On rereading, after a LOT of genuine research, I still enjoy this book as a lighter biography, but I have to admit that it's less than thorough, a little too reliant on pop-psychology, and strangely biased in its interpretations of events and motives.

THE book on Weird Tales magazine, covering its publishing history from 1923 until its death in the 1950s. Lots of info, lots of pictures, lots of anecdotes from famous contributors to "The Unique Magazine" throughout its lifespan. This book won a World Fantasy Award for Mr. Weinberg when it first came out. A definite must-have for any weird fiction collector. Weinberg, aside from being a very cool guy, is one of the foremost authorities on Weird Tales, and maintains one of the largest pulp collections in the world...

A phenomenal read that makes you feel personally connected to HPL. Lovecraft speaks for himself in hundred of epistolary excerpts edited and compiled by Mr. Joshi. Fascinating and compelling. It was in this book and the 5 volumes of Collected Letters published by Arkham House that I got a handle on Lovecraft's voice.

Readable, intriguing critical study of Lovecraft's work that traces significant themes throughout his stories: dreams, forbidden books, ancient cults, ancestry, subterranean worlds, dark myths, etc.. A terrific, if slight overview of HPL's obsessions. A superb introduction to a critical reading of Lovecraft's body of work and recurring concerns.

Definitive editions of Lovecraft's writing complete with massively detailed annotations and scrupulous attention to reconstruction of pristine texts.

Penguin's highbrow Lovecraft collections. Terrific collections for someone wanting a good selection of stories to sample. The annotations by Joshi are relegated to endnote status, making it a little harder to cross reference things. These are the editions I suggest to people who ask for a casual introduction to HPL's writing.

Amazon: "Surprisingly relaxed and informal view of HPL in a book built of a series of letters, written in 1936-37, exchanged between Howard Phillips Lovecraft and Willis Conover, a 12-year-old boy at the time. A very intimate look at the father of modern horror literature."

This isn't as random as it might seem. Disney was a Depression-era Chicago illustrator who knew Margaret Brundage for decades. This book is a terrifically readable biography of the man behind the Mouse. Lots of juicy historical detail. I read this because of Disney's early days in Chicago, the time he spent in High School and the Academy with Brundage, and the job offer he made to her later on... Only shreds of that research survive in the play, but nevertheless...

Amazon: "Thoughtful, scholarly, and a helluva read. A fantastic book that is something of a classic of its kind. A fascinating book for anyone interested in Howard's work and life."

Amazon: "An excellent introduction to Robert E. Howard's non-heroic fantasy tales (no Conan, Kull or Solomon Kane stories here). Includes some of Howard's most compelling stories, especially "Pigeons from Hell" and "Worms of the Earth." Only about half the 13 items in the book have anything even remotely to do with H.P. Lovecraft's "Mythos," but it's a graphic illustration of what a born talented storyteller Howard was."

Core rules for the popular role-playing game set in the worlds of H. P. Lovecraft's fiction. Investigators fight to keep their sanity as they poke into dark corners better left unlit. This game and its offshoots have been responsible in large part for the continued growth of Lovecraft's cult following... Edition 5.6.1

Excellent book detailing adaptations of H. P. Lovecraft in film, television & other recorded media...

An edge of your seat read! A dazzling postmodern thriller about literary joke that plunges its perpetrators into deadly peril... included here because a few people have pointed out similarities in tone, topic and construction between it and Drawing Monsters. Randomly, the novel's pivotal moment even contains a brief, potent reference to Cthulhu & Lovecraft.

Spectacular. Eco's "Postscript" is worth the price of the book in itself... published finally with the book that inspired it. But the novel, an event when it was first published, is phenomenal, totally deserving of its success. Smarty-pants fiction with a lingering glow.

Henry James' short masterpiece of gothic terror and ambiguity. Riveting and elusive. In the hands of James, the master of nuance, this little tale of terror is an exquisite gem of sexual and psychological ambiguity. Virginia Woolf said of this masterpiece, "We are afraid of something unnamed, of something, perhaps, in ourselves...Henry James...can still make us afraid of the dark."

Packed with insight and illuminating inquiry. This book includes the original novella and a collection of all of the major criticism relating to it, going all the way back to James later thoughts in The Aspern Papers and the initial critical responses to the book. A feast of gothic ideas.

