The Shunned House
"The Shunned House" | |
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Periodical | |
Media type | Print (Magazine) |
Publication date | October 1937 |
"The Shunned House" is a horror fiction novelette by American author H. P. Lovecraft, written on October 16–19, 1924. It was first published in the October 1937 issue of Weird Tales.
Inspiration
The Shunned House of the title is based on an actual house in Providence, Rhode Island, built around 1763 and still standing at 135 Benefit Street. Lovecraft was familiar with the house because his aunt Lillian Clark lived there in 1919/20 as a companion to Mrs. H. C. Babbit.[1] However, it was another house in Elizabeth, New Jersey that actually compelled Lovecraft to write the story. As he wrote in a letter:
On the northeast corner of Bridge Street and Elizabeth Avenue is a terrible old house—a hellish place where night-black deeds must have been done in the early seventeen-hundreds—with a blackish unpainted surface, unnaturally steep roof, and an outside flight of stairs leading to the second story, suffocatingly embowered in a tangle of ivy so dense that one cannot but imagine it accursed or corpse-fed. It reminded me of the Babbit House in Benefit Street…. Later its image came up again with renewed vividness, finally causing me to write a new horror story with its scene in Providence and with the Babbit House as its basis.[2]
Plot
For many years, the
When Dr. Whipple naps, he tosses and turns and starts babbling in French until he suddenly awakes. He tells the narrator that he had strange visions of lying in an open pit, inside a house with constantly shifting features, while faces stared down at him. Many of the faces were those of the Harris family, whose members died in the house. When the narrator sleeps, he is awakened by a horrific scream. He sees a revolting yellowish "corpse-light" bubbling up from the floor, which stares at him with many eyes before vanishing in a wisp through the chimney. He finds his uncle transformed into a monster with "blackened, decaying features" and dripping claws. He turns on the Crookes tube, but seeing that it has no effect, escapes the house through the cellar door as his uncle's body dissolves, transforming into a multitude of faces of those who died in the house as it melts. The narrator returns the next day to find his equipment intact, but no body.
The narrator hatches a plan. He orders a military gas mask, digging tools, and six carboys of sulfuric acid to be delivered to the cellar door of the house. He digs into the earthen floor of the cellar, turning up fungous yellow ooze, and arranges the barrels of acid around the hole in the belief that he will happen upon some kind of monstrous creature. Eventually, he uncovers a soft, blue-white, translucent tube, bent in half and two feet in diameter at its widest point. He frantically climbs out of the neck-deep hole, and dumps in four barrels of acid, realizing that he had found the elbow of a gigantic monster. The narrator faints after emptying the fourth barrel. When he awakens, the narrator empties the two remaining barrels, to no effect, replaces the dirt, and finds that the strange fungus has turned to harmless ash. He mourns his uncle, but is relieved to be sure that the horrible creature is finally dead. The narrator records that the house has subsequently been rented to another family, and that the house now appears completely normal.
Characters
- Elihu Whipple: Described as "a sane, conservative physician of the old school...a bachelor; a white-haired, clean-shaven, old-fashioned gentleman, and a local historian of note." Peter Cannon writes that Whipple "is probably a composite portrait of Lovecraft's two learned uncles-in-law and maternal grandfather"; the grandfather's name was Whipple Phillips.[3] Dr. Whipple's home -- the "Georgian homestead with knocker and iron-railed steps, balanced eerily on the steep ascent of North Court Street beside the ancient brick court and colony house", with its "damp, low-ceiled library with the musty white panelling, heavy carved overmantel and small-paned, vine-shaded windows" -- is based on Cushing House at 40 North Court Street, built in 1737, the oldest home on College Hill.
- Etienne Roulet: A lycanthropy in 1598 before being confined to an asylum. Jacques Roulet was a real person, whom Lovecraft had read about in John Fiske's Myths and Myth-Makers.[4]
Publication
This section needs additional citations for verification. (October 2017) |
"The Shunned House", with an introduction by Frank Belknap Long, was to have been Lovecraft's first published book. Approximately 250 copies were printed in 1928 by W. Paul Cook for Recluse Press. However, the sheets were not bound at that time.
Approximately 150 sets of unbound sheets eventually found their way into the possession of
Reception
Robert Weinberg described "The Shunned House" as "one of Lovecraft's best short novels".[5]
Other media
- The Shunned House features prominently in Lovecraftian: The Shipwright Circle by Steven Philip Jones. The Lovecraftian series reimagines the tales of H. P. Lovecraft into one universe.
References
- ^ S. T. Joshi, More Annotated Lovecraft, p. 107.
- ^ H. P. Lovecraft, Selected Letters Vol. I, p. 357; quoted in David E. Schultz, "Lovecraft's New York Exile", Black Forbidden Things, Robert M. Price, ed., p. 53.
- ^ Peter Cannon, "Introduction", More Annotated Lovecraft, p. 5.
- ^ S. T. Joshi, More Annotated Lovecraft, p. 106.
- ^ Weinberg, The Weird Tales Story, p. 42.
Sources
- Lovecraft, Howard P. (1999) [1924]. "The Shunned House". In S. T. Joshi; Peter Cannon (eds.). More Annotated Lovecraft (1st ed.). New York City, NY: Dell. ISBN 0-440-50875-4. With explanatory footnotes.
- ISBN 1-55742-005-X.
- Chalker, Jack L.; Mark Owings (1998). The Science-Fantasy Publishers: A Bibliographic History, 1923-1998. Westminster, MD and Baltimore: Mirage Press, Ltd. pp. 38–39.
- ISBN 0-87054-176-5.
- Nielsen, Leon (2004). Arkham House Books: A Collector's Guide. Jefferson, NC and London: McFarland & Company, Inc. p. 84. ISBN 0-7864-1785-4.
- Weinberg, Robert (1977). The Weird Tales Story. West Lynn, OR: FAX Collector’s Editions. p. 42. ISBN 1-58715-101-4.
External links
- Works related to The Shunned House at Wikisource
- The still standing "Shunned house" is at coordinates 41°49′46.9″N 71°24′30.5″W / 41.829694°N 71.408472°W
- A collection of public domain H. P. Lovecraft short fiction at Standard Ebooks
- The Shunned House at Project Gutenberg
- The Shunned House title listing at the Internet Speculative Fiction Database
- The Shunned House public domain audiobook at LibriVox