The Shadow Over Innsmouth (1931)

It stands as Lovecraft's most famous story...  

The story is set in a small isolated Massachusetts coastal town called Innsmouth.  It's a fictional Lovecraftian creation...there's no town there but the geography of the townsite is real.  Incidentally, Lovecraft also dreamed up other nearby locations, like Arkham and Miskatonic University.  The premise of this story revolves around a community that is changing...into what exactly?..well, you'll have to read the story to glean the full extent of Lovecraft's horror.  Here's a hint...they have gills.  

Just as Cthulhu is his most famous, or well-known creation, The Shadow Over Innsmouth can rightly stand as his most important...Lovecraft's only book published within his lifetime.  It was a small run of 400 copies...how many actually sold is unknown, but an additional 200, unbound, were ultimately destroyed due to poor sales, making this 1936 first edition extremely rare.  

No virtual facsimile is available, and frankly, it would be hard to read...so many printing errors exist that an entire sheet of errata had to be tucked in...you might as well read a cleaned-up version online.

Shadow Over Innsmouth 

Lovecraft's stories really took-off and gained popularity after he passed in 1937 at the age of 46.  His writing is unique, original and influential.  The next generation of horror writers were defiantly familiar with his work, and you can see a little Lovecraft peeping through the pages of later horror greats like Stephan King.  As a side note...this story was published later on in 1942 in Weird Tales.  It's abridged, but it's the closest to a "first edition" you'll get on the Web.  Let's just say it's the first edition of The Shadow Over Innsmouth printed in a popular mainstream publication... 

Weird Tales, January 1942

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