The Thing from the Lake

The little-known American writer Eleanor M. Ingram (1886-1921) published eight novels (one of them filmed by Cecil B. DeMille) between 1909 and 1921, but only one--The Thing from the Lake (1921)--is of interest today. This is largely because H. P. Lovecraft read the book in 1927, remarking: "Eleanor M. Ingram's 'Thing from the Lake' is a really good story--with a genuine thread of horror despite best-seller form." Although it would be an exaggeration to say that Ingram's book inspired Lovecraft's Cthulhu Mythos (which Lovecraft had already outlined in "The Call of Cthulhu" [1926]), the novel could have inspired "The Dunwich Horror" (1928), which echoes The Thing from the Lake in suggesting the presence of monsters from another dimension. But the novel is a fine piece of ghostly fiction in its own right. This edition contains a detailed introduction by leading Lovecraft scholar S. T. Joshi.