H. P. Lovecraft’s Biography, Net Worth, Fact, Career, Awards and Life Story

Biography

Lovecraft Was Born in His Family Home on August 20, 1890, in Providence, Rhode Island. He Was the Only Child of Winfield Scott Lovecraft and Sarah Susan [Née Phillips] Lovecraft. Susie’s Family Was of Substantial Means at the Time of Their Marriage, Her Father, Whipple Van Buren Phillips, Being Involved in Business Ventures.

Early Life and Family Tragedies

Lovecraft Was Born in His Family Home on August 20, 1890, in Providence, Rhode Island. He Was the Only Child of Winfield Scott Lovecraft and Sarah Susan [Née Phillips] Lovecraft. Susie’s Family Was of Substantial Means at the Time of Their Marriage, Her Father, Whipple Van Buren Phillips, Being Involved in Business Ventures.

Earliest Recognition

Not Much of Lovecraft and Susie’s Activities from Late 1908 to 1913 Are Recorded. Lovecraft Mentions a Steady Continuation of Their Financial Decline Highlighted by a Failed Business Venture of His Uncle That Cost Susie a Large Portion of Their Dwindling Wealth. a Friend of Susie, Clara Hess, Recalled a Visit During Which Susie Spoke Continuously About Lovecraft Being “So Hideous That He Hid from Everyone and Did Not Like to Walk Upon the Streets Where People Could Gaze on Him. ” Despite Hess’ Protest That This Was Not the Case, Susie Maintained This Stance. for His Part, Lovecraft Said He Found His Mother to Be “A Positive Marvel of Consideration”. a Next-Door Neighbor Later Pointed out That What Others in the Neighborhood Often Supposed Were Loud, Nocturnal Quarrels Between Mother and Son, She Recognized as Being Recitations of Shakespeare, an Activity That Seemed to Delight Mother and Son.

Rejuvenation and Tragedy

—Lovecraft in 1921.

Marriage and New York

Lovecraft’s Aunts Disapproved of This Relationship with Sonia. Lovecraft and Greene Married on March 3, 1924, and Relocated to Her Brooklyn Apartment at 793 Flatbush Avenue; She Thought He Needed to Get out of Providence in Order to Flourish and Was Willing to Support Him Financially. Greene, Who Had Been Married Before, Later Said Lovecraft Had Performed Satisfactorily as a Lover, Though She Had to Take the Initiative in All Aspects of the Relationship. She Attributed Lovecraft’s Passive Nature to a Stultifying Upbringing by His Mother. Lovecraft’s Weight Increased to 200 Lb (91 Kg) on His Wife’s Home Cooking.

Financial Difficulties

Not Long After the Marriage, Greene Lost Her Business and Her Assets Disappeared in a Bank Failure; She Also Became Ill. Lovecraft Made Efforts to Support His Wife Through Regular Jobs, but His Lack of Previous Work Experience Meant He Lacked Proven Marketable Skills. After a Few Unsuccessful Spells as a Low-Level Clerk, His Job-Seeking Became Desultory. the Publisher of Weird Tales Attempted to Put the Loss-Making Magazine on a Business Footing and Offered the Job of Editor to Lovecraft, Who Declined, Citing His Reluctance to Relocate to Chicago; “Think of the Tragedy of Such a Move for an Aged Antiquarian, ” the 34-Year-Old Writer Declared. Baird Was Replaced with Farnsworth Wright, Whose Writing Lovecraft Had Criticized. Lovecraft’s Submissions Were Often Rejected by Wright. (This May Have Been Partially Due to Censorship Guidelines Imposed in the Aftermath of a Weird Tales Story That Hinted at Necrophilia, Although After Lovecraft’s Death, Wright Accepted Many of the Stories He Had Originally Rejected.)

