User blog comment:Mikemacdee/Best of Lovecraft (and Other Thoughts)/@comment-24101790-20171011135648/@comment-4715955-20171012003629

In the Vault isn't a bad example of his more traditional spook story forays. I was just reading The Cats of Ulthar the other day, too.

I think his racism is most evident in The Horror of Red Hook. A lot of his works make "mixed races is bad!" metaphorical, but in Red Hook it's just blatant: the source of the horror is literally those damned mixed-blood foreigners and other mongrel species of man. It has some good spooky imagery, but the true horror is basically racial impurity, and even reviews of the time called it out.

I've read that he mellowed out quite a bit as he got older.