The Silver Key

The Silver Key
by H. P. Lovecraft

"The Silver Key" is a short story written by H. P. Lovecraft in 1926, considered part of his Dreamlands series. It was first published in the January 1929 issue of Weird Tales. It is a continuation of "The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath", and was followed by a sequel, "Through the Gates of the Silver Key", co-written with E. Hoffmann Price.

The story and its sequel both feature Lovecraft's recurring character of Randolph Carter as the protagonist.

"The Silver Key" is thought to have been inspired in part by Lovecraft's visit to Foster, Rhode Island, where his maternal ancestors lived. The character Benijah Corey from the story seems to combine the names of Emma Corey Phillips, one of Lovecraft's relatives, and Benejah Place, a farmer who lived across the street from the home where Lovecraft stayed.

Carter's search for meaning through a succession of philosophical and aesthetic approaches may have been inspired by J. K. Huysmans' A rebours (1884), whose main character undertakes a similar progression.

About The Author :-

Lovecraft's major inspiration and invention was cosmic horror, the idea that life is incomprehensible to human minds and that the inverse is fundamentally alien.

Lovecraft's readership was limited during his life, but his reputation since then has grown in leaps, and he is now regarded as one of the most influential horror writers of the 20th century.

HOWARD PHILLIPS LOVECRAFT was born in 1890 in Providence, Rhode Island, where he lived most of his life. He wrote many essays and poems early in his career, but gradually focused on the writing of horror stories, after the advent in 1923 of the pulp magazine Weird Tales, to which he contributed most of his fiction.

Howard Phillips Lovecraft died in March 1937, at the height of his career. Though only forty-six years of age, he had built up an international reputation by the artistry and impeccable literary craftsmanship of his weird tales; and he was regarded on both sides of the Atlantic as probably the greatest contemporary master of weird fiction.