The Loved Dead is a story written by
C. M. Eddy Jr.
Clifford Martin Eddy Jr. (C. M. Eddy Jr.; January 18, 1896 – November 21, 1967)Fenham Publishing/ref> was an American writer known for his horror, mystery and supernatural short stories. He is best remembered for his work in ''Weird Tales'' m ...
in 1919. A controversial tale of
necrophilia, it was published in ''
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 ...
'' bumper issue for May/July 1924.
Plot
The plot centres around an unnamed narrator living in the rural village of Fenham who is a
necrophile. He describes his repressive childhood and what drove him to commit these crimes. He works for one mortuary/undertaker after another, in order to be near corpses. At the end of the story, with police hot on his trail, he commits suicide.
Reaction
Due to the tale's grisly subject matter, style and descriptiveness, it caused a storm of controversy.
According to Eddy, copies 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 ...
'' had to be withdrawn from sale in many places. Robert Weinberg has disputed this, saying he was unable to find evidence of such withdrawals.
On the other hand,
S. T. Joshi contends that when published in ''Weird Tales'', the story elicited a protest from authorities in Indiana, who sought to have the issue banned; subsequently, editor Farnsworth Wright became hesitant to accept any stories from
H. P. Lovecraft that features explicitly gruesome passages of the kind found in "The Loved Dead", and as a result several of Lovecraft's tales were rejected.
Ramsey Campbell
Ramsey Campbell (born 4 January 1946) is an English horror fiction writer, editor and critic who has been writing for well over fifty years. He is the author of over 30 novels and hundreds of short stories, many of them winners of literary awa ...
wrote in 1969 that this story consisted of "ludicrous melodrama" and that it was a "distastefully sensationalist revision" He later modified this view in a revision of his 1969 article. Robert Weinberg described "The Loved Dead" as an "over-written and minor" story.
John Pelan wrote, "This shuddery tale, for all its Grand Guignol excess, still strikes a chilling chord after many years and deserves its place as the best of 1924. One challenge in assembling this collection was to disregard the notoriety of certain tales and evaluate whether or not a story really deserved to be considered the 'best' of a given year. In the case of C. M. Eddy's story, it managed to be both."
[John Pelan, ''The Century's Best Horror Fiction'', Cemetery Dance Publications, 2011.]
Further reading
David E. Schultz. "On 'The Loved Dead'", ''Crypt of Cthulhu'' No 17 (Hallowmas 1983): 25-28.
Publishing history
* ''Weird Tales'', 4, No. 2 (May–June–July 1924), 54-57.
* ''Arkham Sampler'' (Summer 1948).
* First collected in ''
The Dark Brotherhood and Other Pieces
''The Dark Brotherhood and Other Pieces'' is a collection of stories, poems and essays by American author H. P. Lovecraft and others, edited by August Derleth. It was released in 1966 by Arkham House in an edition of 3,460 copies. The dustjacket ...
''
*''
The Horror in the Museum and Other Revisions''. Sauk City, WI: Arkham House, 1970, 348-57.
*''The Loved Dead and Other Revisions'' New York: Carroll & Graf Publishers, 1997, 149-58.
*''The Loved Dead and Other Tales'' by C. M. Eddy Jr. Rhode Islan
Fenham Publishing, 2008, 1-15.
References
{{DEFAULTSORT:Loved Dead, The
1924 short stories
Horror short stories
Works originally published in Weird Tales