The Road to Madness [Paperback]

H. P. Lovecraft (Author), John Jude Palencar (Author), Barbara Hambly (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 1, 1996

One of the most influential practitioners of American horror, H.P. Lovecraft inspired the work of Stephen King, Anne Rice, and Clive Barker. As he perfected his mastery of the macabre, his works developed from seminal fragments into acknowledged masterpieces of terror. This volume traces his chilling career and includes:
IMPRISONED WITH THE PHARAOHS--Houdini seeks to reveal the demons that inhabit the Egyptian night.
AT THE MOUNTAINS OF MADNESS--An unsuspecting expedition uncovers a city of untold terror, buried beneath an Antarctic wasteland.
Plus, for the first time in any Del Rey edition:
HERBERT WEST: REANIMATOR--Mad experiments yield hideous results in this, the inspiration for the cult film Re-Animator.
COOL AIR--An icy apartment hides secrets no man dares unlock.
THE TERRIBLE OLD MAN--The intruders seek a fortune but find only death!
AND TWENTY-FOUR MORE BLOOD-CHILLING TALES

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

"There is a melancholy, operatic grandeur in Lovecraft's most passionate work," writes Joyce Carol Oates in The New York Review of Books, "... a curious elegiac poetry of unspeakable loss, of adolescent despair, and an existential loneliness so pervasive that it lingers in the reader's memory, like a dream, long after the rudiments of Lovecraftian plot have faded." Del Rey has reprinted Lovecraft's stories in three large-format paperbacks. This third volume collects one poem, one story fragment, and 26 tales not included in the first two, including "Herbert West--Reanimator," "The Lurking Fear," "Dagon," "The Unnameable," and the classic short novel "At the Mountains of Madness." Introduction by Barbara Hambly. Beautiful cover art by surrealist John Jude Palencar.

From Publishers Weekly

H.P. Lovecraft. Del Rey, $10 (384p) ISBN 0-345-38422-9 Lovecraft's transformation from beginner to master horror writer is the theme behind this collection of macabre tales, the third in a Del Rey trilogy of Lovecraft's work. It certainly succeeds in this design, making it both easy and informative to follow his development. But the works included here range from abysmal to excellent, with most occupying the weaker end of the range. Certain selections show Lovecraft at his gripping and imaginative best?particularly the important novella, "At the Mountains of Madness," which deals with dreadful life encountered in the Antarctic wasteland (creatures who were "above all doubt the originals of the fiendish elder myths which thing like the Pnakotic Manuscripts and the Necronomicon affrightedly hint about."). But earlier works are less impressive. The first five stories, labeled "early tales" by their author, are among the few youthful writings that Lovecraft preserved. Three show the promise of talent to come, but the inclusion here of the xenophobic tract, "The Street," is barely justifiable. Beyond these, there are many one-note and predictable tales, often additionally marred by grotesque racism. It clearly took Lovecraft a while to develop the subtlety required for suspenseful storytelling. Editorial remarks beyond the existing one-page introduction could have added much, as would dating of the pieces. Serious Lovecraft fans, however, will not want to miss this collection, if only for the few gems included and later tales that bear on the Cthulhu mythos.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 400 pages
• Publisher: Del Rey; 1st edition (October 1, 1996)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0345384229
• ISBN-13: 978-0345384225
• Product Dimensions: 5.3 x 0.9 x 8.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12.3 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (31 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #141,932 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

H. P. Lovecraft was born in 1890 in Providence, Rhode Island, where he lived most of his life. He wrote many essays and poems early in his career, but gradually focused on the writing of horror stories, after the advent in 1923 of the pulp magazine Weird Tales, to which he contributed most of his fiction. His relatively small corpus of fiction--three short novels and about sixty short stories--has nevertheless exercised a wide influence on subsequent work in the field, and he is regarded as the leading twentieth-century American author of supernatural fiction. H. P. Lovecraft died in Providence in 1937.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

39 of 39 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars DEL REY ANTHOLOGY OF LOVECRAFT'S BEST, June 17, 2006

By 

Alexander Scott (Birmingham, AL) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Road to Madness (Paperback)

This is an anthology of some of the best works of Howard Philips Lovecraft (HPL), a pulp horror- and science fiction- writer of the 1920s and 30s. Lovecraft had a distinctive style of writing, meant to convey through description an atmosphere of awe and wonder of the universe, which he believed a rational mind would experience as horror. His works have influenced generations of writers including Stephen King, Brian Lumley, Ramsey Campbell, and Robert Howard. The content of THE ROAD TO MADNESS is some of HPLs most evocative, chilling, and enduring tales. And I almost missed them.

