The Call of Cthulhu [2020, PDF/EPUB, ENG]

by H.P. Lovecraft

(2,436 ratings)
Book cover

The Call of Cthulhu

Complete short story
The first seed of the story's first chapter The Horror in Clay came from one of Lovecraft's own dreams he had in 1919,which he described briefly in two different letters sent to his friend Rheinhart Kleiner on May 21 and December 14, 1920.
The story's narrator, Francis Wayland Thurston, recounts his discovery of various notes left behind by his great uncle, George Gammell Angell, a prominent professor of Semitic languages at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island, who died during the winter of 1926 after being jostled by a sailor.The first chapter, 'The Horror in Clay', concerns a small bas-relief sculpture found among the notes, which the narrator describes: 'My somewhat extravagant imagination yielded simultaneous pictures of an octopus, a dragon, and a human caricature.
  • Lovecraft holds a unique position in the literary world; he has grasped, to all intents, the worlds outside our paltry ken.
  • Lovecraft scholar Peter Cannon regarded the story as 'ambitious and complex...a dense and subtle narrative in which the horror gradually builds to cosmic proportions',
  • French novelistMichel Houellebecq, in his bookH. P. Lovecraft: Against the World, Against Life, described the story as the first of Lovecraft's 'great texts'.
  • E. F. Bleilerhas referred to 'The Call of Cthulhu' as 'a fragmented essay with narrative inclusions'.
  • Canadian mathematician Benjamin K. Tippett noted that the phenomena described in Johansen's journal may be interpreted as 'observable consequences of a localized bubble ofspacetime curvature', and proposed a suitable mathematical model.
Contents
  1. THE HORROR IN CLAY
  2. THE TALE OF INSPECTOR LEGRASSE
  3. THE MADNESS FROM THE SEA
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Book details


  • Retail price : from $6.99
  • Author : H.P. Lovecraft
  • Publisher : Independently published
  • Published : 07-26-2020
  • Language : English
  • Pages : 57
  • ISBN-13 : 979-8669574079
  • Reader Reviews : 2,436 (4.4)

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  • Status : available for FREE download
  • Downloads : 3548

About the Author


H.P. Lovecraft


Leslie S. Klinger is considered to be one of the world's foremost authorities on those icons of the Victorian era, Sherlock Holmes, Dracula, and Frankenstein. He is the editor of the three-volume collection of the short stories and novels, THE NEW ANNOTATED SHERLOCK HOLMES, published by W. W. Norton in 2004 and 2005, winner of the Edgar Award for Best Critical/Biographical Work and nominated for every other major award in the mystery genre. THE NEW ANNOTATED DRACULA, published by W. W. Norton in 2008, offers a similar in-depth examination of Bram Stoker's haunting classic and its historical context. It received a starred review in Publishers' Weekly.

Since the 1960s, the study of the rich fantastic literature of the Victorian writers has been Klinger's consuming passion. He has written dozens of articles on Sherlockiana, published 20 books on Sherlock Holmes in addition to the Norton work, and regularly teaches UCLA Extension courses on 'Sherlock Holmes and His World' and 'Dracula and His World.' Klinger's Sherlock Holmes Reference Library has been called by the Baker Street Journal 'the standard text of reference for all serious Sherlockians.' He contributed essays to Playboy Magazine and the Times of London on vampires and served as the technical adviser for Warner Bros. on the 'Sherlock Holmes' films starring Robert Downey, Jr. and Jude Law.

