Dispatch · Field Reference
What Are the Best Lovecraft Collections for New Readers?
The Field Reference Library lists the printed editions chronicle by chronicle, and the answer to this question follows from what each one contains. The short version is a recommendation by situation.
If you want one book to start with
Penguin Classics Volume I, The Call of Cthulhu and Other Weird Stories. It holds 18 chronicles on file, among them The Call of Cthulhu, The Colour Out of Space, The Whisperer in Darkness, The Shadow Over Innsmouth and The Haunter of the Dark, which is the sequence most first-time readers are given in the Dispatch on reading order.
If you want the whole run in sequence
The Penguin Classics set continues with Volume II, The Dreams in the Witch House and Other Weird Stories, 21 chronicles on file, including The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath, The Silver Key and The Shadow Out of Time. Volume III, The Thing on the Doorstep and Other Weird Stories, carries 11 of its 12 on file, including The Dunwich Horror, At the Mountains of Madness and The Case of Charles Dexter Ward. The twelfth is a ghostwriting commission that falls outside this Archive's scope.
If you want everything in one cover
The single-volume Complete Fiction holds all 50 chronicles on file, and comes in several bindings. A UK edition is bound in leather, a US edition is a Chartwell Classics volume, and a second UK listing carries the Chartwell text. Paperback and hardcover bindings of another publisher's Complete Fiction are also on file.
If you want pictures
Four Baranger illustrated volumes carry The Call of Cthulhu, The Dunwich Horror and, in two parts, At the Mountains of Madness. Gou Tanabe's manga adaptations are a separate shelf, covered in their own Dispatch.
If you want it free
The Standard Ebooks edition costs nothing and covers most of the chronicles. See the Dispatch on where to read for the details.
A note on the links. The Field Reference pages link to Bookshop.org, and this office may earn a small commission on a purchase made through them, at no cost to the buyer.