The life and work of Robert Hayward Barlow (1918-1951) has received remarkably little study from scholars, who see in him only one of the acolytes (and the literary executor) of the great American supernaturalist H. P. Lovecraft. But, as this pioneering study by Italian scholar Massimo Berruti establishes, Barlow was a distinguished writer in his own right-the author of dozens of provocative tales of fantasy and horror and of several volumes of thought-provoking poetry. Berruti undertakes a full-scale structuralist analysis of Barlow's work, studying such central themes as cosmicism, time, nature, and irony, and subjecting such celebrated tales as "A Dim-Remembered Story" and "The Night Ocean" to penetrating analysis. Berruti concludes his study with perspicacious observations on Barlow as a free-verse poet. Massimo Berruti teaches Semiotics of Narrativity and Semiotics of Interpretation at Helsinki University, Finland. He is the author of many articles on H. P. Lovecraft and other writers that have appeared in such journals as Lovecraft Studies, Studies in Fantasy Literature, Studi Lovecraftiani, and Semiotica. He has also translated Lovecraft's Il guardiano dei sogni (2007) and other volumes of fiction and literary criticism.