"The Hound" is a short story written by H. P. Lovecraft in September 1922 and published in the February 1924 issue of ''

Weird Tales ''Weird Tales'' is an American fantasy and horror fiction pulp magazine founded by J. C. Henneberger and J. M. Lansinger in late 1922. The first issue, dated March 1923, appeared on newsstands February 18. The first editor, Edwin Baird, pri ...

''. It contains the first mention of Lovecraft's fictional text the ''

Necronomicon The ', also referred to as the ''Book of the Dead'', or under a purported original Arabic title of ', is a fictional grimoire (textbook of magic) appearing in stories by the horror writer H. P. Lovecraft and his followers. It was first men ...

.''

Plot

The story opens with the unnamed narrator preparing to commit suicide. Lamenting his fate, he reflects upon the events which led him to this moment. The narrator and his friend, St. John, are a pair of loners who both have a deranged interest in robbing graves. They constantly defile crypts and often keep souvenirs of their nocturnal expeditions. Since they reside in the same house, they have the opportunity to set up a sort of morbid museum in their basement. Using the objects collected from the various graves they have robbed, the two men organize a private exhibition. The collection consists of headstones, preserved bodies, skulls, and several heads in different phases of decomposition. It also includes statues, frightful paintings, and a locked portfolio bound in tanned human skin. One day, the two learn of a particular grave, which sparks a profound interest in them: an old grave in a Holland cemetery which holds a legendary tomb raider within, one who is said to have stolen, many years ago, a "potent thing from a mighty sepulchre." They travel to the old cemetery where the man was buried. The thought of exhuming the final resting place of a former grave robber is irresistibly appealing to them. That, and the fact that the body had been buried several centuries before, drives them to travel such long distances to reach the site. Upon reaching the old cemetery, they notice the distant

baying Dog communication is the transfer of information between dogs, as well as between dogs and humans. Behaviors associated with dog communication are categorized into visual and vocal. Visual communication includes mouth shape and head position, li ...

of a giant

hound A hound is a type of hunting dog used by hunters to track or chase prey. Description Hounds can be contrasted with gun dogs that assist hunters by identifying prey and/or recovering shot quarry. The hound breeds were the first hunting dogs. ...

. They ignore it and begin their excavation. After some time, they hit a solid object in the ground. Clearing the last of the dirt from it, the two men unearth a strange and elaborately-made casket. Upon opening the casket, they see that several places on the skeletal remains appear torn and shattered, as if attacked by a wild animal, yet the whole of the skeleton is still completely distinguishable. At that moment, they notice a jade amulet hanging from the skeleton's neck. They examine it and, after some observation, they recognize the amulet as one mentioned in "the forbidden

of the mad Arab Abdul Alhazred." They immediately know they must have the amulet at all cost. They remove it from the skeleton and flee into the night. As they do, they notice once again the continuous sound of a baying hound in the distance. After they return home to England, strange events begin to occur. Odd sounds can be heard within and around their house, including the distant howling they heard in the cemetery. One night, St. John is violently attacked and killed by a mysterious creature, which the narrator claims the amulet had brought unto him. He destroys the macabre museum he and his friend made, before fleeing from the house and traveling to London. Still plagued by bizarre occurrences, he decides that he must return the amulet to its rightful owner. He travels to Holland, but the amulet is stolen from him before he can return it. The next day, he reads in the newspaper about a band of thieves savagely killed by an unknown creature. Slowly going insane, he returns to the churchyard and exhumes the coffin once more, only to find the skeleton within covered in caked blood and bits of flesh and hair, holding the lost amulet in its hand. Suddenly, the skeleton begins howling, the same howl that had tormented him since he first stole the amulet. The narrator flees the graveyard, succumbing to madness and despair. He states that he intends to kill himself with a

revolver A revolver (also called a wheel gun) is a repeating firearm, repeating handgun that has at least one gun barrel, barrel and uses a revolving cylinder (firearms), cylinder containing multiple chamber (firearms), chambers (each holding a single ...

, believing death to be his only refuge from the crawling horror which grows within him.

