The Mask of Cthulhu

Great Cthulhu–Hastur the Unspeakable–sunken R’lyeh–all come to life once again in these five novellas and the shorty story, Something in Wood, which here continue the narrative of the Mythos originally brought into being by the fertile creative imagination of that late great master of the macabre, H. P. Lovecraft. Indeed, Lovecraft himself suggested the theme of The Return of Hastur shortly before his untimely death in 1937. The remaining tales in this collection of horror stories followed naturally upon it–the account of the terrible psychic residue that remained luring in The House in the Valley; the gruesome compulsion which drove the narrator to his doom in The Whippoorwills in the Hills; the inescapable agreement which lay behind The Sandwin Compact; and the search which followed the discovery of The Seal of R’lyeh in the house near Innsmouth.

With publication of The Lurker of the Threshold in 1945, it was patent that themes and concepts of the Lovecraft Mythos had fallen into able hands. The Mask of Cthulhu will confirm the belief of one reviewer, who wrote, "It is evident that August Derleth, who has already revealed his creative talents in other fields, is fully capable of adding to the Cthulhu Mythos in a vein and a manner which would certainly have won Lovecraft’s approval."

These are tales of terror and horror, grown from mankind’s ageless struggle between good and evil, the Lovecraftian concept of which lies in the Great Old Ones and the Ancient Ones–Hastur, Cthulhu, Yog-Sothoth, Nyarlathep, and all the other imaginative beings of the Cthulhu panoply.