The HPLHS is pleased to present the first original audiobook of Lovecraft’s complete fiction, covering 74 stories and comprising more than fifty hours of professionally recorded audio. The stories are read by HPLHS founders and trained actors Sean Branney and Andrew Leman, from texts prepared by Lovecraft scholar S.T. Joshi. The recordings feature original music by Troy Sterling Nies. Three years in the making, this collection gathers all Lovecraft's tales, from those written in his youth to those written shortly before his death, in one comprehensive and unified collection.
The Complete Fiction of H.P. Lovecraft Audiobook is available in a Collector’s Edition featuring a faux old library book which holds a custom-made 16GB memory stick containing all of the stories as individual files. Download editions of the Complete Fiction as well as a subset of Collected Tales are available through the HPLHS’s online store.
CONTENT WARNING: We read HPL's stories the way he wrote them, which means there are a few tales that contain language listeners might find offensive.
Order now!Below are samples of the audio in the collection. We're pleased to offer the complete reading of "The Statement of Randolph Carter", along with brief clips of some of the other stories.
A traditional book is a self-contained random access device: you can open it to any page you want and just start reading. But for an audiobook which might get played on a computer or a car stereo or an iPod or wherever with varying degrees of control, and for those who might not be familiar with all of these stories, we wanted to provide some suggestions for ways to approach this large collection.
In preparing Lovecraft’s stories for this audiobook, we had to put them in some kind of order. If you start chronologically, then the first story you’ll hear is “The Little Glass Bottle”, which was written by Lovecraft when he was a seven-year-old boy. If you start alphabetically, then the first one you’ll hear is “The Alchemist” — a minor work — followed immediately by his epic masterpiece "At the Mountains of Madness", which we didn't think made for the best listening experience. But any other organizational scheme is entirely subjective, and after discussing various options we decided the best choice was to put the files in alphabetical order, but provide some suggestions for other ways to hear them.
If you’re already familiar with Lovecraft’s works, we suggest you simply dive in and start listening to some of your favorite stories. If you’re new to Lovecraft, we suggest you start with our GREATEST HITS LIST in the tab to the right — once you’ve heard those stories, you can explore the rest of them on your own. We have some other suggestions in other tabs here.
A good starting point...
The Statement of Randolph Carter
Pickman’s Model
The Hound
The Call of Cthulhu
The Colour Out of Space
The Dunwich Horror
The Whisperer in Darkness
At the Mountains of Madness
The Shadow Over Innsmouth
The Shadow Out of Time
If you’re academically inclined and want to hear the development of HPL as an author, this Chronological List can be an interesting way to approach the stories.
The Little Glass Bottle (1897)
The Secret Cave (1898)
The Mystery of the Grave-Yard (1898)
The Mysterious Ship (short version) (1902)
The Mysterious Ship (long version) (1902)
The Beast in the Cave (1905)
The Alchemist (1908)
The Tomb (1917)
Dagon (1917)
A Reminiscence of Dr. Samuel Johnson (1917)
Sweet Ermengarde (1917)
Polaris (1918)
Beyond the Wall of Sleep (1919)
Memory (1919)
Old Bugs (1919)
The Transition of Juan Romero (1919)
The White Ship (1919)
The Doom that Came to Sarnath (1919)
The Statement of Randolph Carter (1919)
The Terrible Old Man (1920)
The Tree (1920)
The Cats of Ulthar (1920)
The Temple (1920)
Facts Concerning the Late Arthur Jermyn and His Family (1920)
The Street (1920)
Celephaïs (1920)
From Beyond (1920)
Nyarlathotep (1920)
The Picture in the House (1920) CONTENT WARNING
Ex Oblivione (1921)
The Nameless City (1921)
The Quest of Iranon (1921)
The Moon-Bog (1921)
The Outsider (1921)
The Other Gods (1921)
The Music of Erich Zann (1921)
Herbert West–Reanimator (1922)
Hypnos (1922)
What the Moon Brings (1922)
Azathoth (1922)
The Hound (1922)
The Lurking Fear (1922)
The Rats in the Walls (1923) CONTENT WARNING
The Unnamable (1923)
The Festival (1923)
Under the Pyramids (1924)
The Shunned House (1924)
The Horror at Red Hook (1925)
He (1925)
In the Vault (1925)
The Descendant (1926)
Cool Air (1926)
The Call of Cthulhu (1926)
Pickman’s Model (1926)
The Silver Key (1926)
The Strange High House in the Mist (1926)
The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath (1927)
The Case of Charles Dexter Ward (1927)
The Colour Out of Space (1927)
The Very Old Folk (1927)
History of the Necronomicon (1927)
Ibid (1928)
The Dunwich Horror (1928)
The Whisperer in Darkness (1930)
At the Mountains of Madness (1931)
Discarded Draft of the Shadow Over Innsmouth (1931)
The Shadow Over Innsmouth (1931)
The Dreams in the Witch House (1932)
Through the Gates of the Silver Key (1932) CONTENT WARNING
The Thing on the Doorstep (1933)
The Evil Clergyman (1933)
The Book (1933)
The Shadow Out of Time (1935)
The Haunter of the Dark (1935)
We’ve broken the stories into a few groups based on common settings or themes. There are stories set in the Dreamlands. There are stories that directly feature the “Cthulhu Mythos”. There are stories that are very science oriented, and some that are classic tales of horror. And there are a number of miscellaneous, juvenile, or shorter tales that don’t really fit any of these categories, all of which have a certain amount of overlap.
