H. P. Lovecraft’s Novels by August Derleth

      H. P. Lovecraft wrote only three novels among his many short stories and novelettes, and each of them is properly viewed as a short novel — that is, longer than the novella form, but not yet a full-length novel. The most ambitious of these is undoubtedly The Case of Charles Dexter Ward, originally written in 1927-1928, but not published until 1941, when an abridged version appeared in Weird Tales. The first full-length version was published in 1943 in Beyond the Wall of Sleep, since which time it has been separately published in England, and in America has been turned into a typical horror movie with Vincent Price in the leading role — titled, hilariously enough, with typical Hollywood vagary, Edgar Allan Poe’s Haunted Palace! Second in length is At the Mountains of Madness written in 1931, and preceding the longer novel in date of publication, in Astounding Stories, where it, too, was somewhat abridged.

      The third, The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath, was very probably conceived and written well in advance of the other novels, sometime in the early or mid-1920’s, but, unlike those novels, it was evidently never extensively revised and remains the least satisfactory of them. It is properly not a part of the Cthulhu Mythos — to which both The Case of Charles Dexter Ward and At the Mountains of Madness belong — but, despite certain facets borrowed from the Mythos, it belongs rather to an earlier period of Lovecraft’s work when he was more obviously under the influence of Lord Dunsany’s fantastic tales. It is one of four stories written about Randolph Carter, who came into existence as representing Lovecraft himself in a dream story of Lovecraft’s titled The Statement of Randolph Carter, written in 1919, when such work as Lovecraft was then producing was making occasional appearances in the amateur press publications of that day. It is very probable that The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath was begun not long after, and evidence suggests that it was worked at at intervals over several years, for its general looseness suggests that Lovecraft initially at least had no very clear plan for it.

      The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath was put aside for future revision but the Cthulhu Mythos enlisted most of his creative interest from the mid-1920’s onward. Nevertheless, Lovecraft twice returned to Randolph Carter after completing The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath, carrying on Carter’s story. In 1926, he wrote The Silver Key, and in 1932, at the urging of his friend and correspondent, E. Hoffman Price, he was persuaded — after Price himself had written his version of a sequel to The Silver Key — to expand and revise Price’s story, which was ultimately published as a collaboration under the title of Through the Gates of the Silver Key. All four of the related stories are published here in their proper sequence.

      The Carter tales are essentially Dunsanian in mood and style, for all their increasing drawing upon the Cthulhu Mythos, and they are secondary to the two remaining works in this collection. At the Mountains of Madness