One of the commonest complaints about Lovecraft's stories is that many of them are too long. As Joseph Payne Brennan puts it, "Many of the Cthulhu stories, such as 'The Dunwich Horror' and 'The Whisperer in Darkness,' are actually tedious. They are too long; our interest in them is apt to flag" (H. P. Lovecraft: An Evaluation, 1955, as cited in Twentieth-Century Literary Criticism, volume 4). One of the most hallowed "rules" in American popular fiction is that a short story should begin right away with the action of its plot. Lovecraft begins "The Dunwich Horror" with a long quotation from the Romantic essayist Charles Lamb, then follows with about fifteen hundred words of description before he even introduces any of the principal players of the plot.

Even so, some critics regard "The Dunwich Horror" as one of Lovecraft's best works, and some, such as L. Sprague de Camp...