{"product_id":"2940014584357","title":"The Shunned House","description":"_A posthumous story of immense power, written by a master of weird\u003cbr\u003e   fiction--a tale of a revolting horror in the cellar of an old\u003cbr\u003e                       house in New England_\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    Howard Phillips Lovecraft died last March, at the height of his\u003cbr\u003e    career. Though only forty-six years of age, he had built up an\u003cbr\u003e    international reputation by the artistry and impeccable literary\u003cbr\u003e    craftsmanship of his weird tales; and he was regarded on both sides\u003cbr\u003e    of the Atlantic as probably the greatest contemporary master of\u003cbr\u003e    weird fiction. His ability to create and sustain a mood of brooding\u003cbr\u003e    dread and unnamable horror is nowhere better shown than in the\u003cbr\u003e    posthumous tale presented here: \"The Shunned House.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eFrom even the greatest of horrors irony is seldom absent. Sometimes it\u003cbr\u003eenters directly into the composition of the events, while sometimes it\u003cbr\u003erelates only to their fortuitous position among persons and places. The\u003cbr\u003elatter sort is splendidly exemplified by a case in the ancient city of\u003cbr\u003eProvidence, where in the late forties Edgar Allan Poe used to sojourn\u003cbr\u003eoften during his unsuccessful wooing of the gifted poetess, Mrs.\u003cbr\u003eWhitman. Poe generally stopped at the Mansion House in Benefit\u003cbr\u003eStreet--the renamed Golden Ball Inn whose roof has sheltered Washington,\u003cbr\u003eJefferson, and Lafayette--and his favorite walk led northward along the\u003cbr\u003esame street to Mrs. Whitman's home and the neighboring hillside\u003cbr\u003echurchyard of St. John's, whose hidden expanse of Eighteenth Century\u003cbr\u003egravestones had for him a peculiar fascination.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eNow the irony is this. In this walk, so many times repeated, the world's\u003cbr\u003egreatest master of the terrible and the bizarre was obliged to pass a\u003cbr\u003eparticular house on the eastern side of the street; a dingy, antiquated\u003cbr\u003estructure perched on the abruptly rising side hill, with a great unkempt\u003cbr\u003eyard dating from a time when the region was partly open country. It does\u003cbr\u003enot appear that he ever wrote or spoke of it, nor is there any evidence\u003cbr\u003ethat he even noticed it. And yet that house, to the two persons in\u003cbr\u003epossession of certain information, equals or outranks in horror the\u003cbr\u003ewildest fantasy of the genius who so often passed it unknowingly, and\u003cbr\u003estands starkly leering as a symbol of all that is unutterably hideous.","brand":"SAP","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":47080291696880,"sku":"2940014584357","price":0.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"url":"https:\/\/shop-qa.barnesandnoble.com\/products\/2940014584357","provider":"Barnes \u0026 Noble (DEV)","version":"1.0","type":"link"}