The Descendant

by H.P. Lovecraft

"The Descendant" is a story fragment by American horror fiction writer H. P. Lovecraft, believed to have been written in 1927.[1] It was first published in the journal Leaves in 1938, after Lovecraft's death.

Lovecraft may have been referring to this attempt at a story when he wrote that he was "making a very careful study of London...in order to get background for tales involving richer antiquities than America can furnish."

Genres: Horror, Short Stories, Lovecraftian, Fiction, Fantasy, Classics, Science Fiction

24 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 1938

About the author

Howard Phillips Lovecraft, of Providence, Rhode Island, was an American author of horror, fantasy and science fiction.

Lovecraft's major inspiration and invention was cosmic horror: life is incomprehensible to human minds and the universe is fundamentally alien. Those who genuinely reason, like his protagonists, gamble with sanity. Lovecraft has developed a cult following for his Cthulhu Mythos, a series of loosely interconnected fictions featuring a pantheon of human-nullifying entities, as well as the Necronomicon, a fictional grimoire of magical rites and forbidden lore. His works were deeply pessimistic and cynical, challenging the values of the Enlightenment, Romanticism and Christianity. Lovecraft's protagonists usually achieve the mirror-opposite of traditional gnosis and mysticism by momentarily glimpsing the horror of ultimate reality.

Although Lovecraft's readership was limited during his life, his reputation has grown over the decades. He is now commonly regarded as one of the most influential horror writers of the 20th Century, exerting widespread and indirect influence, and frequently compared to Edgar Allan Poe.
See also Howard Phillips Lovecraft.

— Wikipedia

Reviews

[Peter · Rating 3 out of 5]

Who is this mysterious man living in Gray's Inn London? Let's follow William who tries to find out his secret. Oh, William purchased The Necronomicon in Chandos Street. The recluse he observes is from a very old family... this is only the unfinished fragment of a story. Otherwise it might have been better. So, you only have some ingredients that hint on a great story.

[Eddie B. · Rating 3 out of 5]

Come on Lovecraft! Where is the rest of it?!

[ᴥ Irena ᴥ · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5

There is an old man living at Gray’s Inn for the past ten years. He doesn't allow anyone to get near him and he starts screaming when the church bells ring.
Nobody knows what happened to him. Nobody knows how he ended up like that. Only one person, Williams, a 'dreamer' like him, got close enough to find out his story.
That would have never happened happen if Williams' thirst for forbidden knowledge hadn't taken him to a place where he found something he searched for a long time. 'Necronomicon', an ancient grimoire dreaded by everyone who know about it, turned out to be the thing which brought Lord Northam and Williams together.

The rest of the story of Lord Northam's ancestors, wandering through deserts (even searching for a Nameless City), the search for an escape from 'the close vistas of science and the dully unvarying laws of Nature' is the old man's to tell.

[Julia Leporace · Rating 2 out of 5]

"Perhaps he held within his own half-explored brain that cryptic link which would awaken him to elder and future lives in forgotten dimensions; which would bind him to the stars, and to the infinities and eternities beyond them."

[Mika · Rating 1 out of 5]

I don't read unfinished works, but since I read this from his complete works collection I wasn't really able to just skip it. It's ironic to call them complete when there is an unfinished one amongst them.

It feels too similar to his other short story ‘Facts Concerning the Late Arthur Jermyn and His Family’ which was written first. I also think it's the better one of these two as it's completed at least.

[Forked Radish · Rating 5 out of 5]

Unfinished is sometimes better. Coleridge's Kubla Khan and Twain's The Mysterious Stranger are masterpieces because they were unfinished.

[Shiwam · Rating 3 out of 5]

It's gonna be maaay! (Nsync)

[Jackson · Rating 4 out of 5]

"He became a dreamer who found life tame and unsatisfying; a searcher for strange realms and relationships once familiar, yet lying nowhere in the visible regions of earth."

What a good short story to jump back into Lovecraft's work with! Very fitting indeed.

[Shannon · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really enjoyed this one! Which was nice... the past few hadn't really been working for me was nice to get back to some weird super out there stuff.

