Dagon: An early hint at the later mythos tales that would capture the public's interest. Obviously the name points to later work. It contains story elements that would later be seen expanded in the iconic The Call of Cthulhu.

I'd honestly say that Lovecraft's Dream Cycle works are not worth the read at all and can simply be skipped. This complete fiction is chronological, so it's interesting to see Lovecraft progress over the years. Admittedly, it was tough to get through some of the stories at the beginning, but once you get accustomed to the way Lovecraft writes, it becomes a lot easier. Not only that, but Lovecraft himself gets better at writing and the quality of his stories vastly improve. Therefore, quite predictably, my favourite stories are actually towards the end of the collection, when Lovecraft has really mastered his craft. One part of his writings though, that I didn't enjoy were many his dream cycle stories. Most of the time they seem to be nothing more than shot glimpses into a dream world narrating forgettable stories if stories at all. The longest of these works 'The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath' was one of the most tedious things I read in my life. The story was (apart from a few parts and the ending) boring, repetitive and forgettable and the work consisted mostly of descriptions of fabulous places with strange names that had no importance of the story.The Alchemist: Here we jump to author age 18. The ending is only slightly toned down from the previous work, retaining an all-caps finish but with only a single exclamation point. All but eight of the stories were written before "the Call of Cthulhu" in 1927, but a number of these earlier ones written in typical Lovecraft fashion contain marked foreshadowings of the Cthulhu Mythos in both themes and details. The tie-ins with stories like "Nyarlathotep" and "The Nameless City" are particularly obvious, as are references to the Necronomican, etc. ("History of the Necronomican" was written post-1927; it's simply a pseudo-nonfiction account of the imaginary author and origins of the sinister book, and its translation/printing "history," but adds enjoyable texture to the Mythos for committed fans.) As I've commented before, Lovecraft's own perception of his main fictional corpus was probably much more unified than that of later critics who carve it up into "Mythos" vs. "non-Mythos," and he never coined the term "Cthulhu Mythos" himself; there's a great degree of similarity of conception in many stories on both sides of the supposed divide. One can definitely say, though, that "The Very Old Folk" is certainly a Mythos tale (and as eerie and chilling as any I'd read before), as well as one which reflects HPL's fascination with ancient Rome. They were, instead, the letters of our familiar alphabet, spelling out the words of the English language in my own handwriting." A: Ah, we figured one of you would bring that up. All of Lovecraft's collaboration tales have fallen into the public domain with the exception of the tales he wrote with his friend, C.M. Eddy. The Eddy estate does not wish for any of C.M. Eddy's stories to appear in any collections of Lovecraft collaboration tales. Out of respect for their wishes, these stories are NOT included in this collection.

HP Lovecraft didn’t know Sumerian, Babylonian, or Aramaic. But that didn’t stop him from making up incantations in other worldly languages. ph’nglui mglw’nafh Cthulu R’lyeh wgah’nagl fhtagn! Yi-nash Yog-Sothoth-he-lgeb-fi-throdog-Yah!The complete works embodies Lovecraft's progression as a writer and fills his mythos well. The only complaint I could find is some earlier works do not stand the test of time or hold well. However having to find other compilations would no longer be needed. For those into noir horror, epic monsters, and the diminished mind seeing the unspeakable terrors and having to rationalize the fear, this is a great book. With some being into lovecraftian lore from gaming, other authors, or even the creepypasta craze, and not reading the original works: buy it now. No other book covers as much. Every other book will have most of the popular selections, not all. At the price you cannot go wrong. Easton Press has created for the horror classics of the great H.P. Lovecraft an edition of unmatched beauty and excellence — an Easton Press Collector's Edition, the state-of-the-art in heirloom quality bookmaking. The Fungi from Yuggoth is mentioned as missing, but this is poetry anyway according to the Wikipedia bibliography.

We’ve broken the stories into a few groups based on common settings or themes. There are stories set in the Dreamlands. There are stories that directly feature the “Cthulhu Mythos”. There are stories that are very science oriented, and some that are classic tales of horror. And there are a number of miscellaneous, juvenile, or shorter tales that don’t really fit any of these categories, all of which have a certain amount of overlap.The works I enjoyed the most were his longer stories and novellas he wrote later in his life, which are also his most iconic works and part of his Cthulhu Mythos as well as I said before, some of his earlier works. A short list of works that one should read of Lovecraft should in my opinion include the following stories and novellas: I can say that in general I enjoy Lovecrafts writing, since it is quite fitting for the types of stories he writes. He uses a wide range of vocabulary and often tends to use more antiquated words than simple ones. This is often fitting, due to his characters often being educated man, students of philosophy or similar characters. Still though, at times even I have to say that his lengthy descriptions and his lingering on certain unimportant details can be annoying.

The Beast in the Cave: This was written by Lovecraft at age 13-14, and for that is impressive. It only starts to touch the horror of being trapped underground that, say, the film The Descent shows fully, muted by the narrator's early resignation to his fate. Its youthful exuberance is captured in the final words, "... a MAN!!!", bold, caps, and triple-exclamation all original.There is also an essay written by Lovecraft on Supernatural Horror in Literature, which was excellent, it clearly showed just how knowledgeable and passionate he was about supernatural literature, reading almost like a who’s who of supernatural Horror leading up to and including his time, which gave me a few more names to add to my ‘to read’ pile.