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| − | {{Infobox Writer | + | {{approved}}{{images OK}}{{submitted}}{{Paid}}{{copyedited}} |
| − | | name = Howard Phillips Lovecraft | + | {{epname|Lovecraft, H. P.}} |
| − | | image = H.P.jpg
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| − | | quote = ''"I am Providence!"''
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| − | | birth_date = [[August 20]], [[1890]]
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| − | | birth_place = [[Providence, Rhode Island|Providence]], [[Rhode Island]], [[United States|U.S.]]
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| − | | death_date = [[March 15]], [[1937]]
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| − | | death_place = Providence, Rhode Island, U.S.
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| − | | occupation = short story writer
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| − | | genre = [[Horror fiction|Horror]], [[Science fiction|SF]], [[Fantasy fiction|Fantasy]]
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| − | | movement =
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| − | | magnum_opus =
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| − | | influences = [[Nathaniel Hawthorne]], [[Robert W. Chambers]], [[Edgar Allan Poe]], [[M. R. James]], [[Lord Dunsany]], [[Arthur Machen]], [[Algernon Blackwood]]
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| − | | influenced = [[Clark Ashton Smith]], [[Robert E. Howard]], [[August Derleth]], [[Robert Bloch]], [[Ramsey Campbell]], [[Clive Barker]], [[Brian Lumley]], [[Stephen King]], [[Alan Moore]], [[Neil Gaiman]]
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| − | | footnotes =
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| − | }} | |
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| − | '''Howard Phillips Lovecraft''' ([[August 20]], [[1890]] – [[March 15]], [[1937]]) was an [[United States|America]]n author of [[fantasy fiction|fantasy]], [[horror fiction|horror]] and [[science fiction]]. Although Lovecraft's readership was limited during his life, he has become a cult figure in the horror genre and is noted as creator of the [[Cthulhu Mythos]] as well as the famed ''[[Necronomicon]]''.
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| | + | [[Image:Howard Phillips Lovecraft.jpg|thumb|200px|Howard Phillips Lovecraft]] |
| | + | '''Howard Phillips Lovecraft''' (August 20, 1890 – March 15, 1937) was an [[United States|America]]n author of [[fantasy fiction|fantasy]], [[horror fiction|horror]], and [[science fiction]], who is now widely recognized as one of the most influential and widely-read authors of popular fiction of all time. Although Lovecraft's readership was limited during his life, since his death he has gained a massive and devoted following of readers who have been captivated by his gripping tales of the supernatural. Amongst scholars, Lovecraft is considered to be an exemplar of a uniquely American strain of [[gothic fiction]], tracing its roots back to [[Edgar Allen Poe]]. Deeply influenced by Poe, as well as by [[Nathaniel Hawthorne|Hawthorne]], Lovecraft, like his forebears, created an entirely alternate world of sheer imagination that remains one of the most engaging ''oeuvres'' of fiction ever created. |
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| | ==Biography== | | ==Biography== |
| | ===Early life=== | | ===Early life=== |
| − | Lovecraft was born on [[20 August]] [[1890]] at 9:00 a.m. in his family home at 194 (now 454) Angell Street in [[Providence, Rhode Island]]. The house was subsequently torn down in 1961. He was the only child of Winfield Scott Lovecraft, a traveling salesman of jewelry and precious metals, and Sarah Susan Phillips Lovecraft, a woman who could trace her ancestry in America back to the [[Massachusetts Bay Colony]] in 1630. His parents married, the first marriage for both, when they were in their thirties. This was unusually late in life given the time period. In 1893, when Lovecraft was three, his father became acutely [[psychotic]] in a [[Chicago]] hotel room while on a business trip. He was brought back to Providence and placed in [http://www.butler.org/homepage.cfm Butler Hospital] where he remained until his death in 1898. Lovecraft was informed that his father was comatose during this period but it is now almost certain that Winfield Scott Lovecraft died from [[tertiary syphilis]] <ref>[[Luc Sante]], "The Heroic Nerd", in ''[[The New York Review of Books]]'', October 10, 2006</ref>. | + | Lovecraft was born on August 20, 1890, in Providence, Rhode Island. He was the only child of Winfield Scott Lovecraft, a traveling salesman of jewelry and precious metals, and Sarah Susan Phillips Lovecraft, a woman who could trace her ancestry in America back to the Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1630. His parents married later in life, when they were both in their thirties, unusual for the era. In 1893, when Lovecraft was three, his father became acutely psychotic in a [[Chicago]] hotel room while on a business trip. He was brought back to Providence and placed in Butler Hospital, where he remained until his death in 1898. |
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| − | [[Image:Howard Phillips Lovecraft - circa 1900.jpg|thumb|Lovecraft at approximately age nine.]]
| + | Lovecraft thereafter was raised by his mother, his two aunts, and his grandfather, Whipple Van Buren Phillips. All resided together in the family home. Lovecraft was a child prodigy, reciting poetry at age two and writing complete poems by six. His grandfather encouraged his reading, providing him with classics such as ''[[The Book of One Thousand and One Nights|The Arabian Nights]],'' ''[[Thomas Bulfinch|Bulfinch's Age of Fable]],'' and children's versions of [[Homer]]'s ''Iliad'' and the ''Odyssey.'' His grandfather also stirred young Howard's interest in what Lovecraft later referred to as "the weird," by telling him his own original tales of [[Gothic fiction|Gothic horror]]. |
| − | Lovecraft thereafter was raised by his mother, his two aunts (Lillian Delora Phillips and Annie Emeline Phillips), and his grandfather, Whipple Van Buren Phillips. All resided together in the family home. Lovecraft was a [[child prodigy]], reciting poetry at age two and writing complete poems by six. His grandfather encouraged his reading, providing him with classics such as ''[[The Book of One Thousand and One Nights|The Arabian Nights]]'', ''[[Thomas Bulfinch|Bulfinch's Age of Fable]]'', and children's versions of The ''[[Iliad]]'' and The ''[[Odyssey]]''. His grandfather also stirred young Howard's interest in [[Speculative fiction|the weird]] by telling him his own original tales of [[Gothic horror]]. His mother, on the other hand, worried that these stories would upset him. | |
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| − | Lovecraft was frequently ill as a child, both physically and psychologically. Due to his sickly condition and his undisciplined, argumentative nature he barely attended school until he was eight and then was withdrawn after a year. He read voraciously during this period and became especially enamored with chemistry and astronomy. He produced several [[hectograph]]ed publications with a limited circulation beginning in 1899 with ''The Scientific Gazette''. Four years later he returned to public school at Hope Street High School. | + | Lovecraft was frequently ill as a child, both physically and psychologically. Due to his sickly condition and his undisciplined, argumentative nature he barely attended school until he was eight and then was withdrawn after a year. He read voraciously during this period, becoming especially enamored with chemistry and astronomy. Four years later, he returned to public school at Hope Street High School. |
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| − | Whipple Van Buren Phillips' death in 1904 greatly affected Lovecraft's life. Mismanagement of his grandfather's property and money left his family in such a poor financial situation they were forced to move into much smaller accommodations at 598 Angell Street. Lovecraft was so deeply affected by the loss of his home and birthplace he contemplated suicide for a time. In 1908, prior to his high school graduation, he suffered a nervous breakdown and consequently never received his high school diploma. This failure to complete his education (he wished to study at [[Brown University]]), was a source of disappointment and shame even late into his life.
| + | In 1908, prior to his high school graduation, Lovecraft suffered a nervous breakdown and consequently never received his high school diploma. This failure to complete his education (he wished to study at Brown University), was a source of disappointment, and even shame, late into his life. |
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| − | Lovecraft wrote some fiction as a youth but from 1908 until 1913 his output was primarily poetry he wrote while living a hermit's existence and having almost no contact with anybody but his mother. This changed when he wrote a letter to [[Argosy (magazine)|The Argosy]], a pulp magazine, complaining about the insipidness of the love stories of one of the publications popular writers. The ensuing debate in the magazine's letters column caught the eye of Edward F. Daas, President of the [[Amateur Press Association|UAPA]], who invited Lovecraft to join in 1914. The [[Amateur Press Association|UAPA]] reinvigorated Lovecraft and incited him to contribute many poems and essays. In 1917, at the prodding of correspondents, he returned to fiction with more polished stories such as "[[The Tomb (short story)|The Tomb]]" and "[[Dagon (short story)|Dagon]]". The latter was his first professionally published work, appearing in ''[[Weird Tales]]'' in 1923. Around this time he began to build up a huge network of correspondents. His lengthy and frequent missives would make him one of the great letter writers of the century. Among his correspondents were the young [[Forrest J. Ackerman]], [[Robert Bloch]] (''[[Psycho (novel)|Psycho]]'') and [[Robert E. Howard]] (''[[Conan the Barbarian]]'' series). | + | Lovecraft wrote some fiction as a youth, but from 1908 until 1913, his output was primarily poetry he wrote while living a hermit's existence, having almost no contact with anybody but his mother. This changed when he wrote a letter to ''The Argosy,'' a pulp magazine, complaining about the insipidness of the love stories of one of the publication's popular writers. The ensuing debate in the magazine's letters column caught the eye of Edward F. Daas, President of the American Press Association, who invited Lovecraft to join in 1914. The job reinvigorated Lovecraft, inciting him to contribute many poems and essays. In 1917, at the prodding of correspondents, he returned to fiction with more polished stories, such as "The Tomb" and "Dagon." |
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| − | In 1919, after suffering from hysteria and depression for a long period of time, Lovecraft's mother had a nervous breakdown and was committed to Butler Hospital like her husband before her. Nevertheless, she wrote frequent letters to Lovecraft, and they remained very close until her death on [[May 21]], [[1921]], the result of complications from a gall bladder surgery. Lovecraft was devastated by the loss.
