However, the household is devastated: Janet, Oscar's first love interest, elopes with Del Prado, and Pride's secretary, Hough, commits suicide.
[1] Clark Ashton Smith, in a February 1949 letter to August Derleth, praised The Dark Chamber, saying "it depicts with singular power the retrogression of a human being.
Hadji in his list of "unjustly neglected" horror fiction, [3] and described by Neil Barron as "an intriguing story, prefiguring Paddy Chayefsky's ALTERED STATES (1978)".
[5] By contrast, E. F. Bleiler's view of the book was negative: "H. P. Lovecraft regarded the novel highly, but I must confess that I found it almost unreadable because of its lack of focus and very turgid writing.
"[6] Lovecraft passed his copy of The Dark Chamber to several of his fellow writers, including Clark Ashton Smith, Donald Wandrei, Frank Belknap Long, and Henry S. Whitehead.