William Hope Hodgson (1877-1918) was an English author best known for The Night Land (1912) and, this, his second novel, The House on the Borderland. Noted by H. P. Lovecraft as "a classic of the first water," it is considered a literary milestone that signaled a radical departure from the typical Gothic fiction of the late 19th century, ushering in a newer more realistic and scientific cosmic horror that left a marked impression on those who would become the great writers of weird tales of the mid-twentieth century.

The story within the story is a hallucinatory account of an old recluse and his very strange house in which he experiences attacks by supernatural swine-beasts, travels to otherworldly dimensions, and bears witness to the destruction of the solar system -- "it is galactic adventure, prophetic fantasy, macabre romance, and drugless trip, and brilliantly unites its many disturbing elements, easily equalling, if not surpassing, all predecessors and contemporaries."