MINOR & MISCELLANEOUS TALES
The Little Glass Bottle
The Secret Cave
The Mystery of the Grave-Yard
The Mysterious Ship
The Beast in the Cave
The Alchemist
The Tomb
The Transition of Juan Romero
The Terrible Old Man
The Tree
The Temple
The Street
The Moon-Bog
Hypnos
Memory
What the Moon Brings
He
In the Vault
The Descendant
The Evil Clergyman
The Book
A Reminiscence of Samuel Johnson
Sweet Ermengarde
Old Bugs
Ibid
CLASSIC HORROR TALES
The Picture in the House (CONTENT WARNING)
The Outsider
The Hound
The Lurking Fear
The Rats in the Walls (CONTENT WARNING)
The Unnamable
Under the Pyramids
Cool Air
Pickman’s Model
The Case of Charles Dexter Ward
The Dunwich Horror
The Thing on the Doorstep
The Haunter of the Dark
Facts Concerning the Late Arthur Jermyn and His Family
The Shunned House
The Horror at Red Hook
MYTHOS TALES
Dagon
The Nameless City
The Music of Erich Zann
Azathoth
The Call of Cthulhu
History of the Necronomicon
The Dunwich Horror
The Shadow Over Innsmouth
The Dreams in the Witch House
TALES OF SCIENCE
Beyond the Wall of Sleep
From Beyond
Nyarlathotep
Herbert West–Reanimator
The Colour Out of Space
The Whisperer in Darkness
At the Mountains of Madness
The Shadow Out of Time
DREAMLANDS TALES
Polaris
The White Ship
The Doom that Came to Sarnath
The Cats of Ulthar
Celephaïs
Ex Oblivione
The Quest of Iranon
The Other Gods
The Festival
The Silver Key
The Strange High House in the Mist
The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath
Through the Gates of the Silver Key (CONTENT WARNING)
In addition to the stories, we have provided a brief audio Foreword and a file of Outtakes (listeners offended by mispronunciations and salty language might want to skip this one). There is also a Listening Guide/Read Me PDF file.
We largely went with Mr. Joshi’s determination as to the contents of this collection. The first volume includes stories written just by HPL himself, with the exceptions of “Under the Pyramids” and “Through the Gates of the Silver Key”. The famed magician Harry Houdini gets a minor credit for “Under the Pyramids” as the general concept was his, but the writing of the story itself was left to Lovecraft. E. Hoffman Price also gets a minor credit for “Through the Gates of the Silver Key”. Price wrote a 6,000 word draft of the story and sent it to Lovecraft, who then expanded the story to some 14,000 words, out of which Price estimated that only about 50 were words from his original draft.
We’ve also included “The Very Old Folk” which is arguably not a story. Lovecraft had a very vivid dream set in Roman times and he described the dream in letters to several of his friends, elaborating more and more each time he wrote it out. The final version that he sent to Donald Wandrei is more of a story than a letter. We’ve included it as it is not typically included in collections of Lovecraft’s fiction — we thought fans might enjoy hearing it. Interestingly, “History of the Necronomicon” is included in most complete collections of Lovecraft stories despite the fact that it is not a story in a traditional sense.
We have produced a second audiobook volume which includes the many collaborations and revisions that Lovecraft worked on with other authors. You can find that collection here.
And, of course, Lovecraft’s fiction represents only a small portion of his work as a writer. He was one of America’s most prolific epistolarians, having penned tens of thousands of letters. An audiobook of those letters would be the project of a lifetime, but if you want to hear some of them read out loud, please check out our podcast, Voluminous. Lovecraft also wrote essays, poetry and other types of non-fiction.
A few do, yes. Some of these stories include a notorious racial slur. Although we do not share or condone Lovecraft's racial views, we made the choice to read the stories the way he wrote them, and not to substitute euphemisms. It is our belief that fans of Lovecraft must come to terms on their own with his well-known racism. If you would like to avoid hearing that offensive word, we recommend not listening to "The Rats in the Walls", "The Picture in the House" or "Through the Gates of the Silver Key".
