LOVECRAFT, H(oward) P(hillips)

(1890-1937)

   US writer who spent almost all his life in Providence, RI, maintaining social contacts mainly by mail. He joined the United Amateur Press Association (APA) in 1914 and produced much of his early fiction inconnection with this enterprise, which also allowed him to come in touch with Clark Ashton SMITH, Frank Belknap LONG and others. He began to publish professionally with the serial release of Herbert West Reanimator (1922 Home Brew; 1977 chap), but only began to establish himself when hestarted, with "Dagon" (1923), publishing in WEIRD TALES; his prolific correspondence with many other of its writers made him a key influence on