the mad Arab, paragraphs from the apocryphal nightmares of Damascius, and infamous lines from the delirious Image du Monde of Gautier de Metz. I repeated queer extracts, and muttered of Afrasiab and the daemons that floated with him down the Oxus; later chanting over and over again a phrase from one of Lord Dunsany's tales--"The unreverberate blackness of the abyss." The paragraph goes on to quote the Irish poet Thomas Moore. The Colossi of Memnon are also mentioned. Reception Though Lovecraft counted "The Nameless City" among his favorite stories, it was rejected (following its original amateur appearance) by a variety of professional outlets, including Weird Tales (twice), Fantasy Magazine and possibly The Galleon. It was accepted by The Fantasy Fan, which folded before publishing it. It eventually appeared in the fall 1936 issue of Fanciful Tales, published by Donald A. Wollheim and Wilson Shepherd, and was reprinted in the November 1938 issue of Weird Tales after Lovecraft's death. Lin Carter described "The Nameless City" as "a trivial exercise in Poe-esque gothica", calling it "overwritten [and] over-dramatic". "[T]he mood of mounting horror is applied in a very artificial manner", Carter writes. "Rather than creating in the reader a mood of terror, Lovecraft describes a mood of terror: the emotion is applied in the adjectives." He does, however, allow that the tale has some "evocative power". Lovecraft himself was powerfully moved by an emotion of awe and fascination when contemplating the mysterious ruins of unthinkable antiquity. This emotion he manages to convey in a sort of dreamlike manner, despite his coldly clinical use of adjectives. The story is often reprinted in various short story collections. References Sources Lin Carter, Lovecraft: A Look Behind the Cthulhu Mythos. William Fulwiler, "E.R.B. and H.P.L.", Black Forbidden Things, Robert M. Price (ed.) External links Publication history for "The Nameless City", The H. P. Lovecraft Archive. 1921 short stories Cthulhu Mythos short stories Cthulhu Mythos locations Fantasy short stories Lost world novels Short stories by H. P. Lovecraft Works originally published in American magazines Saudi Arabia in fiction First-person narrative fiction Chaldea Iram of the Pillars