
Rich Tate
This is quite possibly the easiest review of a book I’ll ever write.

Howard Phillip Lovecraft is the father of the modern horror genre as we know it today, being cited time after time by numerous contemporary masters of the craft. If you are a fan of Stephen King, Richard Matheson or any author of their ilk you owe it to yourself to read this collection.

Lovecraft is the master of odd, organic horror with an ethereal blend. These are literally the stories that bred countless nightmares throughout...more
Brian
Apr 25, 2013 Brian rated it 5 of 5 stars Recommends it for: horror fans
Shelves: cthulhu, horror, 5-stars
Now that time has given us some perspective on his work, I think it is beyond doubt that H. P. Lovecraft has yet to be surpassed as the twentieth century’s greatest practitioner of the classic horror tale.
-Stephen King
This is a collection of everything H. P. Lovecraft ever wrote, arranged as an ebook in chronological order and internally linked to make it easy to jump to any individual story. It's available for free at Cthulhuchick's website.

And you should definitely download it. Lovecraft's inf...more
Katy
Disclosure: I picked up a free copy formatted for Nook on CthulhuChick.com. You can pick up a Kindle copy at the same place.

Synopsis: The Complete Works of H.P. Lovecraft contains all the original stories which Lovecraft wrote as an adult. It begins in 1917 with “The Tomb” and ends in 1935 with his last original work “The Haunter of the Dark.” The book is ordered chronologically by the date the story was written. Because Lovecraft was a terrible businessman and left no heirs to his intellectual...more
Shaun Baker
I really enjoy Lovecraft's stories and ideas. I think they capture a very specific moment in the history of fiction that really appeals to me - the pulp movement of the 20's and 30's is the source of a lot of my favorite authors (Lovecraft and Robert E. Howard chief among them).

The Tomb (1917) ***
Dagon (1917) ****
Polaris (1918) **
Beyond the Wall of Sleep (1919) ****
Memory (1919) **
Old Bugs (1919) **
The Transition of Juan Romero (1919) ***
The White Ship (1919) **
The Doom That Came to Sarnath (191...more
W.E. Linde
The Master of Madness: Review of The Complete Works of H.P. Lovecraft

If you have any inclination toward horror or classic authors, you've probably at least heard snippets of H.P. Lovecraft's literary legacy. Strange words like Cthulhu and the Necronomicon have worked their way into a horror subculture that has endured for nearly a century now. I've heard that there are some devotees who claim that the forbidden tome Necronomicon is an actual book. I tell you, that's a legacy,

I had never read any...more
Nathan Shumate
What? Three stars? Unfortunately, yes. In reading the entirety of Lovecraft's fictive output in chronological order (a more accurate title would be "The Complete Non-Collaborative/Ghostwritten Fiction Works of H.P. Lovecraft"), I've come both to appreciate more and criticize more his storytelling skill. I cannot deny that his often-used conceit of things which are so far beyond our conception of "evil" or "the supernatural" that they would challenge the sanity of a poor beknighted human who trie...more
Benjamin Thomas
I've been working on reading through these short stories and novellas for the past 9 months, taking my time with them and making sure I didn't rush through them too quickly. I also didn't want to get burned out on them. There are a total of 63 works in this complete collection, presented in the order in which they were written (not necessarily the same as the order of publication). There are no collaborations here, just the total body of work that HP Lovecraft produced on his own.

As with any col...more
Dan Tasse
I agree with some other reviewers that a lot of the early stuff is lame but the later stuff is generally pretty great, either because it's actually scary ("The Picture in the House", "The Whisperer in Darkness", "Pickman's Model") or because it's really interesting fantasy ("Nyarlathotep", "At the Mountains of Madness", "The Dunwich Horror"). He does a lot of the thing that good horror creators do where they show scared people instead of the scary thing itself.

Course, I've only read maybe 1/3 of...more
Marco Salvador
No leí toda la obra. Este es un mini resumen de mi humilde opinión de lo leído:

The Tomb (meh), Dagon (meh), The Doom That Came to Sarnath (meh), Nyarlathotep (meh), The Outsider (Muy bueno), The Other Gods (meh), The Unnamable (Bueno), The Call of Cthulhu (Muy bueno), The Case of Charles Dexter Ward (ABURRIDISIMO), The Colour Out of Space (Bueno), The History of the Necronomicon (meh), At the Mountains of Madness (Bueno, pero medio aburrido), The Dreams in the Witch House (Muy bueno)

Mi favorito:...more
Avardsin
I haven't read the full book yet, but what i have read is good. Also for the price i got this book, you really can't complain.

H.P. Lovecraft seems an artist in his writing. The writing seems to give the book a presence.

It's not always an 'easy read', sometimes you have to go back over yourself... Also his paragraphs lengths seem abit long which can cause you to lose your place within the story.

Radu
More accurately: 4.5 stars for the content, 5 stars and kudos to the 'gatherer'. Great compilation; I bet one can't find Lovecraft's short stories, bundled like this, in any library (at least, I haven't so far). I'll just say that, after reading these stories, which I'm aware are only part of his works (I still haven't touched his poetry and collaborations), HPL has become one of my favorite authors.
Dan
Never again will there ever be a horror fiction writer as amazing with imagery and setting the mood as Howard Phillips Lovecraft... I recommend the following stories this compendium, "The Mountains of Madness", "Rats in the Walls", and of course... "The Call of Cthulhu".... After reading his works, you will never look at Anne Rice or Stephen King with the same respect.
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The Complete Works of H. P. Lovecraft (Kindle Edition)
The Complete Works of H.P. Lovecraft (ebook)
The Complete Works (Kindle Edition)
The Complete Works (ebook)
The Complete Works of H.P. Lovecraft (ebook)

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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...more
More about H.P. Lovecraft...
The Best of H.P. Lovecraft: Bloodcurdling Tales of Horror and the Macabre The Call of Cthulhu and Other Weird Stories At the Mountains of Madness and Other Tales of Terror At the Mountains of Madness The Road to Madness

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“Who knows the end? What has risen may sink, and what has sunk may rise. Loathsomeness waits and dreams in the deep, and decay spreads over the tottering cities of men.” 4 people liked it
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