Klinger has edited several anthologies of stories relating to Holmes, vampires, horror, and Victorian fiction, including 'In the Shadow of Dracula' and 'In the Shadow of Sherlock Holmes' for IDW Books and 'In the Shadow of Edgar Allen Poe' for Pegasus Books. He has also co-edited with Laurie R. King four anthologies of new stories about Sherlock Holmes, 'A Study in Sherlock,' the Anthony-winning 'In the Company of Sherlock Holmes,' 'Echoes of Sherlock Holmes,' and 'For the Sake of the Game.' The four-volume 'The Annotated Sandman' in collaboration with Neil Gaiman for DC Entertainment appeared in 2012-14, and his 'Watchmen: Annotated Edition' was published by DC Entertainment in 2017. Also in 2017, his 'New Annotated Frankenstein,' published by W. W. Norton, was nominated for a World Fantasy Award. Klinger's 'The New Annotated H. P. Lovecraft,' shortlisted for the Bram Stoker Award, appeared in 2014, and a second volume, 'New Annotated H. P. Lovecraft: Beyond the Mythos' will be published by Norton in 2019.

Klinger and co-editor Laura Caldwell just completed 'ANATOMY OF INNOCENCE: TESTIMONIES OF THE WRONGFULLY CONVICTED,' published by Liveright Publishing/W. W. Norton in 2017. This harrowing anthology pairs exonerees with major mystery/thriller writers to tell their tales of despair, hope, and courage. A nonprofit project, proceeds from the book benefit innocence projects.

In 2018, Klinger published 'Classic American Crime Fiction of the 1920s,' a massive annotated collection of five novels, including the first Charlie Chan mystery, the first Ellery Queen mystery, the first Philo Vance mystery, Dashiell Hammett's first novel, and 'Little Caesar,' the first gangster novel. The book was awarded the Edgar for Best Critical/Biographical and is nominated for several other awards.

Later in 2019, Neil Gaiman's 'Annotated American Gods,' edited with notes by Klinger, will appear from William Morrow.

Born in Chicago, Illinois, Klinger received an AB in English from the University of California, Berkeley, followed by a JD from Boalt Hall (School of Law, U.C. Berkeley). Since then, he has lived in Los Angeles, pursuing a legal career in tax, estate, and business planning. Klinger is a member of the Baker Street Irregulars, the Horror Writers Association, and the Mystery Writers of America. He served for three years as the chapter president of the SoCal Chapter of MWA and on its National Board of Directors, and he is the Treasurer of the Horror Writers Association.

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Reader Reviews

J
Amazon Customer
GREAT ITEM
Reviewed in the United States on 06-07-2023
GREAT BOOK.
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J
Melisa
Glad I finally read it
Reviewed in the United States on 06-18-2023
This is a good short book of horror. I have read many of Lovecraft's shorts and loved most of them. This was also good but with disappointing racial descriptions, which I guess weren't too big of a surprise given his biography..
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J
fra7299
Weird, unsettling, atmopsheric
Reviewed in the United States on 08-07-2017
I’ve long been waiting to get to read a H.P. Lovecraft story for years. I read Algernon Blackwood’s “The Willows” a few years back and loved it, and hearing that there were similarities to Blackwood and Lovecraft, I was looking forward to “The Call of the Cthulhu.”

Lovecraft sets the stage with such a powerful, gripping opening sentence that not only forebodes danger and peril, but certainly depicts a feeling of a other-worldly presence in the natural world: “We live on a placid island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity, and it was not meant that we should voyage far.”

When the narrator stumbles upon some notes of a dead professor and a strange object, he relates with awe, wonder, and dread, the circumstances of this ill-fated professor and the awful creature that is attached to his story.

Lovecraft’s tale relies quite heavily on a back-telling of the mythology of this creature, as well as the circumstances that leads to the final, harrowing and ultimately, gripping ending. I would venture to say that the first half to two-thirds of this story is simply exposition and detail to set up what is to come. Some of this is quite dense, I will admit. This does consume quite a bit of the flow, and does take some patience for a reader. However, I think the pay off at the end of this “weird tale” is worth it.

Lovecraft is an amazing worthsmith that can create such an ominous atmosphere and feel. His vocabulary is quite dense and difficult, just as a warning, though. This tale of his is dark and ventures into subjects and places that humans would not want to visit. Literally this tale is dripping with an ambience of unsettling forebodings, and it builds and builds towards its final conclusion.
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