Brooklyn

Greene, Moving Where the Work Was, Relocated to Cincinnati, and Then to Cleveland; Her Employment Required Constant Travel. Added to the Daunting Reality of Failure in a City with a Large Immigrant Population, Lovecraft’s Single-Room Apartment at 169 Clinton Street in Brooklyn Heights, Not Far from the Working-Class Waterfront Neighborhood Red Hook, Was Burgled, Leaving Him with Only the Clothes He Was Wearing. in August 1925, He Wrote “The Horror at Red Hook” and “He”, in the Latter of Which the Narrator Says “My Coming to New York Had Been a Mistake; for Whereas I Had Looked for Poignant Wonder and Inspiration […] I Had Found Instead Only a Sense of Horror and Oppression Which Threatened to Master, Paralyze, and Annihilate Me. ” It Was at Around This Time He Wrote the Outline for “The Call of Cthulhu”, with Its Theme of the Insignificance of All Humanity. with a Weekly Allowance Greene Sent, Lovecraft Moved to a Working-Class Area of Brooklyn Heights, Where He Subsisted in a Tiny Apartment. He Had Lost Approximately 40 Pounds (18 Kg) of Body Weight by 1926, When He Left for Providence.

Return to Providence

Back in Providence, Lovecraft Lived in a “Spacious Brown Victorian Wooden House” at 10 Barnes Street Until 1933. the Same Address Is Given as the Home of Dr. Willett in Lovecraft’s the Case of Charles Dexter Ward. the Period Beginning After His Return to Providence—the Last Decade of His Life—Was Lovecraft’s Most Prolific; in That Time He Produced Short Stories, as Well as His Longest Works of Fiction: the Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath, the Case of Charles Dexter Ward, and at the Mountains of Madness. He Frequently Revised Work for Other Authors and Did a Large Amount of Ghost-Writing, Including the Mound, Winged Death, and the Diary of Alonzo Typer. Client Harry Houdini Was Laudatory, and Attempted to Help Lovecraft by Introducing Him to the Head of a Newspaper Syndicate. Plans for a Further Project Were Ended by Houdini’s Death.

Last Year's and Death

Lovecraft Was Never Able to Provide for Even Basic Expenses by Selling Stories and Doing Paid Literary Work for Others. He Lived Frugally, Subsisting on an Inheritance That Was Nearly Depleted by the Time He Died. He Sometimes Went Without Food to Be Able to Pay the Cost of Mailing Letters. After Leaving New York, He Moved to an Apartment at 10 Barnes Street Near Brown University with His Surviving Aunt; a Few Year's Later, They Moved to a Slightly Less Expensive Place at 65 Prospect Street. as a Result of the Great Depression, He Shifted Towards Socialism. He Supported Franklin D. Roosevelt, but He Thought That the New Deal Was Not Sufficiently Leftist.

Influences

Some of Lovecraft’s Work Was Inspired by His Own Nightmares. His Interest Started from His Childhood Days When His Grandfather Would Tell Him Gothic Horror Stories.

Themes

Several Themes Recur in Lovecraft’s Stories:

Forbidden Knowledge

Forbidden, Dark, Esoterically Veiled Knowledge Is a Central Theme in Many of Lovecraft’s Works. Many of His Characters Are Driven by Curiosity or Scientific Endeavor, and in Many of His Stories the Knowledge They Uncover Proves Promethean in Nature, Either Filling the Seeker with Regret for What They Have Learned, Destroying Them Psychologically, or Completely Destroying the Person Who Holds the Knowledge.

Non-Human Influences on Humanity

The Beings of Lovecraft’s Mythos Often Have Human Servants; Cthulhu, for Instance, Is Worshipped Under Various Names by Cults Among Both the Greenlandic Inuit and Voodoo Circles of Louisiana, and in Many Other Parts of the World.

Inherited Guilt

Another Recurring Theme in Lovecraft’s Stories Is the Idea That Descendants in a Bloodline Can Never Escape the Stain of Crimes Committed by Their Forebears, at Least If the Crimes Are Atrocious Enough. Descendants May Be Very Far Removed, Both in Place and in Time (And, Indeed, in Culpability), from the Act Itself, and Yet, They May Be Haunted by the Revenant Past, E. G. “The Rats in the Walls”, “The Lurking Fear”, “Facts Concerning the Late Arthur Jermyn and His Family”, “The Alchemist”, the Shadow over Innsmouth, “The Doom That Came to Sarnath” and the Case of Charles Dexter Ward.

