The Dead Valley and Others — S.T. Joshi

H. P. Lovecraft was a voracious reader of supernatural and fantastic fiction, and he was continually on the hunt for powerful and stimulating works in these genres. Many of the stories he read directly influenced his own writings. This first volume of H. P. Lovecraft s Favorite Horror Stories presents 16 stories that Lovecraft found to be of particular merit. Among them are the beautiful poetic fantasy Idle Days on the Yann by Lord Dunsany; Fiona Macleod s grimly evocative The Sin-Eater, which influenced The Rats in the Walls ; Arthur Machen s grisly novelette Novel of the White Powder, which Lovecraft adapted for Cool Air ; and M. P. Shield s The House of Sounds, which Lovecraft ranked among the greatest weird tales ever written. Also included are hard-to-find stories by Nathaniel Hawthorne, E. F. Benson, Théophile Gautier, John Buchan, and others, as well as two stories from the legendary pulp magazine Weird Tales (Seabury Quinn s The Phantom Farmhouse and Arthur J. Burks s Bells of Oceana ). The volume contains an introduction by S. T. Joshi as well as notes on the individual stories, giving background on the authors as well as on Lovecraft s appreciation of the tales and their possible influence on his work.