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| | ===Marriage and New York=== | | ===Marriage and New York=== |
| − | A few weeks after the death of his mother Lovecraft attended an amateur journalist convention in Boston where he met [[Sonia Greene]]. Born in 1883, she was of [[Ukraine|Ukrainian]] [[Jew]]ish ancestry and seven years older than Lovecraft. They married in 1924, and the couple moved to the [[Political subdivisions of New York State#Borough|borough]] of [[Brooklyn, New York|Brooklyn]] in [[New York City]]. Lovecraft's aunts may have been unhappy with this arrangement as they were not fond of Lovecraft being married to a tradeswoman (Greene owned a hat shop). Initially Lovecraft was enthralled by New York but soon the couple was facing financial difficulties. Greene lost her hat shop and suffered poor health. Lovecraft could not find work to support them both so his wife moved to [[Cleveland, Ohio|Cleveland]] for employment. Lovecraft lived by himself in the [[Red Hook, Brooklyn|Red Hook]] neighborhood of Brooklyn and came to intensely dislike New York life.<ref>This situation is closely paralleled in the semi-autobiographical "He", as noted by Michel Houellebecq in ''H. P. Lovecraft: Against the World, Against Life''</ref> Indeed, this daunting reality of failure to secure ''any'' work in the midst of a large immigrant population—especially irreconcilable with his opinion of himself as a privileged Anglo-Saxon—has been theorized as galvanizing his racism to the point of fear.<ref>''H. P. Lovecraft: Against the World, Against Life'', Michel Houellebecq</ref> | + | A few weeks after the death of his mother in 1921, Lovecraft attended an amateur journalist convention in Boston, where he met Sonia Greene. Born in 1883, she was of [[Ukraine|Ukrainian]] [[Jew]]ish ancestry and seven years older than Lovecraft. They married in 1924, and the couple moved to [[New York City]]. Initially, Lovecraft was enthralled by New York but soon the couple was facing financial difficulties. Lovecraft could not find work to support them both so his wife moved to Cleveland for employment. Lovecraft lived by himself and came to intensely dislike life in New York. (This situation is closely paralleled in the semi-autobiographical "He," as noted by Michel Houellebecq in ''H. P. Lovecraft: Against the World, Against Life.'') |
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| − | A few years later he and Greene, still living separately, agreed to an amicable divorce, which was never fully completed. He returned to Providence to live with his aunts during their remaining years. Due to the unhappiness of their marriage, some biographers have speculated that Lovecraft could have been [[asexual]], though Greene is often quoted as referring to him as "an adequately excellent lover" [http://www.hplovecraft.com/life/myths.asp#homosexual]. | + | A few years, later he and Greene, still living separately, agreed to an amicable divorce, which was never fully completed. He returned to Providence to live with his aunts during their remaining years. |
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| | ===Return to Providence=== | | ===Return to Providence=== |
| − | Back in Providence, Lovecraft lived in a "spacious brown Victorian wooden house" at 10 Barnes Street (the address given as the home of Dr. Willett in ''[[The Case of Charles Dexter Ward]]'') until 1933. The period after his return to Providence—the last decade of his life—was Lovecraft's most prolific. During this time period he produced almost all of his best-known short stories for the leading [[pulp magazine|pulp publications]] of the day (primarily ''[[Weird Tales]]'') as well as longer efforts like ''[[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".
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| − | Despite his best writing efforts, however, he grew ever poorer. He was forced to move to smaller and meaner lodgings with his surviving aunt. He was also deeply affected by [[Robert E. Howard]]'s [[suicide]]. In 1936 he was diagnosed with [[cancer (medicine)|cancer]] of the intestine and he also suffered from [[malnutrition]]. He lived in constant pain until his death on [[March 15]], [[1937]] in Providence.
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| − | Lovecraft was listed along with his parents on the Phillips family monument. That was not enough for his fans, so in 1977 a group of individuals raised the money to buy him a headstone of his own, on which they had inscribed Lovecraft's name, the dates of his birth and death and the phrase, "I AM PROVIDENCE," a line from one of his personal letters. Lovecraft's grave in [[Swan Point Cemetery]] in Providence is occasionally marked with [[graffiti]] quoting his famous phrase from "[[The Call of Cthulhu]]" (originally from "[[The Nameless City]]"):
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| − | :''"That is not dead which can eternal lie,''
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| − | :''And with strange aeons even death may die."''
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| − | ==Background of Lovecraft's work==
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| − | H. P. Lovecraft’s name is virtually synonymous with American style horror fiction; his writing, particularly his so-called “Cthulhu Mythos”, has influenced fiction authors worldwide, and Lovecraftian elements can be seen in novels, movies, comic books, even cartoons. For example, the insane villains of Gotham City in the [[Batman]] stories are said to be incarcerated at [[Arkham Asylum]] - and [[Arkham]] was an invention of Lovecraft’s. Many modern horror writers — such as [[Stephen King]], [[Bentley Little]], [[Joe R. Lansdale]], to name just a few — have cited Lovecraft as one of their primary influences.
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| − | Lovecraft himself, though, was relatively unknown during his own time. While his stories might have made it into the pages of prominent magazines such as Weird Tales (often eliciting letters of outrage from regular readers of the magazines), not many people knew his name. He was never famous during his own time. He was a prolific letter writer, though, and corresponded regularly with other contemporary writers such as [[Clark Ashton Smith]] and [[August Derleth]], people who became good friends of his, even if they never met in person. This group of correspondents became known as the “Lovecraft Circle”, since they all freely borrowed elements of Lovecraft’s stories — the mysterious books with disturbing names, the pantheon of ancient alien gods such as Cthulhu and Azathoth, and eldritch places such as [[Miskatonic]] and Arkham — for use in their own (with Lovecraft’s blessing and encouragement). It’s been suggested that it was the efforts of the Lovecraft Circle — particularly August Derleth — that prevented Lovecraft’s name and fiction from disappearing completely into obscurity.
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| − | After Lovecraft’s death, the Lovecraft Circle carried on. August Derleth was probably the most prolific of these writers, and added to and expanded on Lovecraft’s vision. Derleth’s contributions have been controversial, to say the least; while Lovecraft never considered his pantheon of alien gods more than a mere plot device, Derleth created an entire cosmology, complete with a war between the “Elder Gods” (such as Cthulhu and his ilk) and the “Outer Gods”, and went on to associate different gods with the traditional four elements. Not every fan of Lovecraft and Lovecraftian horror has approved of these additions, since they seem to contradict Lovecraft’s own vision of a universe without order or plan, with beings that weren’t so much malevolent as they were just uninterested in the goings on of humanity. Would Lovecraft have approved of Derleth’s expansions? It’s been said that Lovecraft was a good sport about this sort of thing, so he probably would have welcomed Derleth’s own take, but he certainly wouldn’t have taken it on himself. If there can be said to be a “Lovecraft canon”, then Derleth’s version would be an interesting take on the canon, but not part of the canon itself.
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| − | Lovecraft's fiction has been grouped into three categories by some critics. While Lovecraft did not refer to these categories himself, he did once write, "There are my '[[Edgar Allan Poe|Poe]]' pieces and my '[[Edward Plunkett, 18th Baron Dunsany|Dunsany]] pieces' — but alas — where are my Lovecraft pieces?" <ref>Letter to Elizabeth Toldridge, March 8, 1929, quoted in ''Lovecraft: A Look Behind the Cthulhu Mythos''</ref>
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| − | *[[Macabre]] stories (approximately 1905–1920)
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| − | *[[Dream Cycle]] stories (approximately 1920–1927)
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| − | *[[Cthulhu Mythos]]/[[Lovecraft Mythos]] stories (approximately 1925–1935)
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| − | Some critics see little difference between the Dream Cycle and the Mythos, often pointing to the recurring ''Necronomicon'' and subsequent "gods". A frequently given explanation is that the Dream Cycle belongs more to the genre of fantasy, while the Mythos is science fiction.
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| − | Much of Lovecraft's work was directly inspired by his [[nightmare]]s, and it is perhaps this direct insight into the [[Unconscious mind|unconscious]] and its [[symbolism]] that helps to account for their continuing resonance and popularity. All these interests naturally led to his deep affection for the works of [[Edgar Allan Poe]], who heavily influenced his earliest macabre stories and writing style. Lovecraft's discovery of the stories of [[Edward Plunkett, 18th Baron Dunsany|Lord Dunsany]] moved his writing in a new direction, resulting in a series of imitative fantasies in a "Dreamlands" setting. It was probably the influence of [[Arthur Machen]], with his carefully constructed tales concerning the survival of ancient evil, and his mystic beliefs in hidden mysteries which lay behind reality, that finally helped inspire Lovecraft to find his own voice from 1923 onwards.
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| − | This took on a dark tone with the creation of what is today often called the [[Cthulhu Mythos]], a pantheon of alien extra-dimensional deities and horrors which predate humanity, and which are hinted at in aeon-old myths and legends. The term "Cthulhu Mythos" was coined by Lovecraft's correspondent and fellow author, [[August Derleth]], after Lovecraft's death; Lovecraft jocularly referred to his artificial mythology as "Yog-Sothothery"[http://www.sff.net/people/timpratt/611.html].
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| − | His stories created one of the most influential plot devices in all of horror: the ''[[Necronomicon]]'', the secret [[grimoire]] written by the mad [[Arab]] [[Abdul Alhazred]]. The resonance and strength of the Mythos concept have led some to incorrectly conclude that Lovecraft had based it on pre-existing myths or occult beliefs. [[Faux]] editions of the ''Necronomicon'' have also been published over the years.
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| − | His prose is somewhat [[antiquarian]]. Often he employed archaic vocabulary or spelling which had already by his time been replaced by contemporary coinages; examples including electric torch (flashlight), Esquimau, and Comanchian. He was given to heavy use of unfamiliar adjectives such as "[[wikt:eldritch|eldritch]]", "[[wikt:rugose|rugose]]", "[[wikt:noisome|noisome]]", "[[wikt:squamous|squamous]]", "[[wikt:ichor|ichor]]" and "[[wikt:cyclopean|cyclopean]]", and of attempts to transcribe dialect speech which have been criticized as clumsy, imprecise and condescending. His works also featured [[British English]] (he was an admitted [[Anglophile]]), and he sometimes made use of anachronistic spellings, such as "compleat/complete", "lanthorn/lantern" and "phantasy/fantasy" (the latter also appearing as "phantastic" and "phantabulous").
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| − | Lovecraft was a prolific letter writer, inscribing multiple pages to his group of correspondents in small longhand. He sometimes dated his letters 200 years before the current date, which would have put the writing back in U.S. colonial times, before the [[American Revolution]] that offended his [[Anglophile|Anglophilia]]. He explained that he thought that the 18th and 20th centuries were the "best"; the former being a period of noble grace, and the latter a [[century]] of [[science]].
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| − | ==Themes==
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| − | [[Image:H. P. Lovecraft.jpg|thumb]]
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| − | Several themes recur in Lovecraft's stories:
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| − | ===Forbidden knowledge===
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| − | In "[[The Call of Cthulhu]]" (1926), Lovecraft wrote: "The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents... some day the piecing together of dissociated knowledge will open up such terrifying vistas of reality, and of our frightful position therein, that we shall either go mad from the revelation or flee from the light into the peace and safety of a new dark age." Lovecraft's protagonists are nevertheless always driven to this "piecing together," which makes up most Lovecraft stories.
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| − | When such vistas are opened, the mind of the protagonist-investigator is often destroyed. Those who actually encounter "living" manifestations of the incomprehensible are particularly likely to go mad.
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| − | Those characters who attempt to make use of such knowledge are almost invariably doomed. Sometimes their work attracts the attention of malevolent beings; sometimes, in the spirit of [[Frankenstein]], they are destroyed by monsters of their own creation.
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| − | ===Nonhuman influences on humanity===
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| − | The beings of Lovecraft's mythos often have human (or mostly-human) servants; Cthulhu, for instance, is worshipped by [[cult]]s amongst both the [[Eskimo]]s of [[Greenland]] and [[voodoo]] circles of [[Louisiana]], and in many other parts of the world.
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| − | These worshipers served a useful narrative purpose for Lovecraft. Many beings of the Mythos were too powerful to be defeated by human opponents, and so horrific that direct knowledge of them meant insanity for the victim. When dealing with such beings, Lovecraft needed a way to provide [[Dramatic structure#Exposition|exposition]] and build tension without bringing the story to a premature end. Human followers gave him a way to reveal information about their "gods" in a diluted form, and also made it possible for his protagonists to win temporary victories. Lovecraft, like his contemporaries, envisioned savages as closer to the Earth, only in Lovecraft's case, this meant, so to speak, closer to Cthulhu.
