For the first time, students and scholars of Lovecraft can see at a glance all the textual variants in all relevant appearances of a story-manuscript, first publication in magazines, and first book publications. The result is an illuminating record of the textual history of the tales, along with how Lovecraft significantly revised his stories after initial publication.

The result is the definitive text of Lovecraft's fiction-an edition that supersedes all those that preceded it and should endure as the standard text of Lovecraft's stories for many years.

In this second volume, the tales that Lovecraft wrote immediately after returning to his native Providence, R.I., from two years of "exile" in New York are presented. The landmark tale "The Call of Cthulhu" was only the tip of the iceberg of a flood of stories he wrote in 1926-27, which include the two short novels The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath and The Case of Charles Dexter Ward. "The Colour out of Space" is a pioneering tale that initiates Lovecraft's distinctive melding of horror and science fiction, while "The Dunwich Horror" and "The Whisperer in Darkness" are rich novellas simultaneously evoking terrors from outer space and the brooding darkness of the New England backwoods.