title: The Annotated H.P. Lovecraft
author:  H.P. Lovecraft 
description: This attractively packaged collection, edited by preeminent H. P. Lovecraft scholar S. T. Joshi, is a treat for long-time enthusiasts and newcomers alike. Joshi provides newly corrected text and footnotes for three superb stories--"The Rats in the Walls," "The Colour out of Space," and "The Dunwich Horror"--as well as the novella "At the Mountains of Madness,"acknowledged as Lovecraft's masterpiece. He explains the origins of place and character names, tracks influences from Lovecraft's reading, defines unusual words such as "nefandous" and "cyclopean," and clarifies which of the cited occult texts are fictional and which are real. <i>The Annotated H. P. Lovecraft</i> also includes a biographical introduction, comments from contemporary horror writers, excerpts from letters presenting Lovecraft's own theories about weird fiction, a critical summary of Lovecraft movies, a select bibliography, and numerous black-and-white photographs. Don't make the mistake of thinking that <i>The Annotated H. P. Lovecraft</i> is just another Lovecraft collection: Joshi has distilled decades of learning into well-chosen observations that are a delight to read.
zlib_text: 
  
  
  H. P. LOVECRAFT
  
  
  COLLECTION
  
  
  
  
  
  THE VERY OLD FOLK
  
  
  It was a flaming sunset or late afternoon in the tiny provincial town of
  Pompelo, at the foot of the Pyrenees in Hispania Citerior. The year must have
  been in the late republic, for the province was still ruled by a senatorial
  proconsul instead of a prætorian legate of Augustus, and the day was the first
  before the Kalends of November. The hills rose scarlet and gold to the north
  of the little town, and the westering sun shone ruddily and mystically on the
  crude new stone and plaster buildings of the dusty forum and the wooden walls
  of the circus some distance to the east. Groups of citizens -broad-browed
  Roman colonists and coarse-haired Romanised natives, together with obvious
  hybrids of the two strains, alike clad in cheap woollen togas -and sprinklings
  of helmeted legionaries and coarse-mantled, black-bearded tribesmen of the
  circumambient Vascones -all thronged the few paved streets and forum; moved by
  some vague and ill-def