Everything you always wanted to know about H.P. Lovecraft but were afraid to ask. This word includes Lovecraft's major works, annotated with speculations about the locales, photographs of existing buildings, covers and illustrations from the original publications or film productions. Several appendices include faculty lists for Miskatonic U., chronologies, and bibliographies. ( )

3.o - An excellent collection. Lovecraft had a singular, iconic vision. However I felt that the writing never caught up with the ideas. A lot of telling, rather than showing. However, this was a quality read, and the volume is a well-constructed collection that does the author justice. ( )

This review is written with a GPL 3.0 license and the rights contained therein shall supersede all TOS by any and all websites in regards to copying and sharing without proper authorization and permissions. Crossposted at Bookstooge.booklikes.blogspot.wordpress.leafmarks.com & Bookstooge's Reviews on the Road Facebook Group by Bookstooge's Exalted Permission. Title: The New Annotated H.P. Lovecraft Series: ----- Author: H.P. Lovecraft, Leslie Klinger Rating: 3 of 5 Stars Genre: Horror Pages: 1008 Synopsis: A compendium of Lovecraft's stories with historical, geographical and misc data footnotes to make this a fuller experience. My Thoughts: First, I found the annotation to be completely useless. Being from New England myself, most of the geographic and historical data wasn't new to me and the bits that weren't, I didn't care about. There were also pictures of places where stories took place. I don't care to see the "Fuller House, repaired in 1997". A lot of the historical and literary annotations I knew about as well. I'm just well read and experienced enough that this stuff wasn't for me. I definitely wasn't the target audience for the annotations side of things. Second, the quality of the stories varied so greatly that I wasn't sure what I was getting into from page to page. Some were incredible, some were just complete and utter stinkers. Sometimes I believed the horrorness of the "unnameable horror" and at other times I was rolling my eyes so hard that my glasses practically jumped off my face. Thirdly, I really wish I had this back in my teen years. I found so many things that other books I've read referenced. It would have made for a much richer reading experience. However, better late than never and I look forward to finding future Lovecraftian influence in the horror books I read. Finally, I don't regret the time I spent on this monster book but I do wish more of the stories had been of higher caliber. " ( )

It's good to see someone other than S.T. Joshi produce an annotated work. Joshi's study of HPL is monumental, but frankly a little frightening in it's obsessiveness. Klinger has done a nice job of presenting authoritative editions of the works and his notes are in the main very enlightening. As large as the collection of tales is, though, I would have liked to have seen others included, ie The Outsider, The Rats in the Walls. But Klinger seems to want to focus on establishing the validity of the Cthulhu Mythos (hence the tentacles on the dust cover?) and those tales don't fit. We'll just have to enjoy the 850+ pages we have. ( )

Great Yuggoth, hath no one review'd this tome of yet? I have been away from this site for many strange aeons, having been occupy'd with the chore of writing weird fiction full time; but I was curious to see what y'all were saying about this magnificent new hardcover edition of Lovecraft, and lo!, I find silence. My views on H. P. Lovecraft are, to some, extreme, in that I claim him to be a classic of American Literature, an excellent artist who remains original in this modern era.

This new edition from Liveright, superbly edited by Les Klinger, has reminded me that I am, above all, an obsess'd fanboy. Damn me but I love H. P. L.!! His fiction enthralls me, and the element of fun that I first encountered from reading him remains to this day. I quiver still with an adolescent thrill every time I begin "The Hound" or "The Statement of Randolph Carter."

I read Lovecraft's weird fiction non-stop, and so it is always a pleasure to have it in an excellent new edition. This book is quite handsome, the layout helps to make it a very pleasurable reading experience, and it is, as an edition, Klinger's own, different indeed from the fine editions ably edited by S. T. Joshi. The book is, in design, a traditional annotated volume in folio size--quite a heavy tome indeed, & I can handle it only by setting it onto a table. Lovecraft's text is in black, with annotations in dark red. Hundreds of illustrations and photographs have been included.

Choice of contents is, for the most part, fine, with the exception of the serious omission of "The Outsider." Les has included the stories that he considers form HPL's "Arkham cycle," but this makes the inclusion of the very boring "Beyond the Wall of Sleep" questionable, and one wou;d have preferred to have "The Outsider," "Pickman's Model," or "The Music of Erich Zann" instead.

Following a fine Introduction by Alan Moore, we are treated with an exhaustive forward of over fifty pages by Les. The annotations for the book are, for the most part, very good, except for the oddness of the editor's playing the "Sherlockian game," in which he pretends that Lovecraft's tales are not fictions but rather factual records of real-life events, & thus it his his editorial duty to gauge what the "real facts" of the stories may be. This simply does not work is so odd a fantasy as "The Festival."

The illustrations are sublime. At one point we have a full two-page reproduction, in Lovecraft's handwriting, of his playful account, "The History of the NECRONOMICON." I confess that I do not care for the jacket illustration of the book, for I grow weary of Lovecraft being associated with tentacles; and even the novelty of these tentacles on the cover having embossed suckers does not improve ye situation.

The book is well-researched and the notes are really fascinating, so even for those who have other editions of Lovecraft's tales, this edition offers new perspectives and biographical detail. A delightful tome indeed!