Explore the marvelous complexity of Lovecraft's writing—including his use of literary allusions, biographical details, and obscure references in this rich, in-depth exploration of great horror fiction from the acknowledged master of the weird, including the stories "Herbert West—Reanimator", "Pickman's Model", "The Call of Cthulhu", "The Thing on the Doorstep", "The Horror at Red Hook" and more.

Though I wouldn't recommend it as an intro to HPL (due to the inclusion of lesser stories, such as "The Shunned House" and "The Horror at Red Hook"), as a longtime Lovecraft fan I found it to be a real treat. Joshua and Cannon's notes help bring out the use of historical and literary allusions as well as the intertextuality of Lovecraft's tales. Includes such gems as "The Picture in the House," "Pickman's Model," and "The Call of Cthulhu." ( )

I'm neither pleased nor entirely displeased with "More Annotated H.P. Lovecraft". I feel a melancholic listlessness. There was some very insightful annotations, and some which only give the dictionary definition of such words as "cyclopean". That which was insightful, was quite so, and I only wish there were even more. Noteworthy were the notes on Pigafetta's "Regnum Congo", the Symbolists, the pre-Raphaelites, Bauldelaire, Huysmans, Arthur Machen, Algernon Blackwood, such artists as Goya, Dore, Angarola, Sime and Fuseli, Lovecraft's family, historical places and pictures, historical names, and excerpts from Lovecraft's letters.

I did notice several spelling errors--they were not archaic spellings, but actual printing errors. This, together with the several seemingly asinine and sometimes redundant annotations, gave the work a sense of being hastily constructed. I believe this would be an very nice introduction for the Lovecraftian neophyte. There is quite a lot of good information here, which has given me a long list of referenced tomes which I would love to add to my shelves, such as Lord Dunsany's "The Book of Wonder" and W. Scott-Elliot's "The Story of Atlantis" and "The Lost Lemuria", Fiske's "Myths and Myth Makers", Miss Murray's "Witch-Cult in Western Europe" and Del Rio's "Disquisitionum Magicarum Libri Sex".

I am fascinated by the fact that Lovecraft, a confessed "mechanist materialist", was totally obsessed with the supernatural. Jack Vance's character, Gartover, in "Ports of Call" said that "'skepticism' is sometimes known as 'dogmatic ignorance'.

I would have to say that my favorite Lovecraft piece within this collection is "Pickman's Model"--"But by God, Eliot, it was a photograph from life"--wheels within wheels, the profound paradoxical. I too cannot get William Blake's "The Ghost of a Flea" out of my mind's eye. ( )