There is a common misconception that a common narrative trope informing much of Lovecraft's work is that of the beleaguered narrator, desperately typing away in an attempt to reveal to the world the horror that at this very moment fumbles monstrously at the latch of my study door...
Well, you get the idea. As I recall, the closest Lovecraft comes to this is in Dagon; in fact it is a conceit that is not original to Lovecraft, but one of his literary forebears: William Hope Hodgson employs it in The House on the Borderland. Mention of Hodgson is long overdue here, so today I present two of his classic works, and ones which not only prefgure Lovecraft's cosmicism but have arguably had something of an influence on HPLs work (but see the comment below): The Night Land and the afoementioned The House on the Borderland. Enjoy.
The only stories by Lovecraft that can possibly have been influenced by Hodgson are "The Shadow out of Time" and "The Haunter of the Dark", since HPL discovered Hodgson only in 1934.
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