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| − | ===Atavistic guilt===
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| − | 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 blood will tell ("[[The Rats in the Walls]]", "[[The Lurking Fear]]", "[[Arthur Jermyn]]", "[[The Alchemist (short story)|The Alchemist]]", "[[The Shadow Over Innsmouth]]" and ''[[The Case of Charles Dexter Ward]]''). An example of a crime that Lovecraft apparently considered heinous enough for this consequence is cannibalism ("[[The Picture in the House]]", and, again "[[The Rats in the Walls]]").
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| − | ===Inability to escape fate===
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| − | Often in Lovecraft's works the protagonist is not in control of his own actions, or finds it impossible to change course. Many of his characters would be free from danger if they simply managed to run away; however, this possibility either never arises or is somehow curtailed by some outside force, as in ''[[The Colour Out of Space]]''. Often his characters are subject to a compulsive influence from powerful malevolent or indifferent beings. As with the inevitability of one's ancestry, eventually even running away, or death itself, provides no safety (''[[The Thing on the Doorstep]]'', ''[[The Outsider (short story)|The Outsider]]'', ''[[The Case of Charles Dexter Ward]]'', etc.). In some cases, this doom is manifest in the entirety of humanity, and no escape is possible (''[[The Shadow out of Time]]'').
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| − | ===Civilization under threat===
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| − | Lovecraft frequently dealt with the idea of [[civilization]] struggling against more barbaric, primitive elements. In some stories this struggle is at an individual level; many of his protagonists are cultured, highly-educated men who are gradually corrupted by some evil influence.
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| − | In such stories, the "curse" is often a hereditary one, either because of interbreeding with non-humans (e.g. "Facts Concerning the Late Arthur Jermyn and His Family" (1920), "The Shadow over Innsmouth" (1931)) or through direct magical influence (''The Case of Charles Dexter Ward''). Physical and mental degradation often come together; this theme of 'tainted blood' may represent concerns relating to Lovecraft's own family history, particularly the death of his father due to what Lovecraft must have suspected to be a [[syphilis|syphilitic]] disorder.
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| − | In other tales, an entire society is threatened by barbarism. Sometimes the barbarism comes as an external threat, with a civilized race destroyed in war (e.g. "Polaris"). Sometimes, an isolated pocket of humanity falls into decadence and [[atavism]] of its own accord (e.g. "The Lurking Fear"). But most often, such stories involve a civilized culture being gradually undermined by a malevolent underclass influenced by inhuman forces.
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| − | ===Racial attitudes===
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| − | The distinction between the civilized element and the underclass, or between 'tainted' and 'pure' blood, is often a racial one. The narrators in "The Street", "Herbert West: Reanimator", "He", "The Call of Cthulhu," "The Shadow Over Innsmouth," "The Horror at Red Hook" and many other tales express sentiments which could be considered hostile towards [[Jews]] (although several of Lovecraft's closer friends and correspondents were Jewish), [[Italians]], [[Poles]], Mediterraneans, Black Africans, and various Asiatic peoples, collectively. Racist views can also be found in his poetry, particularly in "On the Creation of Niggers", and "New England Fallen" (both 1912). He expressed racist and ethnocentric beliefs in his personal correspondence. <ref>See letter to J. Vernon Shea, [[September 25]], 1933, No. 648, ''Selected Letters IV'', [[Arkham House]].</ref> In a letter of [[January 23]], [[1920]], Lovecraft wrote:
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| − | :For evolved man — the apex of organic progress on the Earth — what branch of reflection is more fitting than that which occupies only his higher and exclusively human faculties? The primal savage or ape merely looks about his native forest to find a mate; the exalted Aryan should lift his eyes to the worlds of space and consider his relation to infinity!!!!
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| − | In "Herbert West - Reanimator", Lovecraft gives an account of a just-deceased African-American male. He asserts:
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| − | :He was a loathsome, gorilla-like thing, with abnormally long arms that I could not help calling fore legs, and a face that conjured up thoughts of unspeakable Congo secrets and tom-tom poundings under an eerie moon. The body must have looked even worse in life - but the world holds many ugly things.<ref>H. P. Lovecraft, "Herbert West - Reanimator", ''Dagon and Other Macabre Tales'', p. 146.</ref>
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| − | In "The Horror at Red Hook", one character is described as "an Arab with a hatefully negroid mouth".<ref>H. P. Lovecraft, "The Horror at Red Hook", ''Dagon and Other Macabre Tales'', p. 258.</ref> In "Medusa's Coil", ghostwritten by Lovecraft for Zealia Bishop, the story's final surprise—after the revelation that the story's villain is a vampiric medusa—is that she
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| − | {{cquote|was faintly, subtly, yet to the eyes of genius unmistakably the scion of Zimbabwe's most primal grovellers.... [T]hough in deceitfully slight proportion, Marceline was a negress."<ref>"Medusa's Coil", Zealia Bishop with H. P. Lovecraft, ''The Horror in the Museum'', p, 200.</ref>}}
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| − | He married a woman of [[Ukraine|Ukrainian]] [[Jewish]] ancestry, Sonia Greene, who later said she had to repeatedly remind Lovecraft of her background when he made anti-Semitic remarks. "Whenever we found ourselves in the racially mixed crowds which characterize New York," Greene wrote after her divorce from Lovecraft, "Howard would become livid with rage. He seemed almost to lose his mind." <ref>Quoted in ''Lovecraft'', Carter, p. 45.</ref>
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| − | To some extent, Lovecraft's views and his blunt expressions of them reflect his era; official [[eugenics]] laws and bans of [[miscegenation]] were at the time legally binding in many parts of the [[United States]] and non-[[Roman Catholic]] areas of [[Europe]], while [[racial segregation]] was legally enforced throughout much of the United States. A popular movement during the 1920s succeeded in drastically restricting [[immigration to the United States]], culminating in the [[Immigration Act of 1924]], which featured expert testimony to the [[United States Congress]] on the threat to American society from the assimilation of more "inferior stock" from eastern and southern Europe.
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| − | He was an avowed Anglophile, and held [[England|English]] culture to be the comparative pinnacle of civilization, with the descendants of the English in America as something of a second-class offshoot, and everyone else below them (see, for example, his poem "[http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/An_American_to_Mother_England An American to Mother England]"). His love for English history and culture is often repeated in his work (such as King [[Kuranes]]' nostalgia for England in "[[The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath]]").
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| − | However, his antipathy to other races admitted some exceptions, mainly to other cultures within the Caucasian sub-species of ''Homo sapiens'' or other culturally European groups. The narrator of "[[Cool Air]]" speaks disparagingly of the poor [[Hispanic]]s of his neighborhood, but respects the wealthy and aristocratic [[Spaniard]] Dr. Muñoz, both for his more 'Celtiberian' origins and because he is "a man of birth, cultivation, and discrimination." In ''[[At the Mountains of Madness]]'', explorers discover evidence of a completely alien race (the [[Elder Things]]) that were eventually destroyed by their brutish [[shoggoth]] servants. Even after several members of the party are killed by revived Elder Things, Lovecraft's narrator expresses sympathy for them: "They were the men of another age and another order of being... what had they done that we would not have done in their place? God, what intelligence and persistence! What a facing of the incredible... Radiates, vegetables, monstrosities, star spawn — whatever they had been, they were men!"
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| − | Lovecraft's interest in eugenics often extended to his white characters. The degenerate descendants of [[Dutch people|Dutch]] immigrants in the [[Catskill Mountains]], "who correspond exactly to the decadent element of [[white trash]] in the [[Southern United States|South]]," ("Beyond the Wall of Sleep", 1919) are common targets. In "The Temple", Lovecraft's narrator is a highly unsympathetic figure: a [[World War I]] [[U-boat]] captain whose faith in his "iron German will" and the superiority of the [[Fatherland]] lead him to machine-gun survivors in lifeboats and, later, kill his own crew, while blinding him to the curse he has brought upon himself.
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| − | These lines of thought in Lovecraft's worldview—romantic reactionary defense of cultural order in the face of the degenerative modern world and racial elitism—have led some scholars to see a special affinity to the aristocratic, Aryan anti-modernism of Traditionalist [[Julius Evola]]:
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| − | :Certainly 'The Dream Quest of Unknown Kadath' with its grandiose portrayal of the onyx city respires the cool and elegant spirit of Tradition, arraigned against which in several stories is the sink of decadence, Innsmouth, an inbred population made up of the offspring of lustful mariners and sea monsters, the negative force of counter-Tradition. The eternal struggle between the Uranian power of light and the telluric forces of chaos is reflected in Lovecraft's work."[http://www.centrostudilaruna.it/schwarzlovecraft.html]
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| − | ===Gender===
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| − | Women in Lovecraft's fiction are rare, and sympathetic women virtually non-existent; the few leading female characters in his stories — like Asenath Waite in "[[The Thing on the Doorstep]]" and Lavinia Whateley in "[[The Dunwich Horror]]" — are invariably servants of sinister forces. Romance is likewise almost absent from his stories; where he touches on love, it is usually a [[platonic love]] (e.g. "The Tree"). His characters live in a world where sexuality is negatively connotated — if it is productive at all, it gives birth to less-than-human beings ("The Dunwich Horror"). In this context, it might be helpful to draw attention to the scale of Lovecraft's horror, which has often been described by critics as "cosmic horror". Operating on a grand, cosmic scale as his stories are, they assign humanity a minor, inconsequential role. Consequently, it is not female sexuality to which the stories categorically deny a vital and positive role — rather, it is human sexuality in general.
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| − | ===Risks of a Scientific Era===
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| − | At the turn of the 20th century, man's increased reliance upon science was both opening new worlds and solidifying the manners by which he could understand them. 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," the inability for science to comprehend a meteorite lends to horror.
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| − | In a letter to James F. Morton in 1923, Lovecraft specifically points to Einstein's theory on relativity as throwing the world into chaos and making the cosmos a jest. And in a 1929 letter to Woodburn Harris, he speculates that technological comforts risk the collapse of science. Indeed, at a time when men viewed science as limitless and powerful, Lovecraft realized alternative potential and fearful outcomes.
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| − | ==Lovecraft's Influence on Culture==
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| − | :''Main articles: [[Lovecraftian horror]] and [[Cthulhu Mythos in popular culture]]''
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| − | Beyond direct adaptation, Lovecraft and his stories have had a profound impact on popular culture, and has been praised by many modern writers of horror, science fiction, and fantasy. Some influence was direct, as he was a friend, inspiration, and correspondent to many of his contemporaries, such as [[Conan the Barbarian]] creator [[Robert E. Howard]] and [[Robert Bloch]], author of ''[[Psycho (novel)|Psycho]]''. Many later creators of horror writing, films and art were influenced by Lovecraft, including author and artist [[Clive Barker]], [[Stephen King]], film directors [[John Carpenter]] and [[Stuart Gordon]], game designer [[Sandy Petersen]], and artist [[H. R. Giger]]. H. P. Lovecraft’s name is virtually synonymous with American style horror fiction; his writing, particularly his so-called “Cthulhu Mythos”, has influenced fiction authors worldwide, and Lovecraftian elements can be seen in novels, movies, comic books, even cartoons. Batman’s nemesis “The Joker”, for example, is said to be incarcerated at Arkham Asylum; and Arkham was an invention of Lovecraft’s. Many modern horror writers — such as [[Stephen King]], [[Bentley Little]], [[Joe R. Lansdale]], to name just a few — have cited Lovecraft as one of their primary influences.
