The Call Of Cthulhu(Illustrated) E-Book

H. P. Lovecraft

• Herausgeber: Micheal Smith
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2024

Beschreibung

• Illustrated Edition: Enjoy the cosmic horror of Lovecraft's masterpiece brought to life with 20 gripping illustrations.
• Includes a Detailed Summary: Dive into the eldritch world of Cthulhu with an accessible summary that captures the essence of the story.
• Character List: Get to know the individuals whose lives are intertwined with the myth of the Great Old One through a comprehensive character list.
• Author Biography: Learn about the enigmatic life of H.P. Lovecraft, the father of cosmic horror, with an engaging biography included.

Step into the shadowy realm of H.P. Lovecraft's "The Call of Cthulhu," now presented in a stunning Illustrated Edition that invites you to visualize the unsettling world of eldritch horror and ancient gods. This edition is a treasure trove for both the uninitiated and the aficionado, featuring 20 evocative illustrations that bring the chilling narrative to life.
Encounter the enigmatic and brooding presence of Cthulhu, the cosmic entity that lies at the heart of Lovecraft's mythos. Through a series of interconnected narratives—a mystery inherited, a bizarre cult uncovered, and an otherworldly encounter on the high seas—this tale weaves the threads of cosmic indifference and human insignificance into a tapestry of pure terror.
With the inclusion of a succinct summary, this edition guides you through the mist-shrouded landscapes of Lovecraft's imagination. The summary captures the pivotal moments of the narrative, ensuring that the full breadth of the story's complexity is appreciated.
The character list serves as your compass through the murky waters of Lovecraft's narrative, charting the course of each individual as they confront the incomprehensible forces that ripple through the tale.
Enhancing this edition is a biography of the master of horror himself, H.P. Lovecraft. Delve into the life of the recluse from Providence, whose pen conjured up some of the most influential and enduring horror fiction of the 20th century.
"The Call of Cthulhu" is not just a story; it is an enduring piece of the cultural zeitgeist, a landmark of the horror genre that resonates with readers almost a century after its creation. This Illustrated Edition, enriched with compelling visuals and insightful extras, is an essential addition to the collection of any horror enthusiast, inviting you to explore the depths of madness and the vast, uncaring universe of Lovecraft's creation. Join us on this voyage into darkness and discover why "The Call of Cthulhu" remains a pinnacle of literary horror.
 

Leseprobe

THE CALL OF CTHULHU

BY

H. P. LOVECRAFT

ABOUT LOVECRAFT

Howard Phillips Lovecraft was born in the inclement realms of Providence, Rhode Island, on August 20, 1890. His birth coincided with the penumbral shadows of the Victorian era, a fitting backdrop for a life steeped in the uncanny and the macabre. Lovecraft's lineage was steeped in New England ancestry, his forebears having planted roots deep in the American soil since the 17th century, but it was the internal landscape of Lovecraft's psyche that proved to be the most fertile ground for the strange flora of his imagination.

Plagued by ill health in his childhood, Lovecraft was often confined to the sepulchral silence of his family home. A precocious child, he found solace in the musty pages of his grandfather's library, devouring the works of Edgar Allan Poe and the Arabian Nights, which would later seed the eldritch terrains of his own literary creations. He started writing at the tender age of seven, beginning with the quaint horrors of the "The Beast in the Cave," a tale signaling the inception of his lifelong dance with the cosmic grotesque.

The phantasmagoric specter of tragedy, however, was never far from Lovecraft. His father succumbed to the cavernous depths of mental illness when Lovecraft was only three, and his mother was later ensnared by the same insidious malady. These harrowing familial experiences infiltrated his writings, as the theme of forbidden knowledge and the fragile human psyche became a recurrent motif in his work.

Despite his academic prowess, especially in the classical disciplines, Lovecraft's formal education was truncated by his recurring bouts of ill health. Thus, he was largely self-taught, his mind a crucible for the synthesis of history, science, and philosophy into the alchemical gold of his unique literary vision. It was within the burgeoning pulp pages of "Weird Tales" magazine that Lovecraft's stories began to seep into the cultural consciousness. Yet, fame, much like the elusive entities in his tales, remained an insubstantial shadow during his lifetime.

Lovecraft's universe was filled by the Great Old Ones, old and indifferent entities whose enormity and timelessness rendered human actions unimportant in the larger scale of things. This intellectual undercurrent, known as cosmicism, became the core of the Lovecraftian mythos, captivating readers with Tales such as ''The call of cthulhu'' and at ''The mountain of madness''.  These were not just works of fiction, but apocryphal scriptures for the worlds he envisaged, a pantheon of cosmic deities that transcended gothic tradition's provincial horrors.

