This book slipped under my radar when it was first published in October, 2008. I became aware of its existence, however, when recently I decided (for reasons I'm not quite sure I can myself fathom) to figure out precisely how many volumes it would require to posses the entirety of Lovecraft's body of work.
I had long known the de facto standard by which Lovecraft compendiums are judged was a set of three volumes published by Arkham House; specifically At the Mountains of Madness and Other Macabre Tales, Dagon and Other Macabre Tales, and The Dunwich Horror and Others.
Those three volumes, totaling in excess of $80, I had thought were the cheapest and most efficient way of owning all of Lovecraft's work (with the exception of poetry and ghostwritten works). The Library of America edition, Tales, was the only worthy single-volume alternative, though the painful absence of some of my favorite stories (such as The Doom that came to Sarnath) prevented it from achieving the status of "the one Lovecraft book you'd save if humans lost the war with the machines and there wasn't enough room in your Ford Falcon for your book collection and your zombie survival kit."
I know what you're probably thinking. "Look at me, I have a kindle/nook/whatever, I won't have to choose what books I keep after the apocalypse!" News flash. Humans lost the war with the machines, remember? Before they took the internet offline, the machines transmitted a signal that corrupted the flash memory of every e-reading device. Just to spite us. So I'd start thinking about what books to save, if I were you.
Anyway, enter "H.P. Lovecraft: The Fiction", published by Barnes & Noble. It contains every work present in the aforementioned Arkham House volumes, except the following:
"In the Walls of Eryx"
"Poetry and the Gods"
"The Thing in the Moonlight"
"The Picture in the House"
While "The Thing in the Moonlight" can be found elsewhere (Shadows of Death, Del Rey), I'm reasonably sure the Arkham House publications are the only volumes containing the above works. Therefore, if "The Fiction" is missing 4 stories, doesn't that mean the Arkham House volumes still win? Not if you consider "The Fiction" contains the following works absent from the Arkham House publications:
"A Reminiscence of Dr. Samuel Johnson"
"Memory"
"Old Bugs"
"Nyarlathotep"
"Ex Oblivione"
"Sweet Ermengarde"
"What the Moon Brings"
"History of the Necronomicon"
"The Very Old Folk"
"Ibid"
When it comes down to it, the differences in content between "The Fiction" and the three Arkham House publications are minor. Though ultimately, since "The Fiction" is a single volume nearly 1/8th the total cost of the three Arkham House publications, I declare it my personal choice of "the one Lovecraft book you'd save if..."!
Apparently I'm not the first one to come to this conclusion either, since when I first discovered "The Fiction," it was out of print and copies were selling for $90-$150 on eBay and elsewhere. Buy a copy or two (in case you need to burn one to keep warm after the apocalypse) while you still can!
p.s. It might seem like I have a grudge against Arkham House, but that couldn't be further from the truth. Their publications are the very standard by which I judge every Lovecraft release!
Additional reading:
The Horror in the Museum and Other Revisions (Arkham House)
Tales of the Cthulhu Mythos (Random House)
The Ancient Track (Night Shade Books)