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| − | Argentine writer [[Jorge Luis Borges]] dedicated his pointedly Lovecraftian short story ''There are More Things'' — a reference to ''[[Hamlet]]'s'' "...in heaven and earth, Horatio, Than are dreamt of in your philosophy" — to the memory of Lovecraft. Contemporary French writer [[Michel Houellebecq]] wrote a literary biography of Lovecraft called ''[[H.P. Lovecraft: Against the World, Against Life]]''. Shades of Lovecraft surface throughout Houellebecq's work. Prolific American writer [[Joyce Carol Oates]] wrote an introduction for a collection of Lovecraft stories. In 2005 Lovecraft was somewhat controversially given a volume in the [[Library of America]] series, essentially declaring him a [[canonical]] great American writer. While he's invoked as a godfather to fantastical genres, his thematics — surely some of the bleakest "realism" ever conveyed — have also sown strange offspring.
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| − | Other authors have written stories that are explicitly set in the same reality as Lovecraft's original stories. Lovecraft [[pastiche]]s are common. Lovecraft's characteristic devices — like the object that drives one insane upon seeing it — are now [[eponymous]].
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| − | He also held responsibility for the invention of the philosophy "[[Cosmicism]]" which was reflected in many works beyond his own, including the ''[[Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy]]'' series and movies like ''[[The Day the Earth Stood Still]]''.
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| − | A number of [[heavy metal music|heavy metal bands]], including [[Blue Oyster Cult]], [[Black Sabbath]], [[Dark Moor]], [[Metallica]], [[Morbid Angel]], [[Nile (band)|Nile]], [[Electric Wizard]], [[Philosopher (band)|Philosopher]], [[Aarni]], [[Dragonland]], [[Bal-Sagoth]], [[Crypticus]], [[1349 (band)|1394]] and [[Vesania]] have been influenced lyrically by Lovecraft's work. One band chose its name from a chapter title in The Case of Charles Dexter Ward, A Nightmare & A Cataclysm. British metal band [[Cradle of Filth]] released an album in 2002 entitled "''Lovecraft and Witch Hearts''." On the inside cover is part of a poem by H. P. Lovecraft, and reads as follows:<br>
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| − | :For here, apart, dwells one whose hands have wrought<br>
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| − | :Strange eidola that chill the world with fear;<br>
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| − | :Whose graven runes in tomes of dread have taught<br>
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| − | :What things beyond the star-gulfs lurk and leer.<br>
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| − | :Dark Lord of Averoigne - whose windows stare<br>
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| − | :On pits of dream no other gaze could bear!"<br>
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| − | The ''[[Live After Death]]'' album from [[Iron Maiden]] shows [[Eddie the Head]] on a stormy night rising from his grave. His gravestone has a quote from Lovecraft: "''That is not dead, which can eternal lie. Yet with strange eons, even death may die''", a quote also present in the lyrics of "The Thing That Should Not Be", by [[Metallica]].
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| − | A few non-metal bands have also used Lovecraftian sources, including [[The Vaselines]] and [[The Darkest of the Hillside Thickets]]. Australian hiphop group [[Nick Sweepah & Aux One]] include references to Lovecraft and the Cthulu mythos on their self-titled EP of 2005.
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| − | Lovecraft's style of horror has been implemented in many video games; including ''[[Clive Barker's Undying]]'', ''[[Eternal Darkness: Sanity's Requiem]]'', ''[[Alone in the Dark]]'', ''[[Call of Cthulhu: Dark Corners of the Earth]]'', and [[Tales of Symphonia]]. | + | Back in Providence, Lovecraft lived in a "spacious brown Victorian wooden house" until 1933. The period after his return to Providence—the last decade of his life—was Lovecraft's most prolific. During this time period he produced almost all of his best-known short stories for the leading pulp publications of the day, as well as longer efforts like ''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." |
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| − | There have also been detailed references to the Cthulhu mythos in current and near current science fiction for example Babylon 5 Thirdspace and the Doctor Who new adventures novels.
| + | Despite his best writing efforts, however, he grew ever poorer. He was forced to move to smaller and meaner lodgings with his surviving aunt. In 1936, he was diagnosed with cancer of the intestine and he also suffered from malnutrition. He lived in constant pain, until his death on March 15, 1937, in Providence. |
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| | + | ==Works== |
| | + | H. P. Lovecraft’s name is virtually synonymous with American style horror fiction; his writing, particularly his so-called “Cthulhu Mythos,” has influenced authors worldwide, and Lovecraftian elements can be seen in novels, movies, comic books, and even cartoons which take science-fiction and horror as their subjects. Many modern horror writers—such as [[Stephen King]], Bentley Little, and Joe R. Lansdale—have cited Lovecraft as one of their primary influences. |
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| − | Lovecraft's ideas have also sprung up as a manifestation in the character Morgan, a little girl in the ongoing webstory Mr Magnifico's Magnificent Murder Mystery Memories. | + | ===Publication history=== |
| | + | For most of the twentieth 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 just released the "definitive edition" of Lovecraft's ''At the Mountains of Madness''. |
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| − | ==Survey of the work==
| + | Lovecraft's poetry is collected in ''The Ancient Track: The Complete Poetical Works of H. P. Lovecraft,'' while much of his juvenilia, various essays on philosophical, political, and literary topics, antiquarian travelogues, and other things, can be found in ''Miscellaneous Writings''. Lovecraft's essay "Supernatural Horror in Literature," first published in 1927, is a historical survey of horror literature available with endnotes as ''The Annotated Supernatural Horror in Literature''. |
| − | 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 just released the "definitive edition" of Lovecraft's ''[[At the Mountains of Madness]]'' (also including "[[Supernatural Horror in Literature]]").
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| − | Lovecraft's poetry is collected in ''The Ancient Track: The Complete Poetical Works of H. P. Lovecraft'', while much of his juvenilia, various essays on philosophical, political and literary topics, antiquarian travelogues, and other things, can be found in ''Miscellaneous Writings''. Lovecraft's essay "Supernatural Horror in Literature", first published in 1927, is a historical survey of horror literature available with endnotes as ''The Annotated Supernatural Horror in Literature''. | |
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| | ===Letters=== | | ===Letters=== |
| − | 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. [[S. T. Joshi]] estimates that Lovecraft wrote about 87,500 letters from 1912 until his death in 1937, including one 70-page letter from [[November 9]], [[1929]], to Woodburn Harris. | + | 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]]. S. T. Joshi estimates that Lovecraft wrote about 87,500 letters from 1912, until his death in 1937, including one 70-page letter from November 9, 1929, to Woodburn Harris. |
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| − | Lovecraft was not a very active letter-writer in youth. In 1931 he admitted: "In youth I scarcely did any letter-writing — thanking anybody for a present was so much of an ordeal that I would rather have written a two hundred fifty-line pastoral or a twenty-page treatise on the rings of Saturn." (SL 3.369–70). The initial interest in letters stemmed from his correspondence with his cousin Phillips Gamwell but even more important was his involvement in the amateur journalism movement, which was responsible for the enormous number of letters Lovecraft produced.
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| − | Lovecraft clearly states that his contact to numerous different people through letter-writing was one of the main factors in broadening his view of the world: "I found myself opened up to dozens of points of view which would otherwise never have occurred to me. My understanding and sympathies were enlarged, and many of my social, political, and economic views were modified as a consequence of increased knowledge." (SL 4.389).
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| − | Today there are four publishing houses that have released letters from Lovecraft, most prominently [[Arkham House]] with its five-volume edition ''Selected Letters.'' Other publishers are [[Hippocampus Press]] (''Letters to Alfred Galpin'' ''et al.''), [[Night Shade Books]] (''Mysteries of Time and Spirit: The Letters of H. P. Lovecraft and Donald Wandrei'' ''et al''.) and [[Necronomicon Press]] (''Letters to Samuel Loveman and Vincent Starrett'' et al).
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| − | ===Intellectual property===
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| − | There is controversy over the [[copyright]] status of many of Lovecraft's works, especially his later works. Lovecraft had specified that the young [[Robert Barlow]] would serve as executor of his [[literary estate]], but these instructions had not been incorporated into his will. Nevertheless his surviving aunt carried out his expressed wishes, and Barlow was given charge of the massive and complex literary estate upon Lovecraft's death.
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| − | Barlow deposited the bulk of the papers, including the voluminous correspondence, with the John Hay Library. However, as a young writer with no legal training, his efforts to organize and maintain Lovecraft's other writing stood little chance of success. [[August Derleth]], an older and more established writer than Barlow, vied for control of the literary estate. One result of these conflicts was the legal confusion over who owned what copyrights.
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| − | All works published before 1923 are [[public domain]] in the US. However, there is some disagreement over who exactly owns or owned the copyrights and whether the copyrights for the majority of Lovecraft's works published post-1923 — including such prominent pieces as "[[The Call of Cthulhu]]" and "[[At the Mountains of Madness]]" — have now expired.
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| − | Questions center over whether copyrights for Lovecraft's works were ever renewed under the terms of the [[United States|U.S.]] [[Copyright Act of 1976]] for works created prior to [[January 1]] [[1978]]. The problem comes from the fact that before the Copyright Act of 1976 the number of years a work was copyrighted in the US was based on ''publication'' rather than life of the author plus a certain number of years and that it was only good for 28 years with one renewal for an additional 28 years with the Copyright Act of 1976 retroactively extended all works renewed to a period of 47 years <ref>[ftp://rtfm.mit.edu/pub/usenet/news.answers/law/copyright/faq/part2 Copyright Basics by Terry Carroll 1994]</ref> and [[Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act]] of 1998 adding another 20 years to that. Similarly, the [[European Union]] [[Directive on harmonising the term of copyright protection]] of 1993 extended the copyrights to 70 years after the author's death, which would be 2007.
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| − | In those [[Berne Convention for the Protection of Literary and Artistic Works|Berne Convention]] countries who have implemented only the minimum copyright period, copyright expires 50 years after the author's death.