Cthulhu Mythos

"The Hound" contains several references to the body of lore known as the

Cthulhu Mythos The Cthulhu Mythos is a mythopoeia and a shared fictional universe, originating in the works of American horror writer H. P. Lovecraft. The term was coined by August Derleth, a contemporary correspondent and protégé of Lovecraft, to identify ...

that Lovecraft shared with other horror writers. Most notably, it marks the first appearance of one of Lovecraft's most famous literary creations—the forbidden book known as the ''

''. Lovecraft had mentioned its author a year earlier, in "

The Nameless City "The Nameless City" is a short horror story written by American writer H. P. Lovecraft in January 1921 and first published in the November 1921 issue of the amateur press journal ''The Wolverine''. It is often considered the first story set in ...

", but here for the first time named the book. Referring to an amulet found on a grave-robbing expedition, the narrator relates: :Alien it indeed was to all art and literature which sane and balanced readers know, but we recognized it as the thing hinted of in the forbidden ''Necronomicon'' of the mad Arab Abdul Alhazred; the ghastly soul-symbol of the corpse-eating cult of inaccessible Leng, in Central Asia. All too well did we trace the sinister lineaments described by the old Arab daemonologist; lineaments, he wrote, drawn from some obscure supernatural manifestation of the souls of those who vexed and gnawed at the dead. The reference to "Leng" is one of the first mentions of Lovecraft's imaginary plateau, having only appeared before in 1920s " Celephais". Here placed in Central Asia, Leng is also associated in Lovecraft's writings with

Antarctica Antarctica () is Earth's southernmost and least-populated continent. Situated almost entirely south of the Antarctic Circle and surrounded by the Southern Ocean, it contains the geographic South Pole. Antarctica is the fifth-largest cont ...

and his imaginary Dreamlands. Lovecraftian scholar Will Murray, pointing to the "semi-canine face" on the amulet as well as the "corpse-eating cult" of Leng, suggests that the titular creature of "The Hound" "probably represents an early form of the

ghoul A ghoul ( ar, غول, ') is a demon-like being or monstrous humanoid. The concept originated in pre-Islamic Arabian religion, associated with graveyards and the consumption of human flesh. Modern fiction often uses the term to label a cert ...

as Lovecraft would develop it."

Inspiration

On September 16, 1922, Lovecraft toured the Flatbush Reformed Church in

Brooklyn Brooklyn () is a borough of New York City, coextensive with Kings County, in the U.S. state of New York. Kings County is the most populous county in the State of New York, and the second-most densely populated county in the United States, be ...

with his friend Rheinhart Kleiner, writing about the visit in a letter: :Around the old pile is a hoary churchyard, with dating from around 1730 to the middle of the nineteenth century.... From one of the crumbling gravestones--dated 1747--I chipped a small piece to carry away. It lies before me as I write--and ought to suggest some sort of horror-story. I must 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? And should it come, who can say what it might not resemble? Lovecraft wrote "The Hound" shortly afterwards, using as the name of one of the main characters his nickname for his companion Kleinhart, "St. John". The grave that is fatefully robbed in the story is in a "terrible Holland churchyard"—perhaps a reference to Flatbush church being part of the

Dutch Reformed Church The Dutch Reformed Church (, abbreviated NHK) was the largest Christian denomination in the Netherlands from the onset of the Protestant Reformation in the 16th century until 1930. It was the original denomination of the Dutch Royal Family and ...

(although the story is actually set in the Netherlands, as well as in England). Critic Steven J. Mariconda suggests that the story is a tribute to the

Decadent The word decadence, which at first meant simply "decline" in an abstract sense, is now most often used to refer to a perceived decay in standards, morals, dignity, religious faith, honor, discipline, or skill at governing among the members of ...

literary movement in general and in particular

Joris-Karl Huysmans Charles-Marie-Georges Huysmans (, ; 5 February 1848 – 12 May 1907) was a French novelist and art critic who published his works as Joris-Karl Huysmans (, variably abbreviated as J. K. or J.-K.). He is most famous for the novel '' À rebour ...