You see, I thought I had everything by Lovecraft. But I would catch allusions to things like the "Martense kin", "the U-Boat", and Arthur Jermyn. I couldn't find these references in any of my books, when I realized I was missing THE TOMB. Rather than buy this out-of-print book, I picked up ROAD TO MADNESS. It has served me well as a general collection of the most enduring elements of Lovecraft's fiction. The 3 Del Rey collections (ROAD TO MADNESS, BEST OF HP LOVECRAFT, DREAM CYCLE OF HP LOVECRAFT) are pretty comprehensive of HPLs corpus. I am posting below a list of the contents of THE ROAD TO MADNESS under the heading of other sources for the same stories, to let you decide how much overlap it has with other anthologies you might own.

AT THE MOUNTAINS OF MADNESS AND OTHER TALES
"At the Mountains of Madness "
"The Evil Clergyman"
"The Shunned House"

THE DOOM THAT CAME TO SARNATH
"The Crawling Chaos"
"The Festival"
"In the Walls of Eryx"
"memory"
"Nathicana"
"The Tomb"
"The Tree"
"Under The Pyramids"

THE LURKING FEAR AND OTHER STORIES
"Dagon"
"Arthur Jermyn"
"The Lurking Fear"
"The Moon-Bog"
"The Temple"
"The Unnameable"
"The White Ship"

THE TOMB AND OTHER TALES:
"The Alchemist"
"The Beast in the Cave"
"The Book"
"The Festival"
"He"
"The Horror at Red Hook"
"In the Walls of Eryx"
"Poetry and the Gods "
"The Street"
"The Tomb"
"The Transition of Juan Romero"
"Under the Pyramids"

[Possibly no other source]
"Cool Air"
"Herbert West, Reanimator"

14 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An excellent book and inspiration., September 9, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: The Road to Madness (Paperback)

This book is excellent for mature readers 12+. When kids (like me, I'm 14) find that ghost stories start to seem a little childish... these stories are a step up. After I read this book, I would sometimes find myself staring off into space, thinking about one of the stories... this book will put so many ideas into your head, you will look at the entire world differently. Lovecraft is a master author.

8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Fascinating Tales for Collectors and Other Freaks!, August 25, 2001

By 

doomsdayer520 (Pennsylvania) - See all my reviews
(HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)    (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)   

This review is from: The Road to Madness (Paperback)

This collection of stories by H.P. Lovecraft apparently was put together for hardcore collectors, but it does have many treasures for those who are just beginning to discover his work. The book begins with several "Early Tales" from Lovecraft's formative period. Some go as far back as his teenage years. In these early stories Lovecraft was still nailing down the style that would later become so influential. Unfortunately some of these tales aren't very good, especially the very predictable "The Beast in the Cave," and the others are high on stiff prose and low on ideas. So this early stuff is a real treasure for collectors but may be a struggle for everyone else. However, once you get over that hurdle, this book starts to pick up steam with a steady supply of fascinating and freaky tales of horror and the supernatural. As the title indicates, most of these short stories contain people going mad, and you may be wondering about your own sanity at the end. Highlights include the Frankenstein-style tales "Herbert West-Reanimator" and "Cool Air." My favorites appear toward the end of the book, with the sci-fi style "In the Walls of Eryx," in which Lovecraft shows a surprising flair for conceptual science fiction. The mini-novel "At the Mountains of Madness" may be Lovecraft's all-time best - a masterpiece of occult history that leaves you with a very spooky feeling afterwards. For those who are just discovering Lovecraft: while you're reading the stories, sometimes you'll find yourself struggling through his dense, slow-moving prose (which hardly ever contains dialogue), and his obscure references to the occult. But once you put the book down, and the stories work their way to the back of your mind, you'll start feeling creeped out. VERY creeped out.