Collection of surviving tales from Lovecraft's childhood. Young Lovecraft wrote extensively, but being dissatisfied with his early work, he destroyed most of his youthful creations. Only 4 works survived, saved by the writer's mother:
- The Little Glass Bottle - The earliest existing fictional prose work by Lovecraft. A humorous tale about the naivety of a certain ship captain who was fooled by a message in a bottle speaking of a hidden treasure. Lovecraft drew a very simple map of the Indian Ocean for the text, marking the location where the treasure was hidden. The short story was saved from destruction by Lovecraft's mother.
-The Secret Cave, or John Lees adventure - The titular John Lee, in his parents' absence, sets off with his little sister to explore a cave discovered in the basement.
- The Mystery of the Grave-Yard, or “A Dead Man’s Revenge” - Here's the translation into English:
The longest of Lovecraft's youthful tales. From the author's later annotation on the manuscript, we learn that he wrote it at the end of 1898 or the beginning of 1899. It is a plot-twisting, somewhat tersely described (12 chapters of about 50 words each) typical detective story, modeled after the dime novels that Lovecraft was avidly reading at the time. The name of the story's main character, detective King John, might have been a combination of the names of two dime novel heroes: Old King Brady (from Francis Worcester Doughty's prose) and Prince John (from Joseph Badger Jr.'s prose).
- The Mysterious Ship - The latest of Lovecraft's youthful stories. It consists of ten short chapters about a ship whose appearance in any port heralded the disappearance of people. Although it is decidedly one of Lovecraft's weaker stories from his youth, the author went to extraordinary lengths to "publish" it: he typed it, bound it in small covers, wrapped it in fabric, and finally sketched a ship on both sides. Moreover, he highly valued the story – he "demanded" 25 cents for it.
