The Beast in the Cave

"The Beast in the Cave"
"The Beast in the Cave"
	First page of H. P. Lovecraft's original manuscript to "The Beast in the Cave"
Author	H. P. Lovecraft
Country	United States
Language	English
Genre(s)	Horror short story
Published in	The Vagrant
Publication date	June 1918
Text	The Beast in the Cave at Wikisource

"The Beast in the Cave" is a short story by American horror fiction writer H. P. Lovecraft. The first draft was written in the Spring of 1904, with the final draft finished in April 1905, when Lovecraft was age fourteen.^[1] It was first published in the June 1918 issue of the amateur journalism publication The Vagrant,^[1]^[2]^[3] this being the equivalent of a well-edited fanzine today. The tale is to be regarded as an example of Lovecraft's juvenilia, and is classed as such in collections of his works.

In the 1930s Lovecraft sometimes sent a copy of the typescript to his promising young correspondents, as an example of what he had produced at their age, and also as a first exercise in re-writing. In this way be could best judge how much imagination and promise they really had.

Plot[]

A man touring the vast Mammoth Cave becomes separated from his guide and becomes lost. His torch expires and he is giving up hope of finding a way out in the pitch dark when he hears strange non-human footsteps approaching him. Thinking it to be a lost mountain lion or another such beast, he picks up a stone and throws it toward the source of the sound. The beast is hit and crumples to the floor. The guide finds the protagonist, and together they examine the fallen creature with the guide's torchlight. The creature mutters in its last breaths and they see its face. They discover a pale, deformed human, who had also become lost in the cave many years ago.

References[]

^ ^a ^b Joshi, S.T. (2001). An H.P. Lovecraft Encyclopedia. Greenwood Publishing Group. p. 18. ISBN 0-3133-1578-7.
^ Loucks, Donovan K. "The Beast in the Cave". The H.P. Lovecraft Archive. Retrieved 5 January 2016.
^ Lovecraft, H.P. (June 1918). "The Beast in the Cave". The Vagrant (7): 113–120.

External links[]

Works related to The Beast in the Cave at Wikisource
The Beast in the Cave title listing at the Internet Speculative Fiction Database
The Beast In Cave public domain audiobook at LibriVox

This article about a horror short story (or stories) published in the 1900s is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by .

[Joshi-1] Joshi, S.T. (2001). An H.P. Lovecraft Encyclopedia. Greenwood Publishing Group. p. 18. ISBN 0-3133-1578-7.

[2] Loucks, Donovan K. "The Beast in the Cave". The H.P. Lovecraft Archive. Retrieved 5 January 2016.

[3] Lovecraft, H.P. (June 1918). "The Beast in the Cave". The Vagrant (7): 113–120.

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v t H. P. Lovecraft
Bibliography
Short stories	"The Beast in the Cave" "The Alchemist" "The Tomb" "Dagon" "A Reminiscence of Dr. Samuel Johnson" "Polaris" "Beyond the Wall of Sleep" "Memory" "Old Bugs" "The Transition of Juan Romero" "The White Ship" "The Street" "The Doom That Came to Sarnath" "The Statement of Randolph Carter" "The Terrible Old Man" "The Tree" "The Cats of Ulthar" "The Temple" "Facts Concerning the Late Arthur Jermyn and His Family" "Celephaïs" "From Beyond" "Nyarlathotep" "The Picture in the House" "Ex Oblivione" "Sweet Ermengarde" "The Nameless City" "The Quest of Iranon" "The Moon-Bog" "The Outsider" "The Other Gods" "The Music of Erich Zann" "Herbert West–Reanimator" "Hypnos" "What the Moon Brings" "Azathoth" "The Hound" "The Lurking Fear" "The Rats in the Walls" "The Unnamable" "The Festival" "The Shunned House" "The Horror at Red Hook" "He" "In the Vault" "Cool Air" "The Call of Cthulhu" "Pickman's Model" "The Silver Key" "The Strange High House in the Mist" "The Colour Out of Space" "The Descendant" "History of the Necronomicon" "The Very Old Folk" "Ibid" "The Dunwich Horror" "The Dreams in the Witch House" "The Thing on the Doorstep" "The Evil Clergyman" "The Book" "The Haunter of the Dark"
Novellas	The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath The Whisperer in Darkness At the Mountains of Madness The Shadow over Innsmouth The Shadow Out of Time
Novels	The Case of Charles Dexter Ward
Collaborations	"The Green Meadow" "Poetry and the Gods" "The Crawling Chaos" "The Horror at Martin's Beach" "Imprisoned with the Pharaohs" "The Curse of Yig" The Mound "Medusa's Coil" "The Horror in the Museum" "Through the Gates of the Silver Key" "Out of the Aeons" "The Tree on the Hill" "Till A' the Seas" "In the Walls of Eryx"
Poetry	Fungi from Yuggoth
Essays	"Supernatural Horror in Literature" To Quebec and the Stars Autobiography: Some Notes on a Nonentity
Locations	Arkham Miskatonic University Lovecraft Country R'lyeh
Characters	Randolph Carter Harley Warren
Books about	H. P. Lovecraft: A Life H. P. Lovecraft: Against the World, Against Life An H. P. Lovecraft Encyclopedia Lovecraft: A Biography Lovecraft: A Look Behind the Cthulhu Mythos
Related	Cthulhu Mythos Cthulhu Mythos in popular culture Dream Cycle Lovecraftian horror Cosmicism H. P. Lovecraft Historical Society Necronomicon Lovecraft: Fear of the Unknown (documentary) Sonia Greene (wife) Lovecraft (crater) Cthulhu Macula
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