As the days darken and Halloween approaches, French fans of H.P. Lovecraft have infinite luck: a huge gift has just arrived.
H.P. Lovecraft at in the spotlight in France
For many French people, autumn is the best season: despite the rainy days, the autumn months provide us with delicious vegetables that enrich dishes based on mushrooms and chestnuts, and the month of October is culturally dedicated to horror. The approach of Halloween is obviously the perfect opportunity for us to discover or re-watch some treasures of gothic and horror cinema. While a large number of our readers will undoubtedly have a marathon with some recent horror cinema successes, others will perhaps immerse themselves in the classics of the Hammer studio or in the adaptations of Edgar Allan Poe by Roger Corman with Vincent Price, which have been entitled to beautiful Blu-ray reissues in recent years.
Moreover, it is also possible to wait for Halloween in other ways than with films and series; and Gallimard editions have a huge surprise for French readers: H.P. Lovecraft has joined the legendary library of La Péiade. Published on October 17 in bookstores, the book Stories of H.P. Lovecraft includes all the short stories of the master of horror. This deluxe edition, published under the direction of Philippe Jaworski, is a wonderful opportunity to rediscover the great stories of the American writer in new translations and to re-confront the metaphysical horror of the Lovecraftian pantheon (Cthulhu, Nyarlathotep, Azathoth, Yog-Sothoth). As with each volume of La Péiade, these Stories by H.P. Lovecraft are accompanied by a fascinating critical corpus, allowing a new understanding of his work.
As a reminder, H.P. Lovecraft is one of the most influential writers of all time. He is presented as “the greatest craftsman of the classic horror story of the 20th century” by Stephen King, and many artists claim his influence. We are thinking in particular of the legendary Alan Moore, who dedicated two comics to him, Neonomicon and the exceptional Providence. We also know that Guillermo Del Toro has been trying for about ten years to make an adaptation of the short novel The Mountains of Madness. We hope that he will succeed in getting his project off the ground!
Did this article interest you? Then you will probably be happy to learn that J.R.R. Tolkien will also soon be entitled to his publication in the Bibliothèque de La Pléiade.