Lovecraft's Early Stories

You've no doubt read or seen many HPL juvenalia. Here is an excerpt you may be less familiar with ...

"I used to write detective stories very often, the works of A, Conan Doyle being my model so far as plot was concerned." [1]

"One long destroyed tale was of twin brothers - one murders the other, but conceals the body & tries to take the life of both - appearing in one place as himself,& elsewhere as his victim. ... He meets sudden death (lightning) when posing as the dead man - is identified by a scar,& the secret finally revealed by his diary. This I think antedates my 11th year. For fun, I have a great mind to write a story again from this plot, publish it without signature, & await the contemptuous laughter of the amateur critics!!" [2]

Perhaps The Case of Charles Dexter Ward of The Dunwich Horror evolved from these concepts? [3]


1 Letters to Rheinheart Kleiner, Joshi, Hippocampus, 2005, {Feb. 2, 1916} p.30

2 op. cit. p. 30

3 op. cit. see note 3, p. 31, S T Joshi.