The Descendant (short story)

"The Descendant"
Author	H. P. Lovecraft
Country	United States
Language	English
Genre(s)	Horror
Published in	Leaves
Publication date	1938

"The Descendant" is a horror story fragment by American writer H. P. Lovecraft, believed to have been written in 1927.[1] It was first published in the journal Leaves in 1938, after Lovecraft's death.[2]

Plot

The story begins with a narrator explaining that he is on his deathbed and feels the need to share a particular story before he dies. He tells of a quiet and slightly mad older man who lives in the Gray's Inn with his pet cat. The mad is haggard and haunted, looking older than his years and terrified of church bells. A young man named Williams (the narrator) moves into to the Inn and tries to befriend the old man and get him to share his knowledge. It is revealed that the man is Lord Northam of England. Williams' attempts are largely rebuked until one day, Williams acquires a copy of the Necronomicon, the book of the dead that captures the minds of so many intrigued by the dark arts. When Williams asks Northam to help translate the book's old Latin, Northam is horrified and begs Williams to burn the volume. Northam is forced to reveal his own history. His line goes back to Roman times in England when soldiers first took to the land. However, they encountered a cave-dwelling cult that they couldn't vanquish, despite their best efforts. This cult was said to be of a people who had lived there for a long time before and were from an ancient land which had sunk into the sea. This was the place where Northam's family castle was built. Generations later, Lord Northam still felt the haunting power of the place which let him to pursue the tales of the supernatural and even to witness it himself. This led him eventually to the Nameless City of Arabia and to believe that there are points in the world where one can transcend to some other place not of this universe. The unfinished story ends with him wondering if this is all in his mind or something that is actually real.

Inspiration

Lovecraft may have been referring to this attempt at a story when he wrote that he was "making a very careful study of London...in order to get background for tales involving richer antiquities than America can furnish."[3]

References

Joshi, S.T.; Schultz, David E. (2004). An H.P. Lovecraft Encyclopedia. Hippocampus Press. p. 66. ISBN 978-0974878911.
"H. P. Lovecraft's 'The Descendant'", The H. P. Lovecraft Archive.
H. P. Lovecraft, letter to August Derleth, April 15, 1927; cited in Joshi and Schultz, p. 66.

External links

Works related to The Descendant at Wikisource
The Descendant title listing at the Internet Speculative Fiction Database

This article is issued from Wikipedia. The text is licensed under Creative Commons - Attribution - Sharealike. Additional terms may apply for the media files.

[1] Joshi, S.T.; Schultz, David E. (2004). An H.P. Lovecraft Encyclopedia. Hippocampus Press. p. 66. ISBN 978-0974878911.

[2] "H. P. Lovecraft's 'The Descendant'", The H. P. Lovecraft Archive.

[3] H. P. Lovecraft, letter to August Derleth, April 15, 1927; cited in Joshi and Schultz, p. 66.

H. P. Lovecraft
Bibliography
Short stories	"The Beast in the Cave" "The Alchemist" "The Tomb" "Dagon" "A Reminiscence of Dr. Samuel Johnson" "Polaris" "Beyond the Wall of Sleep" "Memory" "Old Bugs" "The Transition of Juan Romero" "The White Ship" "The Street" "The Doom That Came to Sarnath" "The Statement of Randolph Carter" "The Terrible Old Man" "The Tree" "The Cats of Ulthar" "The Temple" "Facts Concerning the Late Arthur Jermyn and His Family" "Celephaïs" "From Beyond" "Nyarlathotep" "The Picture in the House" "Ex Oblivione" "Sweet Ermengarde" "The Nameless City" "The Quest of Iranon" "The Moon-Bog" "The Outsider" "The Other Gods" "The Music of Erich Zann" "Herbert West–Reanimator" "Hypnos" "What the Moon Brings" "Azathoth" "The Hound" "The Lurking Fear" "The Rats in the Walls" "The Unnamable" "The Festival" "The Shunned House" "The Horror at Red Hook" "He" "In the Vault" "Cool Air" "The Call of Cthulhu" "Pickman's Model" "The Silver Key" "The Strange High House in the Mist" "The Colour Out of Space" "The Descendant" "History of the Necronomicon" "The Very Old Folk" "Ibid" "The Dunwich Horror" "The Dreams in the Witch House" "The Thing on the Doorstep" "The Evil Clergyman" "The Book" "The Haunter of the Dark"
Novellas	The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath The Whisperer in Darkness At the Mountains of Madness The Shadow over Innsmouth The Shadow Out of Time
Novels	The Case of Charles Dexter Ward
Collaborations	"The Green Meadow" "Poetry and the Gods" "The Crawling Chaos" "The Horror at Martin's Beach" "Imprisoned with the Pharaohs" "The Curse of Yig" The Mound "Medusa's Coil" "The Horror in the Museum" "Through the Gates of the Silver Key" "Out of the Aeons" "The Tree on the Hill" "Till A' the Seas" "In the Walls of Eryx" "The Thing in the Moonlight"
Poetry	Fungi from Yuggoth
Essays	"Supernatural Horror in Literature" To Quebec and the Stars Autobiography: Some Notes on a Nonentity
Locations	Arkham Dunwich Innsmouth Miskatonic University Lovecraft Country R'lyeh Yuggoth
Characters	Randolph Carter Harley Warren Herbert West
Books about	H. P. Lovecraft: A Life H. P. Lovecraft: Against the World, Against Life An H. P. Lovecraft Encyclopedia Lovecraft: A Biography Lovecraft: A Look Behind the Cthulhu Mythos
Related	Cthulhu Mythos Cthulhu Mythos in popular culture Dream Cycle Lovecraftian horror Cosmicism H. P. Lovecraft Historical Society Necronomicon Lovecraft: Fear of the Unknown (documentary) Sonia Greene (wife)
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