The Colour Out of Space

The Colour Out of Space is H.P. Lovecraft's masterpiece of cosmic horror. When a meteorite lands on a secluded farm, something begins to spread through the surrounding countryside. The vegetation flourishes grotesquely. The water turns foul. The very atmosphere seems altered. Lovecraft builds a slow, growing dread as the natural world gives way to something wholly alien. Lovecraft wrote the story in March 1927, in the midst of finalizing his essay Supernatural Horror in Literature. Dissatisfied with the all-too-human aliens populating much of the fiction he had been surveying, he set out to imagine an entity so foreign it could scarcely be described—a presence beyond comprehension and category. The story appeared that September in Amazing Stories and remained, by Lovecraft's own account, his favorite of his short works.

The Numbered Edition is limited to 250 copies with a 6” x 9.85” trim size. It is signed by S.T. Joshi and Sally Hands and includes an introduction by S.T. Joshi. The volume features seven wood engravings by Sally Hands, printed from the block. The quarter leather binding uses spine leather sourced from J Hewit & Sons and hand-marbled paper by Renato Crepaldi, featuring a 'tiger eye' pattern created for this edition to evoke the alien force central to the story. The book includes handmade leather head and tail bands, Hahnemühle Bugra endsheets, and text set in ITC Golden Cockerel. Designed by Misha Beletsky, the edition is printed letterpress on mouldmade Liber Charta by Pat Randle and Ellen Bills at Nomad Letterpress on a Heidelberg Cylinder in Gloucestershire, United Kingdom. Each copy is housed in a clamshell enclosure with cloth-covered boards and velour-lined trays.