There’s yet another new reprint of Lovecraft stories. But this time it’s the British Library which is cashing in, with its hardcover The Gothic Tales of H.P. Lovecraft (Aug 2018). This is now available in the British Library shop, and also on Amazon albeit under a different title than that of the cover, “The Gothic Stories of H. P. Lovecraft”.
Since it’s from such a prestigious publisher, presumably they used the definitive corrected Joshi texts — but the blurb doesn’t mention or credit him. A keyword search of stjoshi.org for “British Library” or “Gothic Tales” or “Gothic Stories” shows no results. And you might have thought he would have mentioned it on his regular blog, if the British Library were about to use his texts.
There’s no “Look Inside” for the book on Amazon, so I can’t even tell what stories have been selected. Judging by the book’s blurb, the selection is of ‘the Gothic tales’ and seems intended to make Lovecraft slightly more palatable to those in Gothic Studies classrooms — a field of study which has previously been very sniffy about his work.
I’m told it includes some of his worst work – juvenilia such as “The Alchemist”, early artistic failures such as “The Moon-Bog”, and the shocker (hastily written as a serial for a friend’s little pulp-shocker magazine) “The Lurking Fear”. One suspects that those in Gothic Studies who read the book will not be impressed by such fare.