"The Call of Cthulhu" is one of H. P. Lovecraft's best-known short stories. Written in the summer of 1926, it was first published in Weird Tales, February 1928. It is the only story written by Lovecraft in which the extraterrestrial entity Cthulhu himself makes a major appearance. It is written in a documentary style, with three independent narratives linked together by the device of a narrator discovering notes left by a deceased relative. The narrator pieces together the whole truth and disturbing significance of the information he possesses, illustrating the story's first line: "The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents. We live on a placid island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity; and it was not meant that we should voyage far."
60 Gothic Classics : Exploring the Haunting Depths of Classic Gothic Literature
Charles Dickens, Oscar Wilde, Robert Louis Stevenson, Edgar Allan Poe, William Hope Hodgson, Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu, Anna Katharine Green, George MacDonald, Bram Stoker, Charlotte Brontë, Emily Brontë, William Godwin, Henry James, Victor Hugo, Théophile Gautier, Arthur Conan Doyle, Jane Austen, John Meade Falkner, George Eliot, Robert Hugh Benson, Horace Walpole, Frederick Marryat, Thomas Love Peacock, Washington Irving, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Gaston Leroux, Grant Allen, Arthur Machen, Wilkie Collins, Thomas Peckett Prest, James Malcolm Rymer, Charles Brockden Brown, James Hogg, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Richard Marsh, Charles Robert Maturin, John William Polidori, H. G. Wells, W. Jacobs, H. P. Lovecraft, William Thomas Beckford, Nikolai Gogol, Mary Shelley, Ann Radcliffe, Matthew Gregory Lewis, Fitz-James O'Brien, Eliza Parsons
book
The Call of Cthulhu (The Work of H. P. Lovecraft, Episode 43)
H. P. Lovecraft
audiobook
Cool Air (The Work of H. P. Lovecraft, Episode 42)
H. P. Lovecraft
audiobook
The Descendant (The Work of H. P. Lovecraft, Episode 41)
H. P. Lovecraft
audiobook
In the Vault (The Work of H. P. Lovecraft, Episode 40)
H. P. Lovecraft
audiobook
He (The Work of H. P. Lovecraft, Episode 39)
H. P. Lovecraft
audiobook
The Horror at Red Hook (The Work of H. P. Lovecraft, Episode 38)
H. P. Lovecraft
audiobook
The Shunned House (The Work of H. P. Lovecraft, Episode 37)
H. P. Lovecraft
audiobook
The Festival (The Work of H. P. Lovecraft, Episode 36)
H. P. Lovecraft
audiobook
The Unnamable (The Work of H. P. Lovecraft, Episode 35)
H. P. Lovecraft
audiobook
The Rats in the Walls (The Work of H. P. Lovecraft, Episode 34)
H. P. Lovecraft
audiobook
The Lurking Fear (The Work of H. P. Lovecraft, Episode 33)
H. P. Lovecraft
audiobook
The Tomb (The Work of H. P. Lovecraft, Episode 1)
H. P. Lovecraft
audiobook
Dagon (The Work of H. P. Lovecraft, Episode 2)
H. P. Lovecraft
audiobook
Polaris (The Work of H. P. Lovecraft, Episode 3)
H. P. Lovecraft
audiobook
Beyond the Wall of Sleep (The Work of H. P. Lovecraft, Episode 4)
H. P. Lovecraft
audiobook
Memory (The Work of H. P. Lovecraft, Episode 5)
H. P. Lovecraft
audiobook
Old Bugs (The Work of H. P. Lovecraft, Episode 6)
H. P. Lovecraft
audiobook
The Transition of Juan Romero (The Work of H. P. Lovecraft, Episode 7)
H. P. Lovecraft
audiobook
The White Ship (The Work of H. P. Lovecraft, Episode 8)
H. P. Lovecraft
audiobook
The Doom That Came to Sarnath (The Work of H. P. Lovecraft, Episode 9)
H. P. Lovecraft
audiobook
The Statement of Randolph Carter (The Work of H. P. Lovecraft, Episode 10)
H. P. Lovecraft
audiobook
The Terrible Old Man (The Work of H. P. Lovecraft, Episode 11)
H. P. Lovecraft
audiobook
The Tree (The Work of H. P. Lovecraft, Episode 12)
H. P. Lovecraft
audiobook