On H.P. Lovecraft's First Four Stories

The first four short stories of H.P. Lovecraft—written from 1904 (when he was 14) to 1917 (when he was 27)—announce, in seed form, nearly all of the major thematic and imagistic motifs that would unfold, grow and flower into the magnificent tree of his career down to his death in 1937 at the age of 46.

Lovecraft, as a lifelong inhabitant of Providence, …