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| − | Lovecraft protégés and part owners of Arkham House, August Derleth and [[Donald Wandrei]], often claimed copyrights over Lovecraft's works. On [[October 9]], [[1947]], Derleth purchased all rights to ''[[Weird Tales]]''. However, since April 1926 at the latest, Lovecraft had reserved all second printing rights to stories published in ''Weird Tales''. Hence, ''Weird Tales'' may only have owned the rights to at most six of Lovecraft's tales. Again, even if Derleth did obtain the copyrights to Lovecraft's tales, no evidence as yet has been found that the copyrights were renewed.<ref>[http://phantasmal.sourceforge.net/Innsmouth/LovecraftCopyright.html Lovecraft Copyright]</ref>
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| − | Prominent Lovecraft scholar S. T. Joshi concludes in his biography, ''H.P. Lovecraft: A Life'', that Derleth's claims are "almost certainly fictitious" and that most of Lovecraft's works published in the amateur press are most likely now in the public domain. The copyright for Lovecraft's works would have been inherited by the only surviving heir of his 1912 will: Lovecraft's aunt, [[Annie Gamwell]]. Gamwell herself perished in 1941 and the copyrights then passed to her remaining descendants, [[Ethel Phillips Morrish]] and Edna Lewis. Morrish and Lewis then signed a document, sometimes referred to as the Morrish-Lewis gift, permitting [[Arkham House]] to republish Lovecraft's works but retaining the copyrights for themselves. Searches of the [[Library of Congress]] have failed to find any evidence that these copyrights were then renewed after the 28-year period and, hence, it is likely that these works are now in the public domain.
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| − | According to an essay by [[Peter Ruber]], the current editor of Arkham House, called "The Un-Demonizing of August Derleth", certain letters obtained in June 1998 detail the Derleth-Wandrei acquisition of Lovecraft's estate. It is unclear whether these letters contradict Joshi's views on Lovecraft's copyrights.[http://www.epberglund.com/RGttCM/nightscapes/NS15/ns15nf01.htm]
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| − | [[Chaosium]], publishers of the [[Call of Cthulhu (role-playing game)|Call of Cthulhu role-playing game]], have a [[trademark]] on several Lovecraftian phrases and creations, including "The Call of Cthulhu", for use in game products. Another RPG publisher, [[TSR, Inc.]], original publisher of [[Dungeons & Dragons|Advanced Dungeons & Dragons]], included in one of that game's earlier supplements, ''[[Deities & Demigods]]'', a section on the Cthulhu Mythos; TSR, Inc. later agreed to remove this section from subsequent editions because of Chaosium's intellectual property interests in the work.
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| − | Regardless of the legal disagreements surrounding Lovecraft's works, Lovecraft himself was extremely generous with his own works and actively encouraged others to borrow ideas from his stories, particularly with regard to his Cthulhu mythos. By "wide citation" he hoped to give his works an "air of verisimilitude", and actively encouraged other writers to reference his creations, such as the ''[[Necronomicon]]'', Cthulhu and Yog-Sothoth. After his death, many writers have contributed stories and enriched the shared mythology of the Cthulhu Mythos, as well as making numerous references to his work. (See [[Cthulhu Mythos in popular culture]].)
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| − | ==Parodies==
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| − | Lovecraft's style and subject matter have leant themselves to numerous parodies within the science fiction and horror genres. Among the more notable are:
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| − | *[[Peter Cannon]]'s "Scream for Jeeves" (which combines Lovecraft with [[P. G. Wodehouse]]); these and several other Lovecraft parodies were later collected in ''Forever Azathoth and Other Horrors''
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| − | *[[Arthur C. Clarke]]'s "At the Mountains of Murkiness" (reprinted in George Locke's parody collection of the same name)
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| − | *[[George Alec Effinger]]'s "Maureen Birnbaum at the Looming Awfulness"
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| − | *[[Terry Pratchett]]'s ''[[The Light Fantastic]]'' and [[Moving Pictures (novel)|''Moving Pictures'']]
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| − | *[[Lawrence Watt-Evans]]'s "Pickman's Modem".
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| − | *[[Howard Waldrop]] (as [[M. M. Moamrath]])'s "Cthulhublanca"
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| − | *[[Mark E. Rogers]] spoofed the Cthulhu mythos in his book ''[[Samurai Cat]]''.
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| − | *[[Neil Gaiman]]'s "A Study in Emerald," a Hugo-winning short story combining H.P. Lovecraft and [[Arthur Conan Doyle]]'s [[Sherlock Holmes]]. and a web exclusive on his site, I, CTHULHU[http://www.neilgaiman.com/exclusive/shortstories/chulthhustory]
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| − | Several other tales have been published by various authors using the M. M. Moamrath ''nom de plume''.
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| − | == Locations featured in Lovecraft stories ==
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| − | Lovecraft drew extensively from his native New England for settings in his fiction. Numerous real historical locations are mentioned, and several fictional New England locations make frequent appearances. (See [[Lovecraft Country]].)
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| − | === Historical locations ===
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| − | * [[Copp's Hill]], [[Boston, Massachusetts]]
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| − | * [[Red Line (MBTA)]]
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| − | * [[Cranston, Rhode Island|Pawtuxet]] (not extant)
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| − | * [[Newburyport, Massachusetts]]
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| − | * [[Ipswich, Massachusetts]]
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| − | * [[Salem, Massachusetts]]
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| − | * Many locations within his hometown of [[Providence, Rhode Island]], including the (then purportedly haunted) Halsey House, Prospect Terrace, and [[Brown University|Brown University's]] John Hay Library and John Carter Brown Library.
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| − | * [[Danvers State Hospital]], in [[Danvers, Massachusetts]], which is largely believed to have served as inspiration for the infamous [[Arkham]] sanitarium from "[[The Thing on the Doorstep]]".
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| − | * [[Catskills|Catskill Mountains, New York]]
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| − | === Fictional locations ===
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| − | * [[Miskatonic University]] in the fictional [[Arkham]], [[Massachusetts]]
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| − | * [[Dunwich (Lovecraft)|Dunwich]], [[Massachusetts]]
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| − | * [[Innsmouth]], [[Massachusetts]]
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| − | * [[Kingsport (Lovecraft)|Kingsport]], [[Massachusetts]]
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| − | * [[Aylesbury, Massachusetts]]
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| − | == Bibliography ==
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| − | {{Wikiquote}}
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| − | {{Wikisource author}}
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| − | See: [[List of works by H. P. Lovecraft]]
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| − | ==Adaptations==
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| − | ===Television===
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| − | *[[Rod Serling]]'s 1969-1973 series, ''[[Night Gallery]]'', adapted at least two Lovecraft stories, "Pickman's Model" and "Cool Air". The episode "Professor Peabody's Last Lecture", concerning the fate of a man who read the ''Necronomicon,'' includes a student named "Mr. Lovecraft". Another five-minute short is called "Ms. Lovecraft Sent Me", about a babysitter and her strange client.
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| − | *''Out of Mind: The Stories of H.P. Lovecraft'' (1998), a Lovecraft sampler shown on ''[[Bravo!]]'' ([http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0213968/ IMDb entry])
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| − | *''Rough Magik'' (2000), [[BBC]] pilot for a Call of Cthulhu show starring Paul Darrow, a la ''[[The X-Files]].'' ([http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0459531/ IMDb entry])
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| − | * The "H.P. Lovecraft's Dreams in the Witch-House" episode of ''[[Masters of Horror]]'' is based on the story and directed by [[Stuart Gordon]], who also directed ''Re-Animator'', ''From Beyond'' and ''Dagon''.
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| − | ===Movies=== | + | ===Fiction=== |
| − | <!-- ***PLEASE***, do not add movies here which are merely "Lovecraftian" (see "Lovecraftian horror") or which make references to the Mythos (see "Cthulhu Mythos in popular culture"), as those are cataloged elsewhere already. This section is purely for adaptations of Lovecraft's work or biographical films. If you're not sure, check the above-mentioned two pages and see if the film is listed there. Then check the IMDB to see if Lovecraft is given story credit for the film. —>
| + | [[Image:R'lyeh map.png|thumb|250px|Location of R'Lyeh, a fictional city that appeared in the writings of H. P. Lovecraft (†1937).]] |
| | + | ===="The Call of Cthulhu"==== |
| | + | "The Call of Cthulhu" is one of Lovecraft's best-known short stories and a superb example of his mature, gothic style. Written in the summer of 1926, it was first published in ''Weird Tales,'' in February 1928. It is the only story penned by Lovecraft in which the extraterrestrial entity Cthulhu, an insane alien god who plays a central role in Lovecraft's horror mythos, makes a major appearance. |
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| − | This is a partial list of films based (generally ''very'' loosely) on specific Lovecraft works. See {{imdbname|0522454|H.P. Lovecraft}} for a more complete selection.
| + | It is written in a documentary style, with three independent narratives linked together through the device of a narrator discovering notes left by a deceased relative. The narrator pieces together the whole truth and disturbing significance of the information he possesses, illustrating the story's first line: "The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents." |
| − | *''[[Kammaren]]'' (2007), a Swedish movie inspired by H.P. Lovecraft.
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| − | *''[[Beyond the Wall of Sleep (film)|Beyond the Wall of Sleep]]'' (2006). ([http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0279688/ IMDb entry])
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| − | *''[[Cthulhu (film)|Cthulhu]]'' (2006) is based on the short story "The Shadow Over Innsmouth"
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| − | *''[[Read Me a Story]]'' (2005), directed by unfilmable.com's [[Craig Mullins (II)]].
| |
| − | *''[[The Call of Cthulhu (film)|The Call of Cthulhu]]'' (2005), a short, silent, black-and-white adaptation.
| |
| − | *''[[The Dreams in the Witch House (film)|The Dreams in the Witch House]]'' (2005) premiered on [[Showtime]]'s ''[[Masters of Horror]]'' film series.
| |
| − | *''[[The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath (film)|The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath]]'' (2003), an animated adaptation ([http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0384057/ IMDb entry])
| |
| − | *''[[13:de mars, 1941]]'' (2004), a Swedish shortmovie inspired by ''[[the Statement of Randolph Carter]]''.
| |
| − | *''[[Dagon (film)|Dagon]]'' (2001), directed by Stuart Gordon, based less on Lovecraft's story of the same name than on "The Shadow Over Innsmouth" transplanted to a modern Spanish fishing village.
| |
| − | *''[[Nyarlathotep (film)|Nyarlathotep]]'' (2001) is a short film based on the story of the same name ([http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0325913/combined IMDB Entry]).
| |
| − | *''[[Cthulhu (film)|Cthulhu]]'' (2000) is based on the short stories "Call of Cthulhu" and "The Dunwich Horror".[http://www.geocities.com/Hollywood/Academy/4859/]
| |
| − | *''[[Cool Air (film)|Cool Air]]'' (1998), an adaptation by Bryan Moore starring Jack Donner.
| |
| − | *''[[The Hound (film)|The Hound]]'' (1997), an adaptation by Anthony Penta of H.P. Lovecraft's short story.
| |
| − | *''[[Witch Hunt(film)|Witch Hunt]]'' (1994) ([http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0111730/ IMDB Entry])[[Dennis Hopper]] play a private investigator named H. Phillip Lovecraft. In a twisted 1950s where everyone does magic, a private detective investigates a murder case without it.(follow up to ''[[Cast a Deadly Spell]]'')
| |
| − | *''[[The Lurking Fear (film)|The Lurking Fear]]'' (1994) ([http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0110410/combined IMDB Entry]).
| |
| − | *''[[Necronomicon (film)|Necronomicon]]'' (1994), three short films based on Lovecraft stories ("The Rats in the Walls", "Cool Air", "The Whisperer in Darkness"). This film depicts Lovecraft ([[Jeffrey Combs]]) stealing the ''Necronomicon'' from a religious order.
