Commentary on The Hound Part 1

On p. 284 (Joshi, H P Lovecraft: A Life) we learn that on the evening of September 16th {of 1922} Lovecraft and Kleiner went to the Dutch Reformed Church (1796) on Flatbush Avenue in Brooklyn.

Lovecraft "...from one of the crumbling gravestones - dated 1747 - I chipped a small piece to carry away. It ... ought to suggest soem sort of a horror-story. I must some night place it beneath my pillow as I sleep ... who can say what thing might not come out of the centuried earth to exact vengeance for his desecrated tomb?"

{This is from the letter of HPL to Lillian D Clark dated 29 September 1922)

Lovecraft finished the Hound before mid-October 1922

Among the fun in-jokes are listed within the text are:

*"damned thing ... mangled flesh" Ambrose Bierce's short story that also influenced The Colour Out of Space.

*"red death" His idol's - Poe's - short story.
*"oblong box" Another Poe story.
*"damp nitrous" an allusion to The Cask or Amontillado
- the word is found in describing the ancient tunnel
*"old manor house" an allusion to The Fall of the House of Usher

*."on the night of September 24, 19__" a tip to Poe's affectation in his story telling

*baying of Hound is a tip to Arthur Conan Doyle's Hounds of the Baskervilles
- the yew tree is mentioned a few times just before Baskerville is killed.

*Steven J. Mariconda has found many allusions to A Rebors by Joris-Karl Huysmans