H. P. Lovecraft's Favorite Weird Tales: The Roots of Modern Horror »

Douglas A. Anderson is a Mythopoeic Scholarship Award Winner and one of the best-known fantasy scholars and anthologists. He is the author/editor of The Annotated Hobbit (Houghton Mifflin, revised 2002) and Tales Before Tolkien: The Roots of Modern Fantasy (Ballantine, 2003), and is Cold Spring Press's series editor for our classic fantasy and horror series.

In 1929-30, H.P. Lovecraft made some lists of both literary and popular stories "having the greatest amount of truly cosmic horror and macabre convincingness." These lists of his favorite weird tales make for a truly landmark Lovecraftian anthology. We present Lovecraft's own favorites horror

stories, including some well-known classics, alongside of a number of excellent rare tales by forgotten authors. Many of these stories are classics, inspiring several generations since of the world's best horror authors. Contributors include Edgar Allan Poe, Ambrose Bierce, Arthur Machen, Robert W. Chambers, M. R. James, Algernon Blackwood, M. P. Shiel, A. Merritt, Walter de la Mare, Paul Suter, M. L. Humphreys, H.F. Arnold, Everil Worrell, Arthur J. Burks, and John Martin Leahy. This is the anthology of favorite weird tales that Lovecraft himself hoped to compile!

"To understand why Lovecraft regarded these stories as the touchstone for greatness in the literature of supernatural horror is to understand the significance of the genre itself. The classic works included in this collection, along with Lovecraft's own best tales, both justify and represent the essence of this form of human expression." – Thomas Ligotti