Civilization Under Threat

Lovecraft Was Familiar with the Work of the German Conservative-Revolutionary Theorist Oswald Spengler, Whose Pessimistic Thesis of the Decadence of the Modern West Formed a Crucial Element in Lovecraft’s Overall Anti-Modern Worldview. Spenglerian Imagery of Cyclical Decay Is Present in Particular in at the Mountains of Madness. S. T. Joshi, in H. P. Lovecraft: the Decline of the West, Places Spengler at the Center of His Discussion of Lovecraft’s Political and Philosophical Ideas.

Risks of a Scientific Era

At the Turn of the 20Th Century, Humanity’s Increased Reliance Upon Science Was Both Opening New World's and Solidifying Understanding of Ours. Lovecraft Portrays This Potential for a Growing Gap of Man’s Understanding of the Universe as a Potential for Horror, Most Notably in “The Colour out of Space”, Where the Inability of Science to Comprehend a Contaminated Meteorite Leads to Horror.

Religion

Lovecraft’s Works Are Ruled by Several Distinct Pantheons of Deities (Actually Aliens Worshiped as Gods by Humans) Who Are Either Indifferent or Actively Hostile to Humanity. Lovecraft’s Personal Philosophy Has Been Termed “Cosmic Indifference” and This Is Expressed in His Fiction. Several of Lovecraft’s Stories of the Old Ones (Alien Beings of the Cthulhu Mythos) Propose Alternate Mythic Human Origins in Contrast to Those Found in the Creation Stories of Existing Religions, Expanding on a Natural World View. for Instance, in Lovecraft’s at the Mountains of Madness, It Is Proposed That Humankind Was Actually Created as a Slave Race by the Old Ones, and That Life on Earth as We Know It Evolved from Scientific Experiments Abandoned by the Elder Things. Protagonist Characters in Lovecraft Are Usually Educated Men, Citing Scientific and Rational Evidence to Support Their Non-Faith. “Herbert West–Reanimator” Reflects on the Atheism Common in Academic Circles. in “The Silver Key”, the Character Randolph Carter Loses the Ability to Dream and Seeks Solace in Religion, Specifically Congregationalism, but Does Not Find It and Ultimately Loses Faith.

Superstition

In 1926, Famed Magician and Escapist Harry Houdini Asked Lovecraft to Ghostwrite a Treatise Exploring the Topic of Superstition. Houdini’s Unexpected Death Later That Year Halted the Project, but the Cancer of Superstition Was Partially Completed by Lovecraft Along with Collaborator C. M. Eddy Jr. a Previously Unknown Manuscript of the Work Was Discovered in 2016 in a Collection Owned by a Magic Shop. the Book States “All Superstitious Beliefs Are Relics of a Common ‘Prehistoric Ignorance’ in Humans, ” and Goes on to Explore Various Superstitious Beliefs in Different Cultures and Times. ”

Lovecraft Country

Lovecraft Drew Extensively from His Native New England for Settings in His Fiction. Numerous Historical Cities and Towns Are Mentioned, and Several Fictionalised Versions of Them Make Frequent Appearances in His Stories. These Municipalities Are Located in the Western Half of a Fictionalized Massachusetts. the Exact Locations of These Municipalities Were Subject to Change with Lovecraft’s Shifting Literary Needs. Starting with Areas That He Thought Were Evocative, Lovecraft Redefined and Exaggerated Them Under Fictional Names. for Example, Lovecraft Renamed the Town of Oakham to Arkham, and Expanded It to Include a Nearby Landmark.

