In Search of the Unknown
New York: Harper & Brothers Publishers, 1904. First Edition. Octavo; publisher's sage green pictorial boards stamped in black, white and a lighter green, 285 pp. Octavo.
Two color Gibson Girl frontispiece. Chambers studied at the Art Student' League and the artist Charles Dana Gibson was a fellow student. Bleiler, The Guide to Supernatural Fiction, 367.
The Lovecraft Connection
A series of interconnected stories in a frame narrative in which a zoologist searching for weird and unusual animals. Lovecraft expressed admiration for the story "The Harbor Master", cited by Robert M. Price as a literary source for "The Shadow over Innsmouth."
Chambers' story concerns the discovery of "the remnants of the last race of amphibious human beings", living in a five-mile deep chasm just off the Atlantic coast. The creature of the title is described as "a man with round, fixed, fishy eyes, and soft, slaty skin. But the horror of the thing were the two gills that swelled and relaxed spasmodically." Lovecraft was evidently impressed by this tale, writing in a letter to Frank Belknap Long: "God! The Harbour-Master!!!".
-H. P. Lovecraft, letter to Frank Belknap Long, October 17, 1930; cited in Robert M. Price, The Innsmouth Cycle, p. 3. Moderate wear to cloth extremities with brief exposure at corners, spine slightly cocked. Light soiling and scuffing to the cover. Previous owner's name in elegant script on the first free endpaper. Elizabeth R. Terry. Item #559
Price: $300.00