Book Details

Early Cthulhu Stories – seven early stories by H.P. Lovecraft that are the foundation of the Cthulhu Mythos.

The stories deal with a race of “Elder Beings” who once ruled the universe but are now imprisoned or sleeping in some remote part of the Earth or elsewhere in the universe. They only await the time “when the stars are right” to return and resume their rule. Monsters and evil humans live and act to hasten this return.

In the first two stories in this volume, Dagon (1919) and The White Ship (1919) some of the concepts and themes of the Cthulhu Mythos begin to take form. The latter five stories beginning with The Doom That Came to Sarnath (1920), are considered by Weinberg and Berglund of The Readers Guide to the Cthulhu Mythos to be integral to the Mythos.

Dagon (1919) – An Eldritch Tale

The White Ship (1919) – He sailed into the boundless sea, beyond the boundaries of fabled Cathuria, and strange was his voyage

The Doom that Came to Sarnath (1920) – A story of the Elder Gods

The Nameless City (1921) – The story of a city so old, no man ever knew of it. . . the nameless city of an Elder Age

The Hound (1924) – A grim tale of ghouls

The Festival (1925) – Of The Necronomicon and an eldritch Yuletide

The Call of Cthulhu (1928)
I. The Horror In Clay
II. The Tale of Inspector Legrasse
III. The Madness From the Sea

Howard Phillips Lovecraft (1890-1937) is probably the most influential horror writer of all time. The shared fictional universe, the Cthulhu Mythos, was named for Lovecraft’s novelette, The Call of Cthulhu  which was written in 1926 and first published in Weird Tales in 1928.

In 2005, The Call of Cthulhu was made into a 47 minute featurette by the H.P. Lovecraft Historical Society.

Early Cthulhu Stories has 5 illustrations.

Available files:

1. Lovecraft-EarlyCthulhuStories.epub

Excerpt: Dagon

I  AM writing this under an appreciable mental strain, since by tonight I shall be no more. Penniless, and at the end of my supply of the drug which alone makes life endurable, I can bear the torture no longer, and shall cast myself from this garret window into the squalid street below. Do not think from my slavery to morphine that I am a weakling or a degenerate. When you have read these hastily scrawled pages you may guess, though never fully realize, why it is that I must have forgetfulness or death.

It was in one of the most open and least frequented parts of the Pacific that the packet of which I was supercargo fell a victim to the German sea-raider. The great war was then at its very beginning, and the enemy’s navy had not reached its later degree of ruthlessness; so that our vessel was made a legitimate prize, whilst we of her crew were treated with all the fairness and consideration due us as naval prisoners. So liberal, indeed, was the discipline of our captors, that five days after we were taken I managed to escape alone in a small boat with water and provisions for a good length of time.

When I finally found myself adrift and free, I had but little idea of my surroundings. Never a competent navigator, I could only guess vaguely by the sun and stars that I was somewhat south of the equator. Of the longitude I knew nothing, and no island or coast-line was in sight. The weather kept fair, and for uncounted days I drifted aimlessly beneath the scorching sun; waiting either for some passing ship, or to be cast on the shores of some habitable land. But neither ship nor land appeared, and I began to despair in my solitude upon the heaving vastness of unbroken blue.

The change happened whilst I slept. Its details I shall never know, for my slumber, though troubled and dream-infested, was continuous. When at last I awaked, it was to discover myself half sucked into a slimy expanse of hellish black mire which extended about me in monotonous undulations as far as I could see, and in which my boat lay grounded some distance away.

Though one might well imagine that my first sensation would be of wonder at so prodigious and unexpected a transformation of scenery, I was in reality more horrified than astonished; for there was in the air and in the rotting soil a sinister quality which chilled me to the very core. The region was putrid with the carcasses of decaying fish, and of other less describable things which I saw protruding from the nasty mud of the unending plain. Perhaps I should not hope to convey in mere words the unutterable hideousness that can dwell in absolute silence and barren immensity. There was nothing within hearing, and nothing in sight save a vast reach of black slime; yet the very completeness of the stillness and the homogeneity of the landscape oppressed me with a nauseating fear.

The sun was blazing down from a sky which seemed to me almost black in its cloudless cruelty; as though reflecting the inky marsh beneath my feet. As I crawled into the stranded boat I realized that only one theory could explain my position. Through some unprecedented volcanic upheaval, a portion of the ocean floor must have been thrown to the surface, exposing regions which for innumerable millions of years had lain hidden under unfathomable watery depths. So great was the extent of the new land which had risen under me, that I could not detect the faintest noise of the surging ocean, strain my ears as I might. Nor were there any sea-fowl to prey upon the dead things.

Excerpt From: H.P. Lovecraft. “Early Cthulhu Stories.”