| |
| − | *''[[The Resurrected]]'' (1992), an adaptation of ''The Case of Charles Dexter Ward'' ([http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0105242/ IMDb entry])
| |
| − | * ''[[Cast a Deadly Spell]]'' (1991) [[Fred Ward]] play a private investigator named Harry Phillip Lovecraft who gets hired to find the Necronomicon.([http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0101550/combined IMDB Entry]).
| |
| − | * ''[[The Unnamable]]'' (1988)a movie about a half demon woman who wreaks terror for some teens who venture into an old house.
| |
| − | *''[[The Curse (film)|The Curse]]'' (1987), an adaptation of "[[The Colour out of Space]]" ([http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0092809/ IMDb entry])
| |
| − | *''[[From Beyond]]'' (1986) directed by Stuart Gordon.
| |
| − | *''[[Re-Animator]]'' (1985) is an adaptation of "Herbert West—Re-Animator", directed by Stuart Gordon, that has three sequels.
| |
| − | *''[[The Dunwich Horror (film)|The Dunwich Horror]]'' (1970) ([http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0065669/ IMDb entry])
| |
| − | *''Curse of the Crimson Altar'' (1968) is based on "The Dreams in the Witch House."
| |
| − | * ''[[The Shuttered Room]]'' (1967), an adaptation in which the creature in hiding is changed from a [[Deep One]]/human hybrid to a deformed insane person.
| |
| − | *''[[Die, Monster, Die!]]'' (1965), another adaptation of "The Colour out of Space" ([http://imdb.com/title/tt0059465/ IMDb entry])
| |
| − | *''[[The Haunted Palace]]'' (1963), an adaptation of ''The Case of Charles Dexter Ward''
| |
| | | | |
| − | ===Theatre=== | + | =====Plot summary===== |
| | + | {{spoilers}} |
| | + | The story is presented as a manuscript "found among the papers of the late Francis Wayland Thurston, of Boston." In the text, Thurston recounts his discovery of notes left behind by his grand-uncle, George Gammell Angell, a prominent professor of [[Semitic languages]] at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island, who died suddenly in "the winter of 1926–27" after being "jostled by a nautical-looking negro." |
| | | | |
| − | *[[Open Circle Theater]] in the [[Lake Union]] neighborhood of [[Seattle, Washington]] adapts and produces a Lovecraft play (usually interlocking stories) every year.
| + | ====="The Horror in Clay"===== |
| | | | |
| − | ===Radio production===
| + | The first part of the story, "The Horror in Clay," concerns a small bas-relief sculpture found among the papers, which the narrator describes: "My somewhat extravagant imagination yielded simultaneous pictures of an octopus, a dragon, and a human caricature…. A pulpy, tentacled head surmounted a grotesque and scaly body with rudimentary wings." |
| − | *''The Call of Cthulhu'' (Broadcast in Tasmania on Lovecraft's 100th birthday)
| |
| − | *''Jeffrey Combs reads Herbert West—Reanimator'' (Audio book CD by Beyond Books/[[Lurker Films]])
| |
| − | *''At the Mountains of Madness'' ([[Atlanta Radio Theater Company]])
| |
| − | *''The Dunwich Horror'' (Atlanta Radio Theater Company)
| |
| − | *''The Rats in the Walls'' (Atlanta Radio Theater Company)
| |
| − | *''The Shadow Over Innsmouth'' (Atlanta Radio Theater Company)
| |
| − | *''The Dunwich Horror'' ([[Suspense (radio program)|Suspense]] 1942-62)[http://www.themonsterclub.com/451105%20The%20Dunwich%20Horror.mp3]
| |
| | | | |
| − | ===Videogames===
| + | The sculpture turns out to be the work of Henry Anthony Wilcox, a student at the Rhode Island School of Design who based the work on his dreams of "great Cyclopean cities of titan blocks and sky-flung monoliths, all dripping with green ooze and sinister with latent horror." These images are associated in the dreams with the words ''Cthulhu'' and ''R'lyeh''. |
| − | [[Call of Cthulhu: Dark Corners of the Earth]] is an amalgamation of elements from several different Lovecraftian short stories. The game takes particular references to "The Shadow Out of Time" and "The Shadow Over Innsmouth" as the main influences of the story. Characters featured in Call of Cthulhu role-playing game Escape From Innsmouth make an appearance in the game, and several scenarios taken from Escape From Innsmouth (such as a raid on the Marsh gold refinery) are utilized.
| |
| | | | |
| − | [[Eternal Darkness: Sanity's Requiem]] is a psychological horror video game, largely inspired by (but not directly adapting) the works of H.P. Lovecraft. Developed by Canadian developer Silicon Knights, it was released on June 24, 2002 and published by Nintendo exclusively for the Nintendo GameCube.
| + | Wilcox's dreams began on March 1, 1925, culminating in a period from March 23 until April 2, when Wilcox was in a state of delirium. During the same period, Angell's research reveals, there were cases of "outre mental illnesses and outbreaks of group folly or mania" around the world. |
| | | | |
| − | In [[The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion]], one miscellaneous mission entitled "A Shadow over Hackdirt" is an adaptation of H.P. Lovecraft's "A Shadow Over Innsmouth." In the mission, you must travel to a mostly deserted town inhabited by several villagers and 'The Brethren'. The villagers make mention of 'Deep Ones' (strange frog-like creatures featured in Lovecraft's tale) that are going to help them bring the town back to life, and in the chapel a book entitled 'Bible of the Deep Ones' can be found. If you look closely, the 'Brethren' resemble Deep One hybrids; they have enlarged eyes and a strange, frog-like look to them, and they are all immune to frost. Additionally, if you stay in the caverns beneath the town long enough, you can hear strange, alien noises, presumably the Deep Ones.
| + | ====="The Tale of Inspector Legrasse"===== |
| | | | |
| − | The [[Gamecube]] and [[Playstation 2]] game [[Tales of Symphonia]] features a side-quest where you must obtain a book entitled [[Necronomicon]]. | + | In the second part of the story, "The Tale of Inspector Legrasse," Angell's notes reveal that the professor had heard the word ''Cthulhu'' and seen a similar image much earlier. At the 1908 meeting of the American Archeological Society in St. Louis, Missouri, a [[New Orleans]] police official named John Raymond Legrasse had asked the assembled antiquarians to identify a statuette, made of an unidentifiable greenish-black stone, that "had been captured some months before in the wooded swamps south of New Orleans during a raid on a supposed [[voodoo]] meeting." The "idol, [[Fetishism|fetish]], or whatever it was" closely resembled the Wilcox bas-relief: |
| | | | |
| − | Deanimator [http://artscool.cfa.cmu.edu/~lee/deanimator.html] is a survival shooter game based on the stories of H.P. Lovecraft.
| + | <blockquote>It represented a monster of vaguely anthropoid outline, but with an octopus-like head whose face was a mass of feelers, a scaly, rubbery-looking body, prodigious claws on hind and fore feet, and long, narrow wings behind. This thing, which seemed instinct with a fearsome and unnatural malignancy, was of a somewhat bloated corpulence, and squatted evilly on a rectangular block or pedestal covered with undecipherable characters.<ref>Lovecraft, "The Call of Cthulhu," p. 133-134.</ref></blockquote> |
| | | | |
| − | Also, the game series [[Shin Megami Tensei]] is heavily based on Lovecraft lore, especially the spin-off [[Persona (video game)|Persona]] series.
| + | Legrasse had led a party in search of several women and children who disappeared from a squatter community. The police found the victims' "oddly marred" bodies being used in a ritual that centered on the statuette, about which roughly 100 men—all of a "very low, mixed-blooded, and mentally aberrant type"—were "braying, bellowing, and writhing," repeatedly chanting the phrase, "''Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn.''" |
| | | | |
| − | Additionally Infogrames produced two 'point and click' adventure games for PC based on the Cthulhu Mythos in the mid-nineties: [[Prisoner of Ice]] and [[Shadow of the Comet]]
| + | Legrasse interrogated the prisoners and learned "the central idea of their loathsome faith:" |
| | | | |
| − | [[Alone in the Dark]] ([[1992]]) is a survival horror video game that is heavily influenced by the works of [[H.P. Lovecraft]]. The occult tomes found in the mansion's library include the [[Necronomicon]] and [[De Vermis Mysteriis]], both taken from Lovecraft's [[Cthulhu Mythos]]. Other mythos references include books that feature the narrated history of Lord Boleskine, a direct reference to another [[Infogrames]] [[Cthulhu Mythos]] based game, [[Shadow of the Comet]], and the last name of player character Edward Carnby, a reference to John Carnby, a character in the mythos tale "Return of the Sorcerer" by [[Clark Ashton Smith]]. Several of the supernatural opponents are recognisable creatures from the Mythos, including [[Deep Ones]], [[Nightgaunts]] and a [[Chthonian (Cthulhu Mythos)|Chthonian]].
| + | <blockquote>They worshiped, so they said, the Great Old Ones who lived ages before there were any men, and who came to the young world out of the sky. Those Old Ones were gone now, inside the earth and under the sea; but their dead bodies had told their secrets in dreams to the first men, who formed a cult which had never died…hidden in distant wastes and dark places all over the world until the time when the great priest Cthulhu, from his dark house in the mighty city of R'lyeh under the waters, should rise and bring the earth again beneath his sway. Some day he would call, when the stars were ready, and the secret cult would always be waiting to liberate him.</blockquote> |
| | | | |
| − | Focus Home Interactive and PMD Logisoft released the e-game Sherlock Holmes - Lathe Awakened, which as its title implies places the character as [[Sherlock Holmes]] as a protagonist battling against a sect of disciples of Cthulhu in a decidedly H.P. Lovecraft setting.
| + | The prisoners identified the statuette as "great Cthulhu," and translated the chanted phrase as "In his house at R'lyeh dead Cthulhu waits dreaming." |
| | | | |
| − | ==Further reading==
| + | Thurston, the narrator, notes that at this point in his investigation, "My attitude was still one of absolute materialism, ''as I wish it still were''."<ref>Lovecraft, "The Call of Cthulhu," p. 144.</ref> |
| − | In the past few decades, the number of books ''about'' Lovecraft has increased considerably. Also, Lovecraft's stories themselves have enjoyed a veritable publishing renaissance in recent years. The titles mentioned below are a small sampling.
| |
| | | | |
| − | ''The Gentleman From Angell Street: Memories of H.P. Lovecraft'' ( ISBN 0-9701699-1-4), written by Muriel and C.M. Eddy, is a collection of personal remembrances and ancedotes from two of Lovecraft's closest friends in Providence. The Eddys were fellow writers, and Mr. Eddy was a frequent contributor to ''Weird Tales.''
