Which Are the Best Lovecraft Stories to Read First?

This office does not rank the chronicles, and the list below is a selection and not a league table. It names ten that repay a first reading, each for a different reason, in an order that starts with the clearest and ends with the longest. The Dispatch on reading order gives a fuller sequence for a newcomer who wants to go through methodically.

The ten

1. The Call of Cthulhu (written 1926). The clearest statement of the premise, and built from three sets of papers that only agree at the end. The one to start with.
2. The Colour Out of Space (written 1927). A single farm and a single slow contamination, told from the outside by a surveyor. Self-contained, and it needs no other chronicle.
3. The Shadow over Innsmouth (written 1931). A witness who learns the truth about a coastal town a little at a time and is chased out of it. The Deep Ones' own record.
4. The Dunwich Horror (written 1928). A hill-country family, an unnatural birth and a librarian at Miskatonic who stands in the way of the ritual. Medium length.
5. The Rats in the Walls (written 1923). A restored English priory and a descent through its cellars into what lay under the family. Short, and it does not soften its ending.
6. Pickman's Model (written 1926). One painter's studio and one photograph. Among the shortest on this list, and it does its work by implication.
7. The Music of Erich Zann (written 1921). A garret in the Rue d'Auseil, a viol and a window that opens on what it should not. The most restrained account on file.
8. The Whisperer in Darkness (written 1930). Letters from a Vermont farmer, a visit to his farm and a cylinder in the study. Longer, and best read after Innsmouth.
9. At the Mountains of Madness (written 1931). The Antarctic expedition and the city beyond the range. One of the three longest chronicles on file, so save it for the second sitting.
10. The Haunter of the Dark (written 1935). A derelict church on Federal Hill and a steeple room that should have stayed closed. The last chronicle written, in 1935.

If you only have an evening

Take Pickman's Model or The Music of Erich Zann. Both are short, both are self-contained, and neither depends on anything else on file.

If you want the whole run

The Dispatch on the full list gives all 50 in the order they were written, and the Dispatch on collections says which printed volume carries which. Six of the ten above are in the first Penguin Classics volume and the other four are in the third. The free Standard Ebooks edition covers most of the chronicles on file, though the Archive has not checked each one against it.