We spent a number of years developing this project. In terms of hours? Probably around 120 hours of actual studio time. And the edit was probably that much again, maybe a little more. It would have been less if Leman knew how to pronounce “basalt”.
As long as your favorite collaboration is not "The Loved Dead", we should have you covered. We have released a second audiobook volume which contains the collaborations and revisions Lovecraft did with/for other authors. The only stories not included are the four he wrote with C.M. Eddy, in accordance with the wishes of the Eddy estate.
It didn’t seem necessary to have one, as such. Each story is its own separate MP3 file, arranged alphabetically on the thumb drive. For longer stories, there are also separate files for each chapter in the folder called "Chaptered Stories". We used Lovecraft's own chapter divisions except for "The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath", which he wrote as one extremely long tale. We thank Reber Clark for his suggestions for breaking it into chapters.
Through the sedulous application of certain infinitely abstruse and daemoniac formulae.
Although that sounds like fun, please don’t post these on the internet or make digital copies. If you really want to use excerpts in some project, write to us and let’s talk.
There are some errors that arose in the process of recording these stories — those are solely our fault and we apologize for them. We fixed the ones we could, but some of them we had to let stand. You do not need to write in and tell us about any imperfections you may find — we just hope you, Mr. Joshi, and Mr. Lovecraft will forgive us. Some thumb drives also have a few minor errors in their metadata, but we think we fixed those already. If you really want to point out a mistake you've found, here's where you can write to us.
A great many wonderful writers, artists, filmmakers and musicians have “borrowed” from Lovecraft over the years, and we thought it would be fun to give a nod to at least some of them. If your favorite is not included we hope you’ll forgive us: there was only so much room on the card.
Clark Ashton Smith
Frank Belknap Long
Robert E. Howard
August Derleth
Robert Bloch
Ray Bradbury
Gahan Wilson
Ramsey Campbell
Stuart Gordon
Stephen King
W. H. Pugmire
Cliff Burton
Guillermo del Toro
Trey Parker
Matt Stone
Some Windows users have reported having an issue unarchiving their download. We are currently running tests to see what the problem might be and will replace the ZIP file if needed. Meanwhile, Windows users report having success using WinRAR to unarchive the download. A free trial version of WinRAR is available at the foregoing link. If you continue to have trouble with the download and WinRAR doesn't help, please do write to us and we will do our best to solve the problem.
The final chapter of that story was omitted from the chapters folder on some of the first wave of thumb drives, and we sincerely apologize for that error. You can download it here.
The Alchemist
At the Mountains of Madness
Azathoth
The Beast in the Cave
Beyond the Wall of Sleep
The Book
The Call of Cthulhu
The Case of Charles Dexter Ward
The Cats of Ulthar
Celphaïs
The Colour Out of Space
Cool Air
Dagon
The Descendant
The Doom that Came to Sarnath
The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath
The Dreams in the Witch House
The Dunwich Horror
The Evil Clergyman
Ex Oblivione
Facts Concerning the Late Arthur Jermyn...
The Festival
From Beyond
The Haunter of the Dark
He
Herbert West – Reanimator
History of the Necronomicon
The Horror at Red Hook
The Hound
Hypnos
Ibid
In the Vault
The Little Glass Bottle
The Lurking Fear
Memory
The Moon-Bog
The Music of Erich Zann
The Mysterious Ship
The Mystery of the Grave-Yard
The Nameless City
Nyarlathotep
Old Bugs
The Other Gods
The Outsider
Pickman's Model
The Picture in the House (CONTENT WARNING)
Polaris
The Quest of Iranon
The Rats in the Walls (CONTENT WARNING)
A Reminiscence of Dr. Samuel Johnson
The Secret Cave
The Shadow Out of Time
The Shadow Over Innsmouth
The Shunned House
The Silver Key
The Statement of Randolph Carter
The Strange High House in the Mist
The Street
Sweet Ermengarde
The Temple
The Terrible Old Man
The Thing on the Doorstep
Through the Gates of the Silver Key (CONTENT WARNING)
The Tomb
The Transition of Juan Romero
The Tree
Under the Pyramids
The Unnameable
The Very Old Folk
What the Moon Brings
The Whisperer in Darkness
The White Ship
These are NOT dramatizations like our Dark Adventure Radio Theatre - rather, this is an audiobook of the original stories, in all-new, never-before-heard recordings. This collection spans his entire career from his earliest surviving works of childhood to stories completed shortly before his death.
The stories were recorded at The Jungle Room studio in Glendale, CA. Our thanks to engineers Daniel Viafore, Jeff Stone, Julian Beeston, Taeghan Hagood, Ben Soldate and studio manager Kevin Anderson for risking their sanity in listening to us read for infinite hours.