By H.P. Lovecraft
Edited by S.T. Joshi
Dust Jacket Text
This fourth volume of Lovecraft’s collected essays contains his complete travel writings,
one of the most distinctive and heartwarming segments of his work. During the last decade of his
life, Lovecraft devoted nearly every summer to extensive travels up and down the eastern seaboard,
from Quebec to Key West, in search of antiquarian oases. He came to love the town of Charleston,
South Carolina, second only to his native city of Providence, Rhode Island. His trip to Vermont
in 1927, recorded in his essay “Vermont—A First Impression,” was instrumental in the
writing of “The Whisperer in Darkness” three years later. “Observations on Several
Parts of America” (1928) and “Travels in the Provinces of America” (1929) reveal, in
a flawless replication of eighteenth-century English, his fascination with such locales as
Philadelphia, Maryland, and Virginia. “A Description of the Town of Quebeck”
(1930–31) is his single longest work, longer than any of his tales; it is printed here for the
first time in a corrected text. Also included is the curious pseudo-travelogue “European
Glimpses” (1932), ghostwritten for his ex-wife, Sonia, and a previously unpublished travelogue
telling of his trip to the Fairbanks house (1636) and the Red Horse Tavern in Massachusetts. All
texts are exhaustively annotated, with critical and bibliographical notes, by S.T. Joshi.
H.P. Lovecraft (1890–1937) has belatedly achieved universal recognition as the twentieth
century’s premier author of supernatural fiction. Poet, essayist, philosopher, and man of
letters, Lovecraft’s work has been translated into more than a dozen languages and is widely
available in numerous annotated editions.
S.T. Joshi is a leading authority on Lovecraft and the author of an exhaustive biography, H.
P. Lovecraft: A Life (1996). He has prepared many annotated editions of Lovecraft’s
fiction, poetry, essays, and letters, along with such critical studies as H.P. Lovecraft: The
Decline of the West (1990) and A Subtler Magick: The Writings and Philosophy of H.P.
Lovecraft (1996). He has also done critical and editorial work on Lord Dunsany, Algernon
Blackwood, Ambrose Bierce, and H.L. Mencken.
Contents
- Introduction by S.T. Joshi
- The Trip of Theobald
- Vermont—A First Impression
- Observations on Several Parts of America
- Travels in the Provinces of America
- An Account of a Trip to the Antient Fairbanks House, in Dedham, and to the Red Horse Tavern in
Sudbury, in the Province of the Massachusetts-Bay
- Account of a Visit to Charleston, S.C.
- An Account of Charleston, in His Majty’s Province
of South-Carolina
- A Description of the Town of Quebeck in New-France, Lately added to His Britannick
Majesty’s Dominions
- European Glimpses
- Some Dutch Footprints in New England
- Homes and Shrines of Poe
- The Unknown City in the Ocean
- Charleston
- Appendix
- A Descent to Avernus
- Sleepy Hollow To-day
- Index
Bibliographic Information
Collected Essays, Volume 4: Travel. By H.P. Lovecraft, Edited by S.T. Joshi. New York,
NY: Hippocampus Press; 2005; ISBN 0-9761592-0-1 (hardcover) 0-9761592-1-X (paperback), 300
pages.
Purchasing This Book
This book may be purchased in hardcover from Amazon.com or Barnes & Noble, in paperback from Amazon.com or Barnes & Noble, or directly from the publisher, Hippocampus Press.