| + | ====="The Madness From the Sea"===== |
| | | | |
| − | ''[[Lovecraft: A Look Behind the Cthulhu Mythos]]'' (ISBN 0-586-04166-4), written by [[Lin Carter]] in 1972, is a survey of Lovecraft's work (along with that of other members of the Lovecraft Circle) with considerable information on his life; it's now available in an updated edition (ISBN 1-55742-253-2 hc, ISBN 1-55742-252-4 pb) co-authored by [[Robert M. Price]]. | + | In the third part of the story, "The Madness From the Sea," Thurston extends the inquiry into the "Cthulhu Cult" beyond what Professor Angell had discovered. He discovers by chance an article from the ''Sydney Bulletin,'' an Australian newspaper, for April 18, 1925, that reported the discovery of a derelict ship in the Pacific Ocean with only one survivor—Norwegian sailor Gustaf Johansen, second mate on the schooner ''Emma'' out of Auckland, New Zealand which on March 23, encountered an island in the vicinity of 47° 9' S, 126° 43' W, even though there are no charted islands in that area. Most of the remaining crew died on the island, but Johansen is said to be "queerly reticent" about what happened to them. |
| | | | |
| − | The first full-length biography was ''[[Lovecraft: a Biography]]'' (ISBN 0-345-25115-6), written by [[L. Sprague de Camp]], published in 1975, and now [[out of print]]. [[Frank Belknap Long]]'s ''[[Howard Phillips Lovecraft: Dreamer on the Nightside]]'' ([[Arkham House]], 1975, ISBN 0-87054-068-8) presents a more personal look at Lovecraft's life, combining reminiscence, biography, and literary criticism. Long was a friend and correspondent of Lovecraft, as well as a fellow fantasist who wrote a number of Lovecraft-influenced Cthulhu Mythos stories (including ''The Hounds of Tindalos'').
| + | When Johansen's widow gives Thurston a manuscript that her husband left behind, the narrator learns of the crew's discovery of the uncharted island which is described as "a coast-line of mingled mud, ooze, and weedy Cyclopean masonry which can be nothing less than the tangible substance of earth's supreme terror—the nightmare corpse-city of R'lyeh." Exploring the risen land, which is "abnormal, non-Euclidian, and loathsomely redolent of spheres and dimensions apart from ours," the sailors manage to open a "monstrously carven portal," and from |
| | | | |
| − | A newer, more extensive biography is ''H. P. Lovecraft: A Life'' (ISBN 0-940884-88-7) written by Lovecraft scholar [[S. T. Joshi]]. It was for a long time [[out of print]], but has recently been republished by [[Necronomicon Press]], with a new afterword by the author. Used copies of the first edition are rare. An alternative is Joshi's abridged ''A Dreamer & A Visionary: H. P. Lovecraft in His Time'' (ISBN 0-85323-946-0). Most recently, an English translation of [[Michel Houellebecq]]'s ''H. P. Lovecraft: Against the World, Against Life'' (ISBN 1-932416-18-8) was published by Believer Books in 2005.
| + | <blockquote>the newly opened depths…It lumbered slobberingly into sight and gropingly squeezed Its gelatinous green immensity through the black doorway…. The stars were right again, and what an age-old cult had failed to do by design, a band of innocent sailors had done by accident. After vigintillions of years great Cthulhu was loose again, and ravening for delight.</blockquote> |
| | | | |
| − | Other significant Lovecraft-related works are ''[[An H. P. Lovecraft Encyclopedia]]'' and ''Lovecraft's Library: A Catalogue'' (a meticulous listing of many of the books in Lovecraft's now scattered library), both by Joshi, and ''Lovecraft at Last,'' an account by [[Willis Conover]] of his teenage correspondence with Lovecraft. For those interested in studying in detail Lovecraft's writings and philosophy, Joshi's ''A Subtler Magick: The Writings and Philosophy of H. P. Lovecraft'' is useful both for the analysis it provides and for the thorough bibliography appended to it. [[Andrew Migliore]] and John Strysik's ''Lurker in the Lobby: A Guide to the Cinema of H. P. Lovecraft'' and [[Charles P. Mitchell]]'s ''The Complete H. P. Lovecraft Filmography'' both discuss films containing Lovecraftian elements.
| + | Thurston (or Johansen) writes that "(T)he Thing cannot be described," though the story does call it "the green, sticky spawn of the stars," and refers to its "flabby claws" and "awful squid-head with writhing feelers." Hinting at its scale, the story says, "A mountain walked or stumbled." Johansen manages to get back to the yacht. |
| | | | |
| − | Lovecraft's prose fiction has been published numerous times, but even after the "corrected texts" were released by Arkham House in the 1980s, many non-definitive collections of his stories have appeared, including Ballantine Books editions and, also, three popular Del Rey editions, which nonetheless have interesting introductions. The three collections published by Penguin, ''[[The Call of Cthulhu and Other Weird Stories]]'', ''[[The Thing on the Doorstep and Other Weird Stories]]'', and ''[[Dreams in the Witch House and Other Weird Stories]]'', incorporate the modifications made in the corrected texts as well as the thorough annotation provided by Joshi.
| + | After reading this manuscript, Thurston ends his own narrative on a pessimistic note: "Loathsomeness waits and dreams in the deep, and decay spreads over the tottering cities of men." He assumes that he will soon meet the fate of Angell and Johansen: "I know too much, and the cult still lives." |
| | + | {{endspoiler}} |
| | | | |
| − | Lovecraft's "revisions" or ghost-written works are compiled in ''The Horror in the Museum and Other Revisions'', edited again by Joshi.
| + | ==Notes== |
| | + | <references/> |
| | | | |
| − | Many readers, when they first encounter Lovecraft's works, find his writing style difficult to read — owing, no doubt, to his fondness for adjectives, long paragraphs, and archaic diction. This characteristic style differs greatly from the fashion standards in literature of the early 21st century, most notably the emphasis on transparency. Also, Lovecraft's early 20th century perspective yielded references in his works to objects and ideas that may be unfamiliar to modern readers. Some of Lovecraft's writings, however, are annotated with [[footnote]]s or [[endnote]]s. In addition to the Penguin editions mentioned above and ''The Annotated Supernatural Horror in Literature'', Joshi has produced ''The Annotated H. P. Lovecraft'' as well as ''More Annotated H. P. Lovecraft'', both of which are footnoted extensively.
| + | ==References== |
| − | | + | *Camp, L. Sprague. ''Lovecraft: a Biography'' ISBN 0345251156 |
| − | Lastly, ''The Philosophy of H. P. Lovecraft'' is a study of Lovecraft's use of language to analyze the psychology of Lovecraft's writings.
| + | *Carter, Lin. ''Lovecraft: A Look Behind the Cthulhu Mythos.'' ISBN 0586041664 |
| − | | + | *Eddy, Muriel and C.M. ''The Gentleman From Angell Street: Memories of H.P. Lovecraft.'' ISBN 0970169914 |
| − | ==Footnotes==
| + | *Joshi, S.T. ''H. P. Lovecraft: A Life.'' ISBN 0940884887 |
| − | <!--<nowiki>
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| − | See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Footnotes for an explanation of how to generate footnotes using the <ref> and </ref> tags, and the template below.
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| − | </nowiki>—>
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| − | {{FootnotesSmall|resize={{{1|100%}}}}}
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| − | | |
| − | ==See also==
| |
| − | *[[List of Works by H. P. Lovecraft]]
| |
| | | | |
| | ==External links== | | ==External links== |
| − | {{wikiquote}}
| + | All links retrieved July 22, 2017. |
| − | {{wikisource author}}
| + | *[http://www.hplovecraft.com/ The H. P. Lovecraft Archive] |
| − | *[http://www.hplovecraft.com/ The H. P. Lovecraft Archive] | |
| − | *[http://www.gutenberg.net.au/plusfifty.html#letterL Works at Project Gutenberg Australia]
| |
| | *[http://www.hplfilmfestival.com/ The H.P. Lovecraft Film Festival] | | *[http://www.hplfilmfestival.com/ The H.P. Lovecraft Film Festival] |
| − | *[http://www.lurkerfilms.com/ The H.P. Lovecraft Collection on DVD] Films and scholarly commentary by [[S.T. Joshi]] etc.
| |
| − | *[http://www.themodernword.com/scriptorium/lovecraft.html Essay on Lovecraft by S. T. Joshi]
| |
| − | *[http://www.MythosTomes.com Mythos Tomes] - A website about H.P. Lovecraft and the Cthulhu Mythos
| |
| − | *[http://dir.salon.com/story/books/feature/2005/02/12/lovecraft/index.html Master of Disgust - Salon.com]
| |
| | *[http://books.guardian.co.uk/extracts/story/0,6761,1498708,00.html Extract from Michel Houellebecq's ''HP Lovecraft: Against the World, Against Life''] | | *[http://books.guardian.co.uk/extracts/story/0,6761,1498708,00.html Extract from Michel Houellebecq's ''HP Lovecraft: Against the World, Against Life''] |
| − | *[http://www.bewilderingstories.com/issue208/outsider_article.html Existential Sadness in H.P. Lovecraft’s “The Outsider”] | + | *[http://www.bewilderingstories.com/issue208/outsider_article.html Existential Sadness in H.P. Lovecraft’s “The Outsider”] |
| − | *[http://www.cthulhulives.org The HP Lovecraft Historical Society] | + | *[http://www.cthulhulives.org The HP Lovecraft Historical Society] |
| − | *[http://mysite.verizon.net/hplovecraft/ A Pictorial Bibliography]
| + | |
| − | * {{isfdb name|id=H._P._Lovecraft|name=H. P. Lovecraft}}
| + | [[Category:Writers and poets]] |
| − | *[http://www.angelfire.com/space2/pyrkium/Lovecraft/Lovecraft.htm The Shadow Over Usenet Archives]
| |
| − | *{{cite web | title=Observer review of Houellebecq's "HP Lovecraft: Against the World, Against Life".| url=http://observer.guardian.co.uk/review/story/0,,1820489,00.html}}
| |
| − | *{{cite web | title=New York Review of Books review of the "Tales" collection & Houellebecq's "HP Lovecraft: Against the World, Against Life".| url=http://www.nybooks.com/articles/19454}}
| |
| − | *[http://www.unfilmable.com Unfilmable.com - news on Lovecraft film productions]
| |
| − | *[http://www.ulthar.tk Howard Phillips Lovecraft: The Herald of Ulthar] - Library of works by Lovecraft with size information for each file. Also Lovecraftian links
| |
| − | *[http://books.guardian.co.uk/departments/sciencefiction/story/0,,1498709,00.html The Myth Maker] essay on Lovecraft at the [[Guardian Unlimited]] book review
| |
| − | *[http://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=gr&GRid=1188 H.P. Lovecraft at Findagrave]
| |
| − | *[http://www.centrostudilaruna.it/schwarzlovecraft.html Martin Schwarz, H. P. Lovecraft - Man and Myth]
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| | | | |
| − | [[Category: Art, music, literature, sports and leisure]]
| + | {{credit2|H.P._Lovecraft|109371091|The_Call_of_Cthulhu|105054554}} |
| − | {{credit|109371091}} | |
Howard Phillips Lovecraft
Howard Phillips Lovecraft (August 20, 1890 – March 15, 1937) was an American author of fantasy, horror, and science fiction, who is now widely recognized as one of the most influential and widely-read authors of popular fiction of all time. Although Lovecraft's readership was limited during his life, since his death he has gained a massive and devoted following of readers who have been captivated by his gripping tales of the supernatural. Amongst scholars, Lovecraft is considered to be an exemplar of a uniquely American strain of gothic fiction, tracing its roots back to Edgar Allen Poe. Deeply influenced by Poe, as well as by Hawthorne, Lovecraft, like his forebears, created an entirely alternate world of sheer imagination that remains one of the most engaging oeuvres of fiction ever created.
