SOURCE: Dziemianowicz, Stefan. “Outsiders and Aliens: The Uses of Isolation in Lovecraft's Fiction.” In An Epicure in the Terrible: A Centennial Anthology of Essays in Honor of H. P. Lovecraft, edited by David E. Schultz and S. T. Joshi, pp. 159–87. Cranbury, NJ: Associated University Presses, 1991.

In the following essay, Dziemianowicz analyzes the theme of isolation in Lovecraft's stories.

There was thunder in the air on the night I went to the deserted mansion atop Tempest Mountain to find the lurking fear. I was not alone, for foolhardiness was not then mixed with that love of the grotesque and the terrible which has made my career a series of quests for strange horrors in literature and in life. With me were two faithful and muscular men for whom I had sent when the time came; men long associated with me in my ghastly explorations because of their peculiar fitness...