Critical Reception

By 1957 Floyd C. Gale of Galaxy Science Fiction Said That “Like R. E. Howard, Lovecraft Seemingly Goes on Forever; the Two Decades Since Their Death Are as Nothing. in Any Event, They Appear More Prolific Than Ever. What with De Camp, Nyberg and Derleth Avidly Rooting out Every Scrap of Their Writings and Expanding Them into Novels, There May Never Be an End to Their Posthumous Careers. ” According to Joyce Carol Oates, Lovecraft (And Edgar Allan Poe in the 19Th Century) Has Exerted “An Incalculable Influence on Succeeding Generations of Writers of Horror Fiction. ” Horror, Fantasy, and Science Fiction Author Stephen King Called Lovecraft “The Twentieth Century’s Greatest Practitioner of the Classic Horror Tale. ” King Has Made It Clear in His Semi-Autobiographical Non-Fiction Book Danse Macabre That Lovecraft Was Responsible for His Own Fascination with Horror and the Macabre and Was the Largest Influence on His Writing.

Within the Genre

By 1957 Floyd C. Gale of Galaxy Science Fiction Said That “Like R. E. Howard, Lovecraft Seemingly Goes on Forever; the Two Decades Since Their Death Are as Nothing. in Any Event, They Appear More Prolific Than Ever. What with De Camp, Nyberg and Derleth Avidly Rooting out Every Scrap of Their Writings and Expanding Them into Novels, There May Never Be an End to Their Posthumous Careers. ” According to Joyce Carol Oates, Lovecraft (And Edgar Allan Poe in the 19Th Century) Has Exerted “An Incalculable Influence on Succeeding Generations of Writers of Horror Fiction. ” Horror, Fantasy, and Science Fiction Author Stephen King Called Lovecraft “The Twentieth Century’s Greatest Practitioner of the Classic Horror Tale. ” King Has Made It Clear in His Semi-Autobiographical Non-Fiction Book Danse Macabre That Lovecraft Was Responsible for His Own Fascination with Horror and the Macabre and Was the Largest Influence on His Writing.

Literary

Early Efforts to Revise an Established Literary View of Lovecraft as an Author of ‘Pulp’ Were Resisted by Some Eminent Critics; in 1945 Edmund Wilson Sneered: “The Only Real Horror in Most of These Fictions Is the Horror of Bad Taste and Bad Art. ” However, Wilson Praised Lovecraft’s Ability to Write About His Chosen Field; He Described Him as Having Written About It “With Much Intelligence. ” According to L. Sprague De Camp, Wilson Later Improved His Opinion of Lovecraft, Citing a Report of David Chavchavadze That Wilson Had Included a Lovecraftian Reference in Little Blue Light: a Play in Three Acts. After Chavchavadze Met with Him to Discuss This, Wilson Revealed That He Had Been Reading a Copy of Lovecraft’s Correspondence. Mystery and Adventure Columnist Will Cuppy of the New York Herald Tribune Recommended to Readers a Volume of Lovecraft’s Stories, Asserting That “The Literature of Horror and Macabre Fantasy Belongs with Mystery in Its Broader Sense. ”

Philosophical

Philosopher Graham Harman, Seeing Lovecraft as Expressing a Unique—Though Implicit—Anti-Reductionalist Ontology, Writes: “No Other Writer Is So Perplexed by the Gap Between Objects and the Power of Language to Describe Them, or Between Objects and the Qualities They Possess. ” Harman Said of Leading Figures at the Initial Speculative Realism Conference (Which Included Philosophers Quentin Meillassoux, Ray Brassier, and Iain Hamilton Grant) That, Though They Shared No Philosophical Heroes, All Were Enthusiastic Readers of Lovecraft. Speculative Realists, Mark Fisher and Other Contemporary Philosophers, Took Lovecraft Seriously, Mainly Because Lovecraft’s Weird Fictional World, Had Nothing to Do with the Gothic’s Insistence on the Supernatural, but Presented Another Undeniable but Incomprehensible Reality. According to Scholar S. T. Joshi: “There Is Never an Entity in Lovecraft That Is Not in Some Fashion Material. ” Philosopher Eugene Thacker Echoes This in His “Horror of Philosophy” Series of Books, Finding in Lovecraft’s Ideas a “Cold Rationalism” or “Cosmic Pessimism” That Highlights the Limitations of Anthropocentric Thinking. Thacker at Once Point Characterizes This as a Tension Between “I Can’t Believe What I See” and “I Can’t See What I Believe. ”

