Pulp Fantasy Library: The Case of Charles Dexter Ward

Of all the stories H.P. Lovecraft ever wrote, only one can rightly be called a novel, The Case of Charles Dexter Ward. Completed in 1927 in a burst of activity following his return to Providence after having lived in New York, the manuscript remained unpublished until 1941 (four years after Lovecraft’s death) when it appeared in Weird Tales in an abridged form over two issues. (The full version would appear two years later in 1943.) Lovecraft never revised it and in letters he dismissed it as “a cumbrous, creaking bit of self-conscious antiquarianism” 

Yet, as is often the case with Lovecraft’s self-criticisms, his judgment was harsher than that of his readers. The very traits he found embarrassing, such as the novel's patient accumulation of historical detail, its period flavor, and its deeply rooted New England setting, are precisely what give it lasting appeal. A rare hybrid of Gothic horror and weird fiction, The Case of Charles Dexter Ward seems to me to owe as much to Poe and the 19th-century ghost story as to the cosmicism of Lovecraft’s later Mythos yarns. Indeed, no less a critic than S.T. Joshi considers The Case of Charles Dexter Ward "among the most carefully wrought fictions in Lovecraft's entire corpus."

The story opens with the puzzling disappearance of the titular character, who is a studious young man from Providence, Rhode Island. Ward is in an asylum to which he'd been committed after a disturbing change in his personality. Once merely eccentric in his love for history, he has recently become withdrawn, secretive, and obsessed with the occult, especially the life of his great-great-great grandfather, Joseph Curwen, a wealthy 18th-century merchant rumored to have been a necromancer. Curwen’s shadowy history of graverobbing, alchemical experiments, and whispered dealings with otherworldly beings ended, at least in official accounts, when Providence citizens raided his estate in 1771. However, no body was ever conclusively identified.

As Ward’s historical research deepens, he discovers Curwen’s letters, records, and formulas. He then begins retracing his ancestor’s steps. His studies turn to experimentation and strange lights, voices, and even disappearances unsettle Providence. Ward’s physical appearance subtly shifts, while his speech adopts 18th-century patterns and his manner grows cold and predatory. Those close to him, most notably his family doctor, Marinus Bicknell Willett, suspect that Ward is no longer entirely himself. 

Their fears prove justified. In a hidden laboratory and a network of tunnels beneath the city, Ward revives the dead to extract ancient knowledge, making use of the “essential saltes [sic]” of long-buried figures. The truth then emerges that, through these same rites, Curwen himself has returned and assumed the identity of his descendant, whom he murders. Thus, it is not Ward but a reborn Joseph Curwen who is responsible for recent events.

In the end, Willett confronts the necromancer masquerading as Ward in the asylum. Using an incantation from Curwen’s own notes, Willett defeats him, reducing him to a "thin coating of fine bluish-grey dust." This is the Call of Cthulhu RPG's spell, resurrection, employed in reverse. Willett then shields the family from the full truth, calling it a case of madness, but the evidence of Curwen’s return and the scale of his occult dealings, suggest something far older and more terrible than mere insanity.

Lovecraft frames The Case of Charles Dexter Ward as a tale of the gradual unearthing of secrets, rich with colonial history and a sense that the past is never truly gone. It is not only a story of necromancy, but also a meditation on ancestral legacy. Consequently, the narrative builds slowly through. old letters, newspaper clippings, genealogical charts, and the reasoned observations of Willett, a man of science forced to confront the unscientific. As the pieces fall into place, the reader shares Willett’s growing conviction that the past is not inert but a living, active, and indeed malevolent presence.

I find it tempting to wonder if the novel isn’t, in some oblique way, Lovecraft turning his gaze inward. Ward is, after all, an antiquarian from Providence, enamored of the past to the point of losing himself in it, a description that could fit Lovecraft himself. Ward’s fate, consumed and supplanted by his own ancestor, reads almost like a dark warning about what happens when one’s obsession with bygone ages ceases to be an intellectual pursuit and becomes an act of resurrection. Perhaps Lovecraft, consciously or not, was toying with the idea that his own retreat into colonial history and musty archives carried, if not such lurid dangers, at least the risk of being overwhelmed by the very past he adored.

Lovecraft himself dismissed the book as a stylistic failure, but this may have been more a reflection of his perfectionism than of the work’s real value. In retrospect, The Case of Charles Dexter Ward stands as one of his best efforts, blending historical mystery, Gothic atmosphere, and supernatural horror into a single, sustained vision. In my opinion, the novel’s enduring appeal lies in its rich evocation of Providence’s past and its slow, inexorable unmasking of ancestral evil. Here, Lovecraft married his antiquarian obsessions to a fully realized narrative arc, creating a tale that is at once intimate in its focus and cosmic in its implications, a rare fusion that continues to reward rereading nearly a century after it was written.