Herbert West, réanimateur: La collection HP Lovecraft

Écrit par H. P. Lovecraft

Raconté par Alain Guillo

Herbert West, réanimateur est une nouvelle publiée pour la première fois en feuilleton de février à juillet 1922 dans la revue amateur Home Brew. Elle est par ailleurs la source d'inspiration du film d'horreur Re-Animator sorti en 1985, de ses suites ainsi que d'autres adaptations. Lovecraft rédige le texte de la nouvelle entre octobre 1921 et juin 1922. Cette histoire est la première à faire mention de l'université de Miskatonic. Le narrateur, médecin ayant suivi des études à la faculté de médecine en compagnie du personnage éponyme, rend compte de la disparition récente d'Herbert West. À présent, il peut enfin témoigner de la folie de son condisciple et exprimer l'horreur que ses actes lui inspiraient.

• Langue: Français
• Éditeur: Compagnie Du Savoir
• Date de sortie: 9 sept. 2022
• ISBN: 9782821187979

H. P. Lovecraft

H. P. Lovecraft (1890-1937) was an American author of science fiction and horror stories. Born in Providence, Rhode Island to a wealthy family, he suffered the loss of his father at a young age. Raised with his mother’s family, he was doted upon throughout his youth and found a paternal figure in his grandfather Whipple, who encouraged his literary interests. He began writing stories and poems inspired by the classics and by Whipple’s spirited retellings of Gothic tales of terror. In 1902, he began publishing a periodical on astronomy, a source of intellectual fascination for the young Lovecraft. Over the next several years, he would suffer from a series of illnesses that made it nearly impossible to attend school. Exacerbated by the decline of his family’s financial stability, this decade would prove formative to Lovecraft’s worldview and writing style, both of which depict humanity as cosmologically insignificant. Supported by his mother Susie in his attempts to study organic chemistry, Lovecraft eventually devoted himself to writing poems and stories for such pulp and weird-fiction magazines as Argosy, where he gained a cult following of readers. Early stories of note include “The Alchemist” (1916), “The Tomb” (1917), and “Beyond the Wall of Sleep” (1919). “The Call of Cthulu,” originally published in pulp magazine Weird Tales in 1928, is considered by many scholars and fellow writers to be his finest, most complex work of fiction. Inspired by the works of Edgar Allan Poe, Arthur Machen, Algernon Blackwood, and Lord Dunsany, Lovecraft became one of the century’s leading horror writers whose influence remains essential to the genre.