Retrospective Reception

Several Media Outlets Published Articles Discussing Lovecraft’s Legacy as a Horror Fiction Writer, with Many Outlets in the 2010S Discussing and Criticizing Lovecraft’s Racism and Homophobia. Public Books Connected Lovecraft’s Upbringing in Providence to the “Racism, Homophobia, Misogyny, and General Parochialism” Found in His Personal Beliefs and Work, Calling It “Unquestionably Rooted in Places, Aesthetics, and an Idiosyncratic Sense of Local Culture. ” the African-American Fantasy Writer N. K. Jemisin Considers Lovecraft’s Racial Attitudes Essential to His Literary World: “His Biases Were the Basis of His Horror. … He Does Some Incredible Imagery, It’s Powerful Work, but It’s Frightening … Because It’s a Way to Look into the Mind of a True Bigot, and Realize Just How Alien Their Thinking Is, Just How Disturbing Their Ability to Dehumanize Their Fellow Human Beings Is. After the World Fantasy Award Dropped Their Connection to Lovecraft, the Atlantic Commented That “In the End, Lovecraft Still Wins—People Who’ve Never Read a Page of His Work Will Still Know Who Cthulhu Is for Year's to Come, and His Legacy Lives on in the Work of Stephen King, Guillermo Del Toro, and Neil Gaiman. ”

Influence on Culture

Lovecraft Was Relatively Unknown During His Lifetime. While His Stories Appeared in Prominent Pulp Magazines Such as Weird Tales (Eliciting Letters of Outrage as Often as Praise from Regular Readers), Not Many People Knew His Name. He Did, However, Correspond Regularly with Other Contemporary Writers Such as Clark Ashton Smith and August Derleth, Who Became His Good Friends, Even Though He Never Met Them in Person. This Group Became Known as the “Lovecraft Circle, ” Since Their Writing Freely Borrowed Lovecraft’s Motifs, with His Encouragement: the Mysterious Books with Disturbing Names Such as the Necronomicon, the Pantheon of Ancient Alien Entities Such as Cthulhu and Azathoth, and Eldritch Places Such as the Ill-Omened New England Town of Arkham and Its Miskatonic University.

Music

Lovecraft’s Fictional Mythos Has Influenced a Number of Musicians, Especially in Rock Music. the Psychedelic Rock Band H. P. Lovecraft (Who Shortened Their Name to Lovecraft and Then Love Craft in the 1970S) Released the Albums H. P. Lovecraft and H. P. Lovecraft Ii in 1967 and 1968 Respectively; Their Songs Included the White Ship and at the Mountains of Madness, Both Titled After Lovecraft Stories. the Founders of Their Record Company, Bill Traut and George Badonsky, Were Fans of the Author and Gained August Derleth’s Permission to Use Lovecraft’s Name for the Band.

Games

Lovecraft Has Also Influenced Gaming, Despite Having Hated Games During His Lifetime. Chaosium’s Tabletop Role-Playing Game Call of Cthulhu, Released in 1981 and Currently in Its Seventh Major Edition, Was One of the First Games to Draw Heavily from Lovecraft. Novel to the Game Was the Lovecraft-Inspired Insanity Mechanic, Which Allowed for Player Characters to Go Insane from Contact with Cosmic Horrors. This Mechanic Would Go on to Make Appearance in Subsequent Table Top and Video Games. 1987 Saw the Release of One of the First Lovecraftian Board Games, Arkham Horror, Which Sold Extremely Well, and Since 2004 Is Still in Print from Fantasy Flight Games. Though Few Subsequent Lovecraftian Board Games Were Released Annually Between 1987 and 2014, the Year's After 2014 Saw a Surge in the Number of Lovecraftian Board Games, Possibly Because of the Entry of Lovecraft’s Work into the Public Domain Combined with a Revival of Interest in Board Games.