[Eithan Arellius · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.75 stars

[Teemu Öhman · Rating 3 out of 5]

I don't consider myself a Lovecraft completist (although it's the complete works I'm reading), so I am not the main target audience of this story fragment (I didn't know it's a fragment until I had finished it). There's a great bit in the beginning, though: "All he seeks from life is not to think. For some reason thought is very horrible to him, and anything which stirs the imagination he flees as a plague." That applies to roughly 95% of humanity these days.

2.5/5

[Tony Ciak · Rating 5 out of 5]

Horror, short story by a master, Great Narration!

[Dave · Rating 4 out of 5]

Pretty good for Lovecraft, creepy, unsettling and he ends the story just before anything really happens, leaving a lingering feeling of disquiet.

[Tea & Gemimah Read Books · Rating 3 out of 5]

The Descendant feels like the literary equivalent of finding an unfinished diary entry that ends mid-sentence. It's quite eerie, promising, and frustratingly incomplete. It’s got all the right ingredients: old houses, cursed bloodlines, an ancient book you definitely shouldn’t open, and a protagonist who looks like he hasn’t slept since the fall of Rome.

There’s a brilliant atmosphere here. Within the fragment are unearthed the bones of a much larger story that never got to put on flesh. You can practically hear Lovecraft whisper, “and then something unspeakable happened,” before wandering off to write about fish people instead.

Still, what’s here works. It’s gothic, weird, and steeped in that signature ancestral dread he loved so much. It just feels like being served the entrée to a meal you can smell but never get to eat. I'm still hungry. In a good way.

Listen to the audio reading for free and chat about books at The Library: https://discord.gg/TqpRTTzzkP

[John Yelverton · Rating 1 out of 5]

A family goes in search of their ancestry and do not like what they find. The subject matter is rather disgusting, and you fully understand why the character's do what they do at the end.

[Josh · Rating 1 out of 5]

When you hand in the assignment half done.

This is unfortunately not even a Lovecraft story, but just a fragment. I am glad it's available, but it probably should never have been published per se, as it was unfinished at the time of his death. What is suggested here is really interesting – a man terrified of bells, subterranean cults stretching back before the Roman Empire, the effects of the Necronomicon — and it is fun to see him play with new toys such as the Necronomicon, or venture out to set a tale in London as opposed to his usual American surroundings. But it also feels like he's queuing up all his usual tropes anyway. With cursed lineage, ancient underground peoples, and haunted texts. So who knows what it may have become. At worst, something like Facts Concerning the Late Arthur Jermyn and His Family, and maybe at best, something like The Lurking Fear. As it stands, we get neither, just an unfinished page and a half that is mostly dull, but has a few pretty rad ideas.

"In London there is a man who screams when the church bells ring."

1.5 Nightmarish Bells out of 5

🔔🔔.5⬛⬛⬛

[Amelia Bujar · Rating 2 out of 5]

FULL REVIEW ON MY WEBSITE
https://thebookcornerchronicles.com/2...

So this was another pretty average short story from H.P Lovecraft. I had high expectations for this short story but it did disappoint me a little bit.

This short story also felt like it wasn’t complete and that the some parts of the short story are missing.

The writing style was pretty okay and it probably the writing style it was the best part of this short story.

The plot was okay but it had potential to be better. It somehow felt poor and that something was off with it. It would be much better if this short story was a novel instead of a short story.

[Oleksandr Fediienko · Rating 3 out of 5]

Дивакуватий лорд Нортем, який постійно до чогось дослухається і волає, коли дзвенять дзвони церкви, розповідає своєму сусіду Вільямсу про себе. Колись він жив у родинному маєтку і з того часу у нього залишилися лише тіні спогадів. В чому він тільки не шукав допомоги, до чого він тільки не вдавався, щоби дістатися до невловимих спогадів у глибині думок. І обирав між релігією і окультизмом, і шукав у Арабській пустелі Безіменне місто, і назва "Некрономікон" йому не незнайома. Можливо, десь в голові є брама до інших світів і її просто треба знайти.