Personal correspondence was Lovecraft's bridge to the world beyond his reclusive existence. He was a prolific letter writer, his epistolary oeuvre dwarfing his published work, and through these letters, he cultivated the fledgling talents of contemporaries and successors, becoming the reluctant patriarch of the weird fiction genre.

Lovecraft's existence, like one of his cryptic tales, was a tapestry of shadow and light. He lived modestly, his diet Spartan, his lifestyle cloistered, and his finances perennially teetering on the precipice of pauperism. His marriage to Sonia H. Greene, a vivacious hat shop owner, was a brief interlude of connubial companionship, but ultimately the union faltered under the weight of his introversion and economic instability.

As the tenebrous fog of the Great Depression suffocated the United States, Lovecraft's life also waned. On March 15, 1937, he succumbed to cancer of the small intestine, a final chapter as enigmatic and fraught with suffering as the stories he penned. Though his earthly remains were interred in the family plot in Providence, his legacy was to become as immortal as the ancient gods he invented.

Howard Phillips Lovecraft's influence on the horror genre is indelible, a legacy that unfurled like the darkly blossoming tentacles of his eldritch entities. His work resonates through time, a testament to the enduring power of the human imagination to conjure worlds that both terrify and transfix, and to the unlikely hero from Providence who became a cult figure of literary horror and the sublime architect of the cosmic horror genre.

SUMMARY

In the gripping novella "The Call of Cthulhu," H.P. Lovecraft beckons readers into a labyrinth of cosmic horror and ancient mystery. When the protagonist, Francis Wayland Thurston, inherits a perplexing estate from his late great-uncle, he is thrust into a world where reality frays and eldritch truths lurk beneath the veneer of the known.

Thurston discovers his great-uncle's obsession with an enigmatic cult, whose whispers speak of the Great Old One, Cthulhu—a slumbering deity from the stars, waiting to reclaim dominion over the Earth. His investigation leads him through a series of cryptic clues, spanning the globe and crossing the paths of individuals whose encounters with the cult have left them shaken or mad.

Through a mosaic of found documents, journal entries, and firsthand testimonies, Lovecraft masterfully intertwines narratives that span decades, revealing the haunting spread of Cthulhu’s influence. From the swampy recesses of the Louisiana bayous to the stormy isles of the Pacific, the cult’s chant echoes: "Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn"—“In his house at R'lyeh, dead Cthulhu waits dreaming.”

As Thurston delves deeper, the veneer of normality crumbles, and he encounters a terrifying sculptural relic, unsettling dreams that plague the sensitive and artistic, and a secretive raid on the cult that reveals horrors beyond comprehension. All these threads converge on the revelation of Cthulhu's nightmarish city of R'lyeh, risen from the ocean depths after an earthquake, and the monstrous entity that stirs within.

"The Call of Cthulhu" is a chilling tale that deftly examines the insignificance of humanity in the vast cosmos and the fragility of the human mind when faced with the incomprehensible. It is a cornerstone of Lovecraftian mythos, encapsulating a world where the esoteric and the terrifying collide, and where the mere knowledge of certain truths can drive one to the brink of sanity. This narrative is not just a story; it is an invitation to gaze into the abyss and witness the writhing shadows that have captivated readers and haunted imaginations since its publication.

CHARACTERS LIST

This book is a seminal work of weird fiction that introduces a pantheon of cosmic deities and a series of human characters drawn into their terrifying world. Here's a list of the central characters from the story:

Francis Wayland Thurston: The story's narrator is a professor of anthropology at Brown University who delves into the mysteries surrounding Cthulhu by reading his great-uncle's papers.

Professor George Gammell Angell: Thurston's great-uncle, a professor of Semitic languages at Brown University, whose death prompts Thurston's investigation. Angell was the one who collected various accounts and artifacts related to Cthulhu.

Henry Anthony Wilcox: A young student and sculptor with a penchant for the bizarre, whose dreams and creation of a strange bas-relief prompt Professor Angell to begin his research into the Cthulhu myth.

Inspector John Raymond Legrasse: A New Orleans police inspector who leads a raid on a swamp cult in Louisiana and later presents a disturbing statuette of Cthulhu at a meeting of the American Archaeological Society, seeking answers.