Through the Gates of the Silver Key

A group of men gather in New Orleans to distribute the estate of the missing Randolph Carter. One of them claims that Carter is alive and begins to weave an incredible tale of his adventures.

E. Hoffman Price, during Lovecraft's visit to his home in New Orleans in June 1931, tried to persuade the Providence writer to create a continuation of Randolph Carter's adventures after the character disappears in the story "The Silver Key." HPL refused to be persuaded, so Price himself, without permission, created a text titled "The Lord of Illusion" in August. He sent the result to Lovecraft, hoping that he would agree to edit the work.

HPL struggled for a long time with the editing of the text. Although he radically changed the linguistic layer of the work, he made no major changes to the plot. Indeed, it is evident that the ideas are not his own: a lot of action, poorly thought-out concepts, and little suggestiveness.