Biography
Early life
Lovecraft was born on August 20, 1890, in Providence, Rhode Island. He was the only child of Winfield Scott Lovecraft, a traveling salesman of jewelry and precious metals, and Sarah Susan Phillips Lovecraft, a woman who could trace her ancestry in America back to the Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1630. His parents married later in life, when they were both in their thirties, unusual for the era. In 1893, when Lovecraft was three, his father became acutely psychotic in a Chicago hotel room while on a business trip. He was brought back to Providence and placed in Butler Hospital, where he remained until his death in 1898.
Lovecraft thereafter was raised by his mother, his two aunts, and his grandfather, Whipple Van Buren Phillips. All resided together in the family home. Lovecraft was a child prodigy, reciting poetry at age two and writing complete poems by six. His grandfather encouraged his reading, providing him with classics such as The Arabian Nights, Bulfinch's Age of Fable, and children's versions of Homer's Iliad and the Odyssey. His grandfather also stirred young Howard's interest in what Lovecraft later referred to as "the weird," by telling him his own original tales of Gothic horror.
Lovecraft was frequently ill as a child, both physically and psychologically. Due to his sickly condition and his undisciplined, argumentative nature he barely attended school until he was eight and then was withdrawn after a year. He read voraciously during this period, becoming especially enamored with chemistry and astronomy. Four years later, he returned to public school at Hope Street High School.
In 1908, prior to his high school graduation, Lovecraft suffered a nervous breakdown and consequently never received his high school diploma. This failure to complete his education (he wished to study at Brown University), was a source of disappointment, and even shame, late into his life.
Lovecraft wrote some fiction as a youth, but from 1908 until 1913, his output was primarily poetry he wrote while living a hermit's existence, having almost no contact with anybody but his mother. This changed when he wrote a letter to The Argosy, a pulp magazine, complaining about the insipidness of the love stories of one of the publication's popular writers. The ensuing debate in the magazine's letters column caught the eye of Edward F. Daas, President of the American Press Association, who invited Lovecraft to join in 1914. The job reinvigorated Lovecraft, inciting him to contribute many poems and essays. In 1917, at the prodding of correspondents, he returned to fiction with more polished stories, such as "The Tomb" and "Dagon."
Marriage and New York
A few weeks after the death of his mother in 1921, Lovecraft attended an amateur journalist convention in Boston, where he met Sonia Greene. Born in 1883, she was of Ukrainian Jewish ancestry and seven years older than Lovecraft. They married in 1924, and the couple moved to New York City. Initially, Lovecraft was enthralled by New York but soon the couple was facing financial difficulties. Lovecraft could not find work to support them both so his wife moved to Cleveland for employment. Lovecraft lived by himself and came to intensely dislike life in New York. (This situation is closely paralleled in the semi-autobiographical "He," as noted by Michel Houellebecq in H. P. Lovecraft: Against the World, Against Life.)
A few years, later he and Greene, still living separately, agreed to an amicable divorce, which was never fully completed. He returned to Providence to live with his aunts during their remaining years.
Return to Providence
Back in Providence, Lovecraft lived in a "spacious brown Victorian wooden house" until 1933. The period after his return to Providence—the last decade of his life—was Lovecraft's most prolific. During this time period he produced almost all of his best-known short stories for the leading pulp publications of the day, as well as longer efforts like 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."
Despite his best writing efforts, however, he grew ever poorer. He was forced to move to smaller and meaner lodgings with his surviving aunt. In 1936, he was diagnosed with cancer of the intestine and he also suffered from malnutrition. He lived in constant pain, until his death on March 15, 1937, in Providence.
Works
H. P. Lovecraft’s name is virtually synonymous with American style horror fiction; his writing, particularly his so-called “Cthulhu Mythos,” has influenced authors worldwide, and Lovecraftian elements can be seen in novels, movies, comic books, and even cartoons which take science-fiction and horror as their subjects. Many modern horror writers—such as Stephen King, Bentley Little, and Joe R. Lansdale—have cited Lovecraft as one of their primary influences.
Publication history
For most of the twentieth 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 just released the "definitive edition" of Lovecraft's At the Mountains of Madness.
Lovecraft's poetry is collected in The Ancient Track: The Complete Poetical Works of H. P. Lovecraft, while much of his juvenilia, various essays on philosophical, political, and literary topics, antiquarian travelogues, and other things, can be found in Miscellaneous Writings. Lovecraft's essay "Supernatural Horror in Literature," first published in 1927, is a historical survey of horror literature available with endnotes as The Annotated Supernatural Horror in Literature.
Letters
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. S. T. Joshi estimates that Lovecraft wrote about 87,500 letters from 1912, until his death in 1937, including one 70-page letter from November 9, 1929, to Woodburn Harris.
Fiction
Location of R'Lyeh, a fictional city that appeared in the writings of H. P. Lovecraft (†1937).
"The Call of Cthulhu"
"The Call of Cthulhu" is one of Lovecraft's best-known short stories and a superb example of his mature, gothic style. Written in the summer of 1926, it was first published in Weird Tales, in February 1928. It is the only story penned by Lovecraft in which the extraterrestrial entity Cthulhu, an insane alien god who plays a central role in Lovecraft's horror mythos, makes a major appearance.
It is written in a documentary style, with three independent narratives linked together through the device of a narrator discovering notes left by a deceased relative. The narrator pieces together the whole truth and disturbing significance of the information he possesses, illustrating the story's first line: "The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents."
Plot summary
The story is presented as a manuscript "found among the papers of the late Francis Wayland Thurston, of Boston." In the text, Thurston recounts his discovery of notes left behind by his grand-uncle, George Gammell Angell, a prominent professor of Semitic languages at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island, who died suddenly in "the winter of 1926–27" after being "jostled by a nautical-looking negro."
"The Horror in Clay"
The first part of the story, "The Horror in Clay," concerns a small bas-relief sculpture found among the papers, which the narrator describes: "My somewhat extravagant imagination yielded simultaneous pictures of an octopus, a dragon, and a human caricature…. A pulpy, tentacled head surmounted a grotesque and scaly body with rudimentary wings."
The sculpture turns out to be the work of Henry Anthony Wilcox, a student at the Rhode Island School of Design who based the work on his dreams of "great Cyclopean cities of titan blocks and sky-flung monoliths, all dripping with green ooze and sinister with latent horror." These images are associated in the dreams with the words Cthulhu and R'lyeh.
Wilcox's dreams began on March 1, 1925, culminating in a period from March 23 until April 2, when Wilcox was in a state of delirium. During the same period, Angell's research reveals, there were cases of "outre mental illnesses and outbreaks of group folly or mania" around the world.
"The Tale of Inspector Legrasse"
In the second part of the story, "The Tale of Inspector Legrasse," Angell's notes reveal that the professor had heard the word Cthulhu and seen a similar image much earlier. At the 1908 meeting of the American Archeological Society in St. Louis, Missouri, a New Orleans police official named John Raymond Legrasse had asked the assembled antiquarians to identify a statuette, made of an unidentifiable greenish-black stone, that "had been captured some months before in the wooded swamps south of New Orleans during a raid on a supposed voodoo meeting." The "idol, fetish, or whatever it was" closely resembled the Wilcox bas-relief:
It represented a monster of vaguely anthropoid outline, but with an octopus-like head whose face was a mass of feelers, a scaly, rubbery-looking body, prodigious claws on hind and fore feet, and long, narrow wings behind. This thing, which seemed instinct with a fearsome and unnatural malignancy, was of a somewhat bloated corpulence, and squatted evilly on a rectangular block or pedestal covered with undecipherable characters.[1]
Legrasse had led a party in search of several women and children who disappeared from a squatter community. The police found the victims' "oddly marred" bodies being used in a ritual that centered on the statuette, about which roughly 100 men—all of a "very low, mixed-blooded, and mentally aberrant type"—were "braying, bellowing, and writhing," repeatedly chanting the phrase, "Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn."
Legrasse interrogated the prisoners and learned "the central idea of their loathsome faith:"
They worshiped, so they said, the Great Old Ones who lived ages before there were any men, and who came to the young world out of the sky. Those Old Ones were gone now, inside the earth and under the sea; but their dead bodies had told their secrets in dreams to the first men, who formed a cult which had never died…hidden in distant wastes and dark places all over the world until the time when the great priest Cthulhu, from his dark house in the mighty city of R'lyeh under the waters, should rise and bring the earth again beneath his sway. Some day he would call, when the stars were ready, and the secret cult would always be waiting to liberate him.
The prisoners identified the statuette as "great Cthulhu," and translated the chanted phrase as "In his house at R'lyeh dead Cthulhu waits dreaming."
Thurston, the narrator, notes that at this point in his investigation, "My attitude was still one of absolute materialism, as I wish it still were."[2]
"The Madness From the Sea"
In the third part of the story, "The Madness From the Sea," Thurston extends the inquiry into the "Cthulhu Cult" beyond what Professor Angell had discovered. He discovers by chance an article from the Sydney Bulletin, an Australian newspaper, for April 18, 1925, that reported the discovery of a derelict ship in the Pacific Ocean with only one survivor—Norwegian sailor Gustaf Johansen, second mate on the schooner Emma out of Auckland, New Zealand which on March 23, encountered an island in the vicinity of 47° 9' S, 126° 43' W, even though there are no charted islands in that area. Most of the remaining crew died on the island, but Johansen is said to be "queerly reticent" about what happened to them.
When Johansen's widow gives Thurston a manuscript that her husband left behind, the narrator learns of the crew's discovery of the uncharted island which is described as "a coast-line of mingled mud, ooze, and weedy Cyclopean masonry which can be nothing less than the tangible substance of earth's supreme terror—the nightmare corpse-city of R'lyeh." Exploring the risen land, which is "abnormal, non-Euclidian, and loathsomely redolent of spheres and dimensions apart from ours," the sailors manage to open a "monstrously carven portal," and from
the newly opened depths…It lumbered slobberingly into sight and gropingly squeezed Its gelatinous green immensity through the black doorway…. The stars were right again, and what an age-old cult had failed to do by design, a band of innocent sailors had done by accident. After vigintillions of years great Cthulhu was loose again, and ravening for delight.
Thurston (or Johansen) writes that "(T)he Thing cannot be described," though the story does call it "the green, sticky spawn of the stars," and refers to its "flabby claws" and "awful squid-head with writhing feelers." Hinting at its scale, the story says, "A mountain walked or stumbled." Johansen manages to get back to the yacht.
After reading this manuscript, Thurston ends his own narrative on a pessimistic note: "Loathsomeness waits and dreams in the deep, and decay spreads over the tottering cities of men." He assumes that he will soon meet the fate of Angell and Johansen: "I know too much, and the cult still lives."
Spoilers end here.
Notes
- ↑ Lovecraft, "The Call of Cthulhu," p. 133-134.
- ↑ Lovecraft, "The Call of Cthulhu," p. 144.
References
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External links
All links retrieved July 22, 2017.
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