' ''

A rebours A, or a, is the first letter and the first vowel of the Latin alphabet, used in the modern English alphabet, the alphabets of other western European languages and others worldwide. Its name in English is ''a'' (pronounced ), plural ''aes' ...

'', an 1884 novel that Lovecraft greatly admired. (Huysmans is mentioned by name in the story, along with

Baudelaire Charles Pierre Baudelaire (, ; ; 9 April 1821 – 31 August 1867) was a French poet who also produced notable work as an essayist and art critic. His poems exhibit mastery in the handling of rhyme and rhythm, contain an exoticism inherited fro ...

.) Like "The Hound"'s protagonists, victims of a "devastating ennui", the main character of ''A rebours'' suffers from an "overpowering tedium" that leads him to "imagine and then indulge in unnatural love-affairs and perverse pleasures." Mariconda also points to the heavy debt the story owes to

Edgar Allan Poe Edgar Allan Poe (; Edgar Poe; January 19, 1809 – October 7, 1849) was an American writer, poet, editor, and literary critic. Poe is best known for his poetry and short stories, particularly his tales of mystery and the macabre. He is wid ...

, an influence acknowledged by several borrowed phrases: :The "oblong box" exumed, the mysterious "knock on my chamber door", and the "red death" brought by the Hound all echo Poe's phraseology.

Reception

Though Lovecraft chose "The Hound" as one of the five stories he initially submitted to ''

'', his main professional outlet, he later dismissed it as "a dead dog"Mariconda, p. 53. and "a piece of junk" Some critics have shared Lovecraft's deprecation;

Lin Carter Linwood Vrooman Carter (June 9, 1930 – February 7, 1988) was an American author of science fiction and fantasy, as well as an editor, poet and critic. He usually wrote as Lin Carter; known pseudonyms include H. P. Lowcraft (for an H. P. ...

called it "a minor little tale" that is "slavishly Poe-esque in style". But the story has its defenders; Steven J. Mariconda says it is "written in a zestful, almost

baroque The Baroque (, ; ) is a style of architecture, music, dance, painting, sculpture, poetry, and other arts that flourished in Europe from the early 17th century until the 1750s. In the territories of the Spanish and Portuguese empires including ...

style which is very entertaining", while

Peter Cannon Peter H. Cannon (born 1951 in California) is an H. P. Lovecraft scholar and an author of Cthulhu Mythos fiction. Cannon works as an editor for ''Publishers Weekly'', specializing in thrillers and mystery. He lives in New York City and is marrie ...

, saying that it must have been written "with tongue at least partly in cheek", credits it with a certain "naive charm".Cannon, p. 4. The plot of the

Poppy Z. Brite Billy Martin (born May 25, 1967), formerly Poppy Z. Brite, is an American author. He initially achieved fame in the gothic horror genre of literature in the early 1990s by publishing a string of successful novels and short story collections. He i ...

short story "His Mouth Will Taste of Wormwood" bears a strong resemblance to this Lovecraft story, albeit transplanted to a modern

Southern Gothic Southern Gothic is an artistic subgenre of fiction, country music, film and television that are heavily influenced by Gothic elements and the American South. Common themes of Southern Gothic include storytelling of deeply flawed, disturbing or ...

Louisiana Louisiana , group=pronunciation (French: ''La Louisiane'') is a state in the Deep South and South Central regions of the United States. It is the 20th-smallest by area and the 25th most populous of the 50 U.S. states. Louisiana is bord ...

setting.

Audio adaptations

Roddy McDowall Roderick Andrew Anthony Jude McDowall (17 September 1928 – 4 October 1998) was a British actor, photographer and film director. He began his acting career as a child in England, and then in the United States, in ''How Green Was My Valley'' (1 ...

was the narrator of the story on a 1966 LP release (Lively Arts 30003) that also included the Lovecraft story " The Outsider".

References

Sources

* With explanatory footnotes.

External links

* * * {{DEFAULTSORT:Hound, The 1924 short stories Cthulhu Mythos short stories England in fiction Fantasy short stories Fiction set in the 20th century Netherlands in fiction Short stories by H. P. Lovecraft Works originally published in Weird Tales