Early reception of H.P. Lovecraft
I am trying to get my head around the early publications of H.P. Lovecraft, to better understand when and how ordinary or non-specialist readers might have had a chance to encounter his works.
So if I understand correctly his tales were originally published from around the 1920's in magazines such as The Vagrant, Home Brew, and first of all Weird Tales.
The first real anthologies were The Outsider and Others published posthumously (in 1939) right? And that was followed by Beyond the Wall of Sleep (1943), Marginalia (1944) and Something About Cats and Other Pieces (1949).
Then, during the 1960's the authoritative edition was established with The Dunwich Horror and Others (1963), At the Mountains of Madness and Other Novels (1964), and Dagon and Other Macabre Tales (1965), all edited and "modernized" by August Derleth.
And then finally there are S.T. Joshi's corrected and annotated editions from the mid-1980's until today.
Does this look right to you or have I overseen something?
TL;DR: I wish to find out when Lovecraft's stories entered mainstream culture? Do you think that would have been at some point during the 1960's or was it later in time?
Posted Dec 7, 2025, 12:56 PM UTC