By H. P. Lovecraft
Edited by David E. Schultz
Illustrated by Jason C. Eckhardt

Dustjacket Text

H. P. Lovecraft’s Fungi from Yuggoth is a remarkable achievement. Written in little more than a week (December 27, 1929–January 4, 1930), the cycle of 36 sonnets is a compact encapsulation of the essence of Lovecraft’s imaginative vision. Its central motifs—the lure of hidden worlds, cosmic alienation, the terrors lurking behind the placid surface of life—are those that structured Lovecraft’s greatest weird tales.

David E. Schultz, one of the leading authorities on Lovecraft, has spent decades preparing this annotated edition of the Fungi. He meticulously discusses the origin of the poem (including the influence of Donald Wandrei’s similar cycle, Sonnets of the Midnight Hours), its connections with Lovecraft’s fiction, Lovecraft’s changing thoughts on natural expression in poetry, and the complex history of the poem's publication—both as individual sonnets and as a unity. Schultz also provides penetrating annotations on every poem.

This volume features the superlative artwork of longtime Lovecraftian artist Jason C. Eckhardt, who has illustrated each poem in a separate full-page edition. Readers are also treated to a reproduction of Lovecraft’s handwritten manuscript of the Fungi, which shows how carefully he revised each sonnet in the course of composition, and Harold S. Farnese’s sheet music for two of the sonnets, most of it never published previously.

This edition will take its place as a landmark contribution to Lovecraft studies—one that allows readers to appreciate Lovecraft’s most famous poem as never before.

David E. Schultz is the editor of an annotated edition of Lovecraft’s Commonplace Book (1987) and coeditor, with S. T. Joshi, of numerous editions of Lovecraft’s letters, including A Means to Freedom: The Letters of H. P. Lovecraft and Robert E. Howard (2009) and Dawnward Spire, Lonely Hill: The Letters of H. P. Lovecraft and Clark Ashton Smith (2017).

Contents

• Fungi from Yuggoth
1. The Book
2. Pursuit
3. The Key
4. Recognition
5. Homecoming
6. The Lamp
7. Zaman’s Hill
8. The Port
9. The Courtyard
10. The Pigeon-Flyers
11. The Well
12. The Howler
13. Hesperia
14. Star-Winds
15. Antarktos
16. The Window
17. A Memory
18. The Gardens of Yin
19. The Bells
20. Night-Gaunts
21. Nyarlathotep
22. Azathoth
23. Mirage
24. The Canal
25. St. Toad’s
26. The Familiars
27. The Elder Pharos
28. Expectancy
29. Nostalgia
30. Background
31. The Dweller
32. Alienation
33. Harbour Whistles
34. Recapture
35. Evening Star
36. Continuity
• Fungi from Yuggoth: The Manuscript
• Dim Essences: The Origins of Fungi from Yuggoth
• Notes
• Appendixes
1. Notes for Additional Sonnets
2. [The Book]
3. Chronology of Appearances of Fungi from Yuggoth
4. Textual Variants
5. The Musical Compositions of Harold S. Farnese
• Bibliography
• Index of Titles and First Lines
• Acknowledgements

Bibliographic Information

Fungi from Yuggoth: An Annotated Edition. By H. P. Lovecraft, edited by David E. Schultz, illustrated by Jason C. Eckhardt. New York, NY: Hippocampus Press; 2017; ISBN 978-1-61498-140-4; hardcover; 288 pages.

Purchasing This Book

This book may be purchased in hardcover from Amazon.com or Barnes & Noble or directly from the publisher, Hippocampus Press.