Howard Phillips Lovecraft, who did not publish a single book during his lifetime, became a beacon and reference point for an entire genre, an idol of both the general reading masses and refined intellectuals, an inexhaustible source of inspiration for filmmakers, and his very name became a household name. Borges himself admired his stories, in which the place of man is on the distant periphery of the universal scheme of things, and supermundane forces instill sacred horror in the souls of the unwary. This collection includes stories and novellas, completed from the drafts left after Lovecraft by his friend, student and first publisher August Derleth.