[Netanella · Rating 2 out of 5]

An unfinished short story, described by one reviewer as "chicken scraps" in Lovecraftian anthologies. Ha ha ha! I love the comparison.

So, I read the chicken scrap, as it was all of two pages. Nice build up about a crazy old guy, and a young fellower 'dreamer', William, who gets to know him through questions regarding that zany tome we love so much, the Necronomicon of the Mad Arab Abdul Alhazred. And then of course, as an unfinished tale, we come to coitus interruptus. Oh well.

[Doyle · Rating 3 out of 5]

Nouvelle très courte qui commence fort avec un refus du vieillard de continuer à faire usage de sa raison, celle-ci la ramenant inéluctablement à l'horreur indicible. Elle se recoupe de façon inattendue avec la Cité sans nom et on y retrouve aussi le Nécronomicon via sa bibliophilie malsaine.

La seule évocation d'un personnage juif est vraiment salement antisémite.

écouté ici : https://youtu.be/VF_bt7lGKgQ

version originale entière ici : https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_De...

[Tristan Bates · Rating 2 out of 5]

Lord Northam is a perfect representation of anxiety and depression in this story. Might be a fairly good representation of Lovecraft himself. As much I wanted to give this story more for a rating I couldn’t as I found myself wanting more. I wanted to know more about Lord Northam and Williams. I liked this story a lot, but wasn’t very satisfied with the conclusion because I wanted it to go on longer to satisfy my urge to learn more.

[Utku · Rating 3 out of 5]

Açıkçası epey düz bir eser olmasına rağmen son ikisine göre daha bir keyif aldım. Çok tatlı başladı, aman aman değil ama tadı yerinde başladı ve çok daha keyifli bir hikaye de çıkarmış. Yarım kalmış maalesef. Neden bu hikaye beni daha bir neşelendirdi diye düşününce, yapısı gereği sanırım. Bu şekilde başlayıp evrilen hikayeleri daha kolay yer ediniyorlar bende. İşin korku tarafı burada yok mesela ama devam edilse olmaması için bir sebep yok.

[Massimo · Rating 3 out of 5]

"Northam per tutta la vita aveva assorbito avidamente qualunque dottrina gli sembrasse in grado di promettere un'evasione dal terreno controllato della scienza e dalle noiose, immutabili leggi di natura."

"he devoured avidly any doctrine or theory which seemed to promise escape from the close vistas of science and the dully unvarying laws of Nature."

[Kow · Rating 2 out of 5]

"He became a dreamer who found life tame and unsatisfying; a searcher for strange realms and relationships once familiar, yet lying nowhere in the visible regions of earth. Filled with a feeling that our tangible world is only an atom in a fabric vast and ominous, and that unknown demesnes press on and permeate the sphere of the known at every point (...)"

[Liz · Rating 2 out of 5]

Another fragment of a story, which is probably only of interest to Lovecraft aficionados. There is an old man who screams when he hears church bells, so why not ask him to help translate the Necronomicon? Another story that's potential was never realized. Good narration by Simon Vance.

[Nutska · Rating 2 out of 5]

ANOTHER UNFINISHED ONE. GODDAMNIT, H.P., FINISH YOUR FUCKING STORIES.

Two stars for the mention of the Necronomicon though. This is the first time mention of it in this collection and it definitely got a reaction out of me.

[Fachrina · Rating 3 out of 5]

Read as part of The Complete Fiction of H.P. Lovecraft

[Divia · Rating 2 out of 5]

This is a pretty good fragment. I think H.P. Lovecraft even made an Atlantic reference when describing the people who came from a place that sank. I think that it is a nice fragment that really captures the Lovecraft ethos.

[David · Rating 2 out of 5]

An unfinished story fragment on a curious young man and recluse, who is apparently a descendant tracing back to an ancient lineage. It sets up something interesting with the Necronomicon, but stops before it gets to the point about why the recluse behaves so very strangely.

[Noah Rozov · Rating 1 out of 5]

The Descendant by H.P. Lovecraft, story of 1938.