The Horror in the Museum and Other Revisions

Note! The Horror in the Museum and Other Revisions is a collection of stories revised or ghostwritten by H. P. Lovecraft. The Horror in the Museum and Other Revisions was revised in 1989 by S. T. Joshi adding an introduction by Joshi and revising both the texts and the contents. In 2007, Del Rey published a trade paperback version with a new introduction by Stephen Jones, and a brief biography of Lovecraft at the end.

Following S. T. Joshi's acclaimed three-volume critical edition of the Lovecraft fiction, this final supplementary collection includes all known revisions and collaborations undertaken by Lovecraft on behalf of his friends and clients. As with previous volumes in this series, the texts preserved herein scrupulously follow archival manuscripts, typescripts, or original publications, and constitute the definitive edition of these stories.

Since Lovecraft's customary procedure as a revisionist was to discard his client’s draft and entirely rewrite the story in his own words, much of the fiction in this collection represents original work by Lovecraft, including such notable contributions to the Cthulhu Mythos as "The Electric Executionar," "Out of the Aeons," and "The Diary of Alonzo Typer." Supreme among the revisions in this volume is the brilliant nouvelle "The Mound," which embodies Lovecraft's satirical commentary on the Machine Age "decadence" of his era and which receives its first unabridged publication in the present edition.

In the whole range of fantastic literature, Lovecraft created a new form that is neither pure fancy nor pure science fiction. He combined a factual and accurate scientific knowledge with its extension to the absolute limit in supernatural bizarrerie. His work defies classification, for it is as much myth as reality – both lore and legend at their haunting, haunted best, and at the same time science at its most provocative. His tales have been termed the finest weird fantasy ever written, and yet also the most superbly literate science fiction. Lovecraft's work has achieved an honored eminence among the great visionary fiction of the ages precisely because, while betraying no trace of the commonplace, his stories are based convincingly in the world of everyday reality, yet lure the mind into the farthest reaches of the imagination, the star-flung spaces of the universe, the cosmic realm of a master mythmaker.

Contents:

• Lovecraft's "Revisions" by August Derleth
• The Green Meadow
• The Crawling Chaos
• The Last Test
• The Electric Executioner
• The Curse of Yig
• The Mound
• Medusa's Coil
• The Man of Stone
• The Horror in the Museum
• Winged Death
• Out of the Aeons
• The Horror in the Burying-Ground
• The Diary of Alonzo Typer
• The Horror at Martin's Beach
• Ashes
• The Ghost-Eater
• The Loved Dead
• Deaf, Dumb, and Blind
• Two Black Bottles
• The Trap
• The Tree on the Hill
• The Disinterment
• 'Till A' the Seas'
• The Night Ocean