H.P. Lovecraft: "The Terrible Old Man" {read by Andrew Gaunce}

"The Terrible Old Man" is a short story of fewer than 1200 words by American writer H. P. Lovecraft. It was written on January 28, 1920, and first published in the Tryout, an amateur press publication, in July 1921. It is notable as the first story to make use of Lovecraft's imaginary New England setting, introducing the fictional town of Kingsport.

The Terrible Old Man reappears in the story "The Strange High House in the Mist" in a more benevolent role. He further elaborates on the origin of the Strange High House, mentioning that the house was old when his own grandfather had been a boy. Given the Old Man's own implied longevity, the house must date to the very early days of colonial America.

He has a number of similarities with later characters created by Lovecraft, in particular Joseph Curwen, the villain of The Case of Charles Dexter Ward: Both were improbably old, such that no one remembered when they were young; possessed vaguely defined but powerful abilities oriented around storing the dead in peculiar objects and calling them forth to serve them; and had access to ancient coinage of precious metals (as do the Whateleys in "The Dunwich Horror").

Lovecraft scholar Peter Cannon dismissively describes the story as "little more than a polemic against the intrusion of people Lovecraft regarded as 'foreigners', that is, the non-English immigrants who arrived in the nineteenth century as cheap labor to fill the factories of an increasingly industrialized America." S. T. Joshi identified the story as having been inspired by Lord Dunsany's short story "Probable Adventure of the Three Literary Men". Joshi wrote that modern critics have "tried to deny the racism seemingly evident in the tale", but Lovecraft takes obvious satisfaction in killing off the criminal immigrants.

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(Voice Recording):
*read for LibriVox by Andrew Gaunce
LibriVox (Short Ghost and Horror Collection 040)
https://librivox.org/short-ghost-and-...

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(Music):
"Children's Theme","Come Play With Me", "Dopplerette""& "Evening Chaos"
by Kevin MacLeod (www.incompetech.com)
Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/...

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(Illustrations):
"Study for old man" (pencil, 2018)
by Andrea Camagna ( CC Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International)

"1904-03-12, Blanco y Negro, (La dolora del superhombre)"
by Narciso Méndez Bringa (Public Domain)

"Alter Kapitän (21. August 1865 Werneck - Unterfranken  15. September 1935 in München)"
by Rudolf Gudden
by (Public Domain)

"Kopfstudie nach einem dreiundneunzigjährigen Mann"  
by Albrecht Dürer (Public Domain)

Illustration of Morris Rosenfield's "Lieder des Ghetto" (1903)
by Berthold Feiwel (Public Domain)

"Jerusalem Shoemaker"
by Theodor Kittelsen (Public Domain)

"Gammel fisker"
by Nikolai Astrup (Public Domain)

"Fáradtság (szén- és ceruzarajz)"
Benczúr Gyula (Public Domain)

Bronze bust of H.P. Lovecraft at the Providence Athenaeum. Providence, Rhode Island
by Kenneth C. Zirkel (Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported)

*All other artwork an photos are in the public domain

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