Edited by Robert M. Price

From the Introduction

“Ph-nglui mglw’nafh Cthulhu R’lyeh wgah’nagl fhtagn”—“In his house at R’lyeh dead Cthulhu waits dreaming.” According to H.P. Lovecraft horror awaits humanity in the depths of R’lyeh, where Great Cthulhu lurks in his crypt. What lurks in this volume, a collection from Crypt of Cthulhu magazine, is horror, too, the literary kind. As you grow increasingly absorbed, slowly turning the pages with fright-numbed fingers, you’ll see what marvels and terrors have kept many readers loyal to Crypt of Cthulhu, which, yes, I will admit to editing.
In this collection I have tried to present a cross section of Crypt, including representative genres, topics, principal contributors to the magazine, and authors treated in our articles. The main focus, as always in the magazine, is on criticism and research, and Lovecraft forms the basis of more of this than anyone else does. But you will also find discussions of Robert Bloch, Robert E. Howard, Henry Kuttner, Lin Carter, Brian Lumley, Colin Wilson, August Derleth, and Clark Ashton Smith. There is a pinch of fiction, including a new “posthumous collaboration” based on a newly discovered and quite extensive set of notes by HPL. A handful of our trademark satirical pieces round out the volume. Thus I think the book fulfills its promise of providing “the horror of it all,” the whole Cryptic gamut. The title is not, as one might expect, “The Best of The Crypt of Cthulhu” since there is simply too much to choose from. The contents of this collection are among the best, but that would be a peculiar title!

Contents

• Introduction by Robert M. Price
• Lovecraft’s Revisions: How Much of Them Did He Write? by S.T. Joshi (Crypt of Cthulhu 11)
• The Real World and the Dream World in Lovecraft by S.T. Joshi (Crypt of Cthulhu 15)
• The Origin of Lovecraft’s “Black Magic” Quote by David E. Schultz (Crypt of Cthulhu 48)
• Lovecraft’s Ghouls by Will Murray (Crypt of Cthulhu 14)
• Baring-Gould and the Ghouls: The Influence of Curious Myths of the Middle Ages on “The Rats in the Walls” by Steven J. Mariconda (Crypt of Cthulhu 14)
• “The Hound”—a Dead Dog? by Steven J. Mariconda (Crypt of Cthulhu 38)
• On “The Loved Dead” by David E. Schultz (Crypt of Cthulhu 17)
• Digging Up Irem by Lin Carter (Crypt of Cthulhu 45)
• CAS & Divers Hands by Steve Behrends (Crypt of Cthulhu 26)
• The Clark Ashton Smythos by Will Murray (Crypt of Cthulhu 26)
• The Cthulhu Mythos Fiction of Robert Bloch by Randall D. Larson (Crypt of Cthulhu 40)
• Reconstructing De Vermis Mysteriis by Robert M. Price (Crypt of Cthulhu 23)
• Solar Pons Meets Cthulhu by S.T. Joshi (Crypt of Cthulhu 6)
• The True History of the Tcho-Tcho People by Robert M. Price and Tani Jantsang (Crypt of Cthulhu 51)
• Obed and Obadiah Marsh by Robert M. Price and Tani Jantsang (Crypt of Cthulhu 18)
• The Strange Case of Robert Ervin Howard by Charles Hoffman and Marc A. Cerasini (Crypt of Cthulhu 3)
• Gol-Goroth, A Forgotten Old One by Robert M. Price (Crypt of Cthulhu 3)
• The Statement of Lin Carter by Robert M. Price (Crypt of Cthulhu 2)
• The Carter-Smith “Collaborations” by Steve Behrends (Crypt of Cthulhu 36)
• Henry Kuttner’s Cthulhu Mythos Fiction: An Overview by Shawn Ramsey (Crypt of Cthulhu 51)
• The Transition of Colin Wilson by Charles Hoffman and Marc A. Cerasini (Crypt of Cthulhu 7)
• Brian Lumley—Reanimator by Robert M. Price (Crypt of Cthulhu 19)
• The Fantasy and Mystery Bookshop by Peter H. Cannon (Crypt of Cthulhu 47)
• The Pool by Donald R. Burleson (Crypt of Cthulhu 47)
• The Volume Out of Print by Jim Cort (Crypt of Cthulhu 52)
• Strange Manuscript Found in the Vermont Woods by Lin Carter (Crypt of Cthulhu 54)
• The Cthulhuers by John Strysik (Crypt of Cthulhu 18)
• Lovecraft as I Seem to Remember Him by Robert M. Price (as F. Gumby Kalem) (Crypt of Cthulhu 14)
• Lovecraft’s Letters to Santa Claus: An Introduction by Robert M. Price (Crypt of Cthulhu 46)

Bibliographic Information

The Horror of It All: Encrusted Gems from the “Crypt of Cthulhu”. Edited by Robert M. Price. Mercer Island, WA: Starmont House; 1990; ISBN 1-55742-123-4; paperback; 204 pages.

Purchasing This Book

This book may be purchased in paperback from Amazon.com or Barnes & Noble.