H.P. Lovecraft's Book of the Supernatural: 20 Classic Tales of the Macabre, Chosen by the Master of Horror Himself

In 1927, H. P. Lovecraft published a 30,000-word essay titled "Supernatural Horror in Literature." In it, the father of American horror writing, whose tales presented one of the earliest scholarly studies of the supernatural in fiction, defined the horror story as one in which "a certain atmosphere of breathless and unexplainable dread of outer, unknown forces must be present." With "H. P. Lovecraft's Book of the Supernatural," Stephen Jones uses Lovecraft's essay as inspiration for an anthology of nineteen selections, each preceded by an excerpt from Lovecraft. Includes the following: "The Tale of the German Student" by Washington Irving, "Markheim" by Robert Louis Stevenson, "Who Knows?" by Guy de Maupassant, "The Invisible Eye" by Erckmann-Chatrian, "The Torture" by Hope by Villiers de l'Isle Adam, "Ms. Found in a Bottle" by Edgar Allan Poe, "What Was It?" by Fitz James O'Brien, "The Middle Toe of the Right Foot" by Ambrose Bierce, "The Turn of the Screw" by Henry James, "The Dead Smile" by F. Marion Crawford, "The Wind in the Rose-Bush" by Mary E. Wilkins-Freeman, "The Yellow Wallpaper" by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, "The Recrudescence of Imray" by Rudyard Kipling, "The Hands of Karma (Ingwa-banashi)" by Lafcadio Hearn, "The Burial of the Rats" by Bram Stoker, "The Red Lodge" by H. R. Wakefield, "The Captain of the Pole-Star" by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, "The Villa Desiree" by May Sinclair, "The Voice in the Night" by William Hope Hodgson, and "Novel of the White Powder" by Arthur Machen. The book also includes a short essay from Lovecraft himself, "Notes on Writing Weird Fiction," in which he lays out tips and rules for mastering the form.

Howard Phillips Lovecraft, of Providence, Rhode Island, was an American author of horror, fantasy and science fiction. 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 is frequently compared to Edgar Allan Poe.