Religion and Occultism

Several Contemporary Religions Have Drawn Influence from the Works of Lovecraft. the Satanic Rituals, Written Either by Anton Lavey or Michael A. Aquino, Includes an Essay Which Claims That the Works of Lovecraft Carry a Partial Truth, Used in the Same Symbolic Manner as Satan. Kenneth Grant of the Typhonian Order Incorporated Lovecraft’s Mythos into His Ritual and Occult System, but in a More Direct and Literal Sense Than the Church of Satan. However, the Typhonian Order Does Not Consider the Entities to Be Directly Existent, but Rather a Symbol Through Which People May Interact with Something Inhuman.

Lovecraft as a Fictional Character

Aside from His Appearance in Robert Bloch’s the Shambler from the Stars, Lovecraft Continues to Be Used as a Character in Supernatural Fiction. John Shirley’s Story When Death Wakes Me to Myself Offers a Tale of a Therapy Patient Slowly Remembering a Former Incarnation When He Was H. P. Lovecraft.

Editions and Collections of Works

For Most of the 20Th Century, the Definitive Editions (Specifically at the Mountains of Madness and Other Novels, Dagon and Other Macabre Tales, the Dunwich Horror and Others, and the Horror in the Museum and Other Revisions) of His Prose Fiction Were Published by Arkham House, a Publisher Originally Started with the Intent of Publishing the Work of Lovecraft, but Which Has Since Published a Considerable Amount of Other Literature as Well. Penguin Classics Has at Present Issued Three Volumes of Lovecraft’s Works: the Call of Cthulhu and Other Weird Stories, the Thing on the Doorstep and Other Weird Stories, and Most Recently the Dreams in the Witch House and Other Weird Stories. They Collect the Standard Texts as Edited by S. T. Joshi, Most of Which Were Available in the Arkham House Editions, with the Exception of the Restored Text of the Shadow out of Time from the Dreams in the Witch House, Which Had Been Previously Released by Small-Press Publisher Hippocampus Press. in 2005 the Prestigious Library of America Canonized Lovecraft with a Volume of His Stories Edited by Peter Straub, and Random House’s Modern Library Line Have Issued the “Definitive Edition” of Lovecraft’s at the Mountains of Madness (Also Including Supernatural Horror in Literature).

Correspondence

Although Lovecraft Is Known Mostly for His Works of Weird Fiction, the Bulk of His Writing Consists of Voluminous Letters About a Variety of Topics, from Weird Fiction and Art Criticism to Politics and History. Lovecraft’s Biographer L. Sprague De Camp Estimates That Lovecraft Wrote 100,000 Letters in His Lifetime, a Fifth of Which Are Believed to Survive.

Copyright and Other Legal Issues

Despite Several Claims to the Contrary, There Is Currently No Evidence That Any Company or Individual Owns the Copyright to Any of Lovecraft’s Work, and It Is Generally Accepted That It Has Passed into the Public Domain. the European Union Copyright Duration Directive of 1993 Extended the Copyrights to 70 Year's After the Author’s Death. All of Lovecraft’s Works Published During His Lifetime Became Public Domain in All 27 European Union Countries on January 1, 2008. in Those Berne Convention Countries That Have Implemented Only the Minimum Copyright Period, Copyright Expires 50 Year's After the Author’s Death. Regarding the United States, All Works Published Before 1925 Are Public Domain. Works Lovecraft Published During His Lifetime Between 1925 and 1937 Will Indisputably Be out of Copyright as They Enter the Public Domain Annually Between 2021 and 2033 (Pre-1978 Works Do Not Use the Life+70 Rule in the Usa).

Film Adaptations

Films Based on the Writings of H. P. Lovecraft Include the Following.

Documentaries and Movie Portrayals

Lovecraft: Fear of the Unknown Is a 2008 Documentary About the Life and Works of H. P. Lovecraft.