A Monster for Many

<p>In the 1990s Robert H. Waugh-now Emeritus Professor of English at the State University of New York at New Paltz-emerged as one of the most profound and learned commentators on H. P. Lovecraft. He has brought to the study of the Providence writer a deep knowledge of literature in English French Latin and other languages and a sensitivity to the complex nuances found in Lovecraft's literary work.</p><p> </p><p>This third volume of his essays continues the pattern of his earlier books <em>The Monster in the Mirror</em> and <em>A Monster of Voices.</em> Here we have studies of Lovecraft's use of the imagery of wells in The Colour out of Space; the cosmic history of alien species in <em>At the Mountains of Madness</em> and The Shadow out of Time; the role that the fictional Miskatonic University plays in Lovecraft's fiction; and the influence of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle on several Lovecraft tales.</p><p> </p><p>Other essays discuss Lovecraft's influence on such science fiction writers as Arthur C. Clarke Fritz Leiber and Philip K. Dick as well as such understudied tales as Cool Air and <em>The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath.</em> And Waugh's long rumination about Lovecraft's response to the Nobel Prize winners of his day displays to the full the author's wide-ranging expertise on world literature.</p><p> </p><p>Robert H. Waugh continues to display a mastery of Lovecraft's life work and thought that makes every one of his essays a feast for the mind.</p>