An excellent annotated edition, although I would have liked more illustrations inspired by HPL's work.

Overall, I enjoyed this incredibly imaginative collection. I especially enjoyed his descriptions of dream cities and worlds, and several of his works left me with goose bumps.

One thing I didn't particularly like was how he repeatedly said things like "I won't attempt to describe it..." But then he does go on to describe it... or he'll say something is utterly indescribable, and that seems lazy to me, especially given how often he does that.

Many of his stories also followed similar formats, where it starts out saying something like "I know what I'm about to say is going to sound crazy, and maybe I dreamed it, but..." and then he talks about how he narrowly escaped certain death, so it just feels repetitive.

But overall, his works were fantastic (literally) and very creative.

I have always wanted to read H.P. Lovecraft’s stories, and this year I decided to do just that. A couple of minutes ago, I finished the last of them.
Oh my god, the dude was boring! It was 1100 pages that read like a police report written by someone with an adjective fetish.

A great collection of great work - a felicitous addition to my library!

I find myself entirely unable to give this book less than 5 stars, for though Lovecraft's writing was coloured by certain unacceptable views, and his style at times erred toward the essay-like, it retains a timeless quality that truly evokes exactly why his works are regarded as so important in the history of horror.
Reading the many stories contained in this volume, I was able to identify the inspiration for many a horror writer, myself included, and though Lovecraft himself drew inspiration from others, he was able to take the ideas that came before and turn them into new, truly terrifying tales. I am not one to be easily scared or unsettled, yet every story left me feeling a little uncertain about my meagre life in this vast universe. Though beings such as Cthulhu, Nyarlathotep and Azathoth do not, as far as we know, truly exist, the very notion of their being is a stark reminder of humanity's true unimportance in the cosmos.
In some ways, it would seem that Lovecraft was ahead of his time. He recognised our insignificance long ago, and this seems particularly prescient to me in an era of human history where arrogance and narcissism seem rather prevalent.
I can honestly say that I will be returning to these stories often, though a repeat undertaking of the mammoth task of reading the entire tome at once seems quite unlikely.
If you are amongst those who have yet to read Lovecraft, you are most certainly missing out.
I found Dagon to be an excellent starting point, personally, though The Doom That Came To Sarnath was, in fact, one of the first I read. In regards to personal favourites, I am drawn particularly to The Colour Out of Space, The Shadow Over Innsmouth and Pickman's Model - The Rats In The Walls and At The Mountains of Madness also hold a special place in my mind.
Truly a fantastic collection of stories, from a talented if tortured author.

A great book to own to say the least

This complete collection of weird fiction by HP Lovecraft about humanity up against forces beyond our control and knowledge are compiled here. As far as I know, it's all in chronological order. I find that a lot of these tales are quite original and, though it has inspired a lot of horror fiction that we know, some of these stories remain unparalleled.

Lovecraft's prejudices are quite clear in a lot of these stories and I wouldn't condone them. I also thought that there weren't any memorable human characters here but a lot of the baddies we read about here are some of the most memorable and creepy. Overall, I enjoyed getting my pants scared off with this book, the discrimination made me feel uncomfortable at times, but these are definitely landmarks of horror fiction for a reason.

The Nameless City – H.P. Lovecraft (★★★★★)

"That is not dead which can eternal lie,
And with strange eons, even death may die."

"Only the grim brooding desert gods know what really took place—what indescribable struggles and scrambles in the dark I endured or what Abaddon guided me back to life, where I must always remember and shiver in the night wind till oblivion—or worse—claims me. Monstrous, unnatural, colossal, was the thing—too far beyond all the ideas of man to be believed except in the silent damnable small hours of the morning when one cannot sleep."

The Hound – H.P. Lovecraft (★★★★★)

"We thought we saw the bats descend in a body to the earth we had so lately rifled, as if seeking for some cursed and unholy nourishment. But the autumn moon shone weak and pale, and we could not be sure. So, too, as we sailed the next day away from Holland to our home, we thought we heard the faint distant baying of some gigantic hound in the background. But the autumn wind moaned sad and wan, and we could not be sure."

"Down unlit and illimitable corridors of eldritch phantasy sweeps the black, shapeless Nemesis that drives me to self-annihilation."

The Festival – H.P. Lovecraft (★★★★☆)

"Great holes secretly are digged where earth's pores ought to suffice, and things have learnt to walk that ought to crawl."

The Dunwich Horror – H.P. Lovecraft (★★★★★)

"Is it that we naturally conceive terror from such objects, considered in their capacity of being able to inflict upon us bodily injury? Oh, least of all! These terrors are of older standing. They date beyond body—or without the body, they would have been the same"

The Whisperer in Darkness – H.P. Lovecraft (★★★★☆)

"My brain whirled; and where before I had attempted to explain things away, I now began to believe in the most abnormal and incredible wonders. The array of vital evidence was damnably vast and overwhelming; and the cool, scientific attitude of Akeley—an attitude removed as far as imaginable from the demented, the fanatical, the hysterical, or even the extravagantly speculative—had a tremendous effect on my thought and judgment."

The History of the Necronomicon – H.P. Lovecraft (★★☆☆☆)

"The book is rigidly suppressed by the authorities of most countries, and by all branches of organized ecclesiasticism. Reading leads to terrible consequences."

Fungi from Tuggoth – H.P. Lovecraft (★★★★☆)

"Such as in no poor earthly garden blow.
Yet for each dream these winds to me convey,
A dozen more of ours they sweep away."

From Beyond – H.P. Lovecraft (★★★★☆)

"We shall see that at which dogs howl in the dark, and that at which cats prick up their ears after midnight. We shall see these things, and others which no breathing creature has yet seen. We shall overleap time, space, and dimensions, and without bodily motion peer to the bottom of creation."

The Temple – H.P. Lovecraft (★★★☆☆)

"It is only the inferior thinker who hastens to explain the singular and the complex by the primitive short cut of supernaturalism."

The Disinterment – H.P. Lovecraft (★★☆☆☆)

"These dreams consisted mainly of ghoulish things; graveyards at night, stalking corpses, and lost souls amid a chaos of blinding light and shadow. The terrible reality of the visions disturbed me most of all: it seemed that some inside influence was inducing the grisly vistas of moonlit tombstones and endless catacombs of the restless dead."

The Lurking Fear – H.P. Lovecraft (★★★★☆)

"Sometimes, in the throes of a nightmare when unseen powers whirl one over the roofs of strange dead cities toward the grinning chasm of Nis, it is a relief and even a delight to shriek wildly and throw oneself voluntarily along with the hideous vortex of dream-doom down into whatever bottomless gulf may yawn"

The Rats in the Walls – H.P. Lovecraft (★☆☆☆☆)

…

Polaris – H.P. Lovecraft (★☆☆☆☆)

"Slumber, watcher, till the spheres,
Six and twenty thousand years
Have revolv'd, and I return
To the spot where now I burn."

The White Ship – H.P. Lovecraft (★★★☆☆)

"Blue, green, gray, white or black; smooth, ruffled, or mountainous; that ocean is not silent."

The Doom That Came to Sarnath – H.P. Lovecraft (★★★☆☆)

"DOOM had come to Sarnath."

The Cats of Ulthar - H.P. Lovecraft (★★★★☆)

"Nature is full of such illusions to impress the imaginative."

Celephais - H.P. Lovecraft (★★☆☆☆)

"When truth and experience failed to reveal it, he sought it in fancy and illusion, and found it on his very doorstep, amid the nebulous memories of childhood tales and dreams."

Nylarlathotep - H.P. Lovecraft (★★★☆☆)