Charles Dexter Ward is a young man, who is quite keen on history. Through his research, he manages to find a relative, long dead, who had almost completely removed from his family tree. 150-years back, Joseph Curwen was a man with an ill reputation. He was, even to his old age, almost ageless. when other people fell to old age, he seemed to keep his youth about him. This alone would have been enough to make the people of Rhode Island ask questions. There was, however, more sinister aspects to him.
The research Charles does on his long-dead ancestor seems to drive him insane. The further he looks into the past, the more of it he seems to bring back. At first, he takes upon the old researches Curwen had done with alchemy. Then his appearance and manner began to change and finally, after locking himself to a house with strange, frightful, new friends, his speech became archaic and he lost his memory of all modern things. So worried are his father and the family doctor Willett, that they place Charles in a mental asylum.
Doctor Willet begins his own research on what has been going on. He finds out, that young Charles had, during his trip to Europe, met many unsavoury characters, of whom he had learnt dark secrets. These secrets he then used in resurrecting Joseph Curwen, who saw an opportunity in the young man: they were nearly identical in looks.
Not even death can keep evil down. Joseph Curwen resumes his ancient studies to bring worth unimaginable power. It doesn't take long for him to contact the people he used to work with during the Salem witch trials and they begin exchanging people of interest long since dead. From those cadavers, they pump out important information to fill their needs. These exercises as put on a halt, when Curwen, thought then as young Charles, is placed in a mental asylum.
As Curwen's house is now empty, Willet conducts his final search of the place. From the cellar, he finds an entry to catacombs beneath the house and the town itself. This dark, damp place is filled with the sinister researches and monsters the ancient warlock has brought forth. It might have been providence, but the old doctor manages to come up alive. The next day hs goes back to the cellar, only to find the entrance to the catacomb sealed. He still knows the truth and takes care of Curwen. To Carhles' father, he just tells, that a year from now, he can proclaim his son dead.
The Case of Charles Dexter Ward is the definitive "sins of the ancestors" tale in Lovecraft's works. It takes the premise he has used several times before this, but now manages to weave it into a more coherent and better fleshed out tale of past sins and innocent want of knowing more of one past. Charles is, in the beginning, an enthusiastic historian, whose vigour pinpoints in researching a relative who was so bad, that he was almost completely struck out from the annals of history. By mere luck, he manages to find clues of the man and ends up stumbling down a rabbit hole, which is the end of him.
Surprisingly enough Lovecraft didn't like the story much. He opinionated, that the style was too "self consciously antiquarian" and thus wasn't too keen on publishing it. The story was published only after his death and generally speaking, it has become one of the better known Lovecraft stories. It is one of the longest stories Lovecraft wrote during his life. It reaches a word count of 51 500 words, making it a short novel. Some critics find it his finest stories. Lovecraft was, in my humble opinion, too harsh on the story. While it does feel a tad gimmicky and even formulaic, it still manages to rise above those matters and deliver a nicely woven yarn. Like I said, the themes it has are something Lovecraft had dwelled previously, but here he manages to bring them into a cohesive and intriguing whole, no matter how familiar these themes are.
While The Case of Charles Dexter Ward is more firmly rooted in Cthulhu-mythos, Necronomicon is present in the story and Yog-Sothoth makes his first appearance, there are some links to Dream-cycle as well. Then again, by this point, everything Lovecraft had written to this point, as far these story settings are concerned, had begun to weave in together, forming a bigger whole, where no dream or waking world would be a place of solace for a seeker of ancient and forbidden knowledge.
The book has been adapted a couple of times. The first adaptation was a Roger Corman 1963 movie, which took its name from Edgar Allan Poe poem The Haunted Palace, but was otherwise a loose adaptation of the story. In 1992, Dan O'Bannon, better known as the writer of Alien, directed an adaptation called The Resurrected, which takes the story to a modern setting. I've not seen either, but The Resurrected has been said to be actually a good movie. Then again, the Corman movie has Vincent Price in it, so there's that. I suspect there might be movie adaptations, direct and indirect alike. Interestingly enough, there was an opera adaptation made in the 1980s. I imagine that could be intriguing viewing.
If you are looking for something longer from Lovecraft to read, I'd suggest giving The Case of Charles Dexter Ward a try. While it is somewhat formulaic, it's not so to a fault. While it doesn't necessarily offer any huge surprises on the way, it doesn't really suffer from that. It actually might benefit from it.
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