From Book News, Inc.: "Inverso (English, Bentley College) examines a wide spectrum of Gothic texts--including The Castle of Otranto, Dracula, and The Turn of the screw--and illustrates how various Gothic narrative motifs and conventions are present in New Gothic drama. Modern plays discussed include Harold Pinter's The Caretaker, Peter Barnes's The Ruling class, and Peter Weiss's Marat/Sade."

Caitlin Kiernan: "An eminently readable and insightful book . . . a must for readers interested in the history and deeper significance of the gothic."

From Kirkus Reviews: "In The Secret Museum (1987), Kendrick traced the rise and influence of literary pornography. Here, in an equally freewheeling study, the Fordham English professor excavates another cultural back-alley--that of horror literature and film. Kendrick's basic thesis is two-fold: that horror arises from ``the fear of being dead,'' and that, since this fear is endemic to the modern (i.e., post-1750) condition, horror entertainments tend to recycle the same themes and styles... Of most value for its in-depth look at the genre's seminal works."

Amazon.com: "They are half-human horrors, strange and scary aliens, the seemingly-normal-but-deadly danger that lurks around the corner: Hollywood monsters, or homosexuals? Horror fiction has always portrayed society's greatest fears as monstrous incarnations of "the other," so it should be no surprise that there has always been a clear homoerotic subtext in horror films... Harry M. Benshoff's Monsters in the Closet details how Hollywood monsters have not only been a reflection of homosexuals, but that changes in the horror film have actually mirrored changes in attitudes toward homosexuality in our society. Discussing hundreds of classic (and not so classic) movies, Benshoff provides new insight into horror and science fiction films and into how popular culture presents ideas about homosexuality to a broad audience."

From Library Journal: "The enduring interest in Gothic and macabre images and stories has drawn the attention of contemporary scholars and critics. Departing from recent volumes that analyze the Gothic in contemporary culture and arts, British critic Davenport-Hines has produced a comprehensive survey of Gothic themes in art, architecture, literature, and film since the early 17th century."

Amazon: "This is a very readable, intellectually serious, and balanced approach to the importance of Gothic literature and film to our culture. Clemens takes what is essentially a Jungian or archetypal close-reading approach to a number of classic and some newer texts... but here's what sets this book apart: a thorough and fascinating grounding in social and political history, and a willingness to take the Gothic seriously even in its current manifestations."

From jacket: "Traces the history of the gothic and cultural significance of the form, from its beginnings in the 18th cent. to modern times. Takes the student from basic material towards the more subtle in an accessible way."

From Book News, Inc.: "The author proposes that the Gothic tradition in literature is a poetic tradition with intimate links to the Romantic, with subjects in both a male and a female genre. She observes that the structure informing the Gothic myth is the patriarchal family, and explains how the tradition as a whole expresses the dangerous power of the female."

From jacket: "From a series that allows contextual study of texts by concentrating on key periods, topics and comparisons in literature. Each book adopts an interactive approach and provides the background for understanding the significance of literary, historical and social contexts."

From jacket: "The Gothic novel emerged out of the romantic mist alongside a new conception of the home as a separate sphere for women. Looking at novels from Horace Walpole's Castle of Otranto to Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, Kate Ferguson Ellis investigates the relationship between these two phenomena of middle-class culture--the idealization of the home and the popularity of the Gothic--and explores how both male and female authors used the Gothic novel to challenge the false claim of home as a safe, protected place. Linking terror -- the most important ingredient of the Gothic novel -- to acts of transgression, Ellis shows how houses in Gothic fiction imprison those inside them, while those locked outside wander the earth plotting their return and their revenge."

H-Net Reviews calls Skin Shows an "intelligent, well-informed, and provocative piece of writing" and writes that its "greatest strength ... is that it allows for other critics of the Gothic to proceed more self-consciously about the presuppositions that particularly psychoanalysis has introduced into the academic discussion." One caveat, though: the language is somewhat turgid, with awkward verbs such as "gothicize" and "metaphorize."

From jacket: "Tales of child sacrifice, demon lovers, incestual relations, and returns from the dead are part of English and Irish gothic literature. Such recurring tropes are examined in this pioneering study by Margot Gayle Backus to show how Anglo-Irish gothic works written from the eighteenth through the twentieth centuries reflect the destructive effects of imperialism on the children and later descendents of Protestant English settlers in Ireland. "