An Exchange Of Souls by Barry Pain
AND
Lazarus by Henri Béraud
ISBN 0977173445
Paperback
$15.00
H. P. Lovecraft was constantly in search of lost masterworks of weird fiction, and the two short novels in this volume are among the choicest rarities in his library.
Barry Pain’s An Exchange of Souls (1911) deals fascinatingly with a scientist who fashions a machine for exchanging his personality with that of another—but when he “exchanges souls” with his fiancée, only horror is the result. The novel unquestionably influenced Lovecraft’s own tale of personality exchange across gender lines, “The Thing on the Doorstep.” Henri Béraud’s
Lazarus (1924) is an even more obscure work, and yet its account of a man who, in an accident, loses his memory and for sixteen years adopts an entirely different personality makes one think immediately of Lovecraft’s “The Shadow out of Time,” where exactly the same idea is used. These two novels, reprinted for the first time since their original publication, shed new light on Lovecraft’s creative process—and at the same time constitute superb works of weird fiction in their own right.
Each novel contains an introduction by S. T. Joshi, providing background on the authors and detailing Lovecraft’s appreciation of them.