"The Dream Quest of Unknown Kadath", first published in Beyond the Wall of Sleep, 1943.
This is the the thirty-third entry in my read-through of the commemorative edition of Necronomicon: The Best Weird Tales of H P Lovecraft.Because of the way the Necronomicon volume is ordered – by publication date rather than writing date – this comes right at the end of the anthology, rather than where it fits in the story of HPL's development as a writer. On the one hand that's a bit of a shame – immediately after this he wrote The Case of Charles Dexter Ward and embarked on the run of stories on which his reputation largely rests, and this story is clearly a turning point.
On the other hand, it's an interesting coda for all the thinking I've done about HPL the man, and how much of him resides in his fiction. They're both interesting topics and I'll take them in turn.