- The Moon-Bog
"The Moon Bog" is a short story by American
horror fiction writerH. P. Lovecraft , written in or before March 1921 and first published in the June 1926 issue of "Weird Tales ".The story was written for a gathering of amateur journalists in Boston on March 10, 1921, that had a
St. Patrick's Day theme. [S. T. Joshi and David E. Schultz, "Moon-Bog, The", "An H. P. Lovecraft Encyclopedia", p. 171.]The main character is Denys Barry, an
Irish-American who reclaims an ancestral estate in Kilderry, a fictional town inIreland . Barry ignores pleas from the local peasantry not to drain the nearbybog , with unfortunate supernatural consequences.Like Barry, Lovecraft had dreams of buying back his ancestors' home in England. [S. T. Joshi and David E. Schultz, "Barry, Denys", "An H. P. Lovecraft Encyclopedia", p. 17.] This same theme is treated with greater depth in Lovecraft's "
The Rats in the Walls " (1923)."The Moon-Bog" is described by S. T. Joshi and David E. Schultz as "one of the most conventionally supernatural in HPL's oeuvre." [Joshi and Schultz, "Moon-Bog, The", p. 171.]
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