H.P. Lovecraft Vintage Paperback Book Lot

At The Mountains of Madness 

The Lurking Fear

The Tomb

Published by Ballantine Books

Third Printings, April 1973

Near Fine, Excellent Vintage Condition. Faint crease marks down the spines. All three books are clean, covers attached, tight and secure bindings, unmarked, no writing, no highlighting, no stains, no ripped pages, no edge chipping, no corner folds, no creased pages, no remainder marks, not ex-library. Very light signs of wear from age, use, storage and handling. Light page toning and inner cover fading. Faint corner crease mark on the cover of The Tomb.

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Howard Phillips Lovecraft  (August 20, 1890 – March 15, 1937) was an American writer of  weird,  science,  fantasy, and  horror fiction. He is best known for his creation of the  Cthulhu Mythos. Born in  Providence, Rhode Island, Lovecraft spent most of his life in  New England. After his father's  institutionalization  in 1893, he lived  affluently  until his family's wealth dissipated after the death of his grandfather. Lovecraft then lived with his mother, in reduced financial security, until her institutionalization in 1919. He began to write essays for the  United Amateur Press Association  and, in 1913, Lovecraft wrote a critical letter to a  pulp magazine  that ultimately led to his involvement in pulp fiction. He became active in the speculative fiction community and was published in several pulp magazines. Lovecraft moved to  New York, marrying  Sonia Greene  in 1924, and later became the center of a wider group of authors known as the "Lovecraft Circle". They introduced him to  Weird Tales, which would become his most prominent publisher. Lovecraft's time in New York took a toll on his mental state and financial conditions. He returned to Providence in 1926 and produced some of his most popular works, including "The Call of Cthulhu",  At the Mountains of Madness,  The Shadow over Innsmouth, and  The Shadow Out of Time. He would remain active as a writer until his death from intestinal cancer at the age of 46.

Lovecraft's literary corpus is based around the idea of  cosmicism, which was simultaneously his personal philosophy and the main theme of his fiction. Cosmicism posits that humanity is an insignificant part of the cosmos, and could be swept away at any moment. He incorporated  fantastic  and  science fiction  elements into his stories, representing the perceived fragility of  anthropocentrism. This was tied to his ambivalent views on knowledge. His works were largely set in a fictionalized version of New England. Civilizational decline also plays a major role in his works, as he believed that the  West  was in decline during his lifetime. Lovecraft's early political opinions were  conservative  and traditionalist; additionally, he held a number of racist views for much of his adult life. Following the  Great Depression, Lovecraft became a democratic socialist, no longer believing a just aristocracy would make the world more fair. Throughout his adult life, Lovecraft was never able to support himself from earnings as an author and editor. He was virtually unknown during his lifetime and was almost exclusively published in pulp magazines before his death. A scholarly revival of Lovecraft's work began in the 1970s, and he is now regarded as one of the most significant 20th-century authors of supernatural horror fiction. Many direct adaptations and spiritual successors followed. Works inspired by Lovecraft, adaptations or original works, began to form the basis of the Cthulhu Mythos, which utilizes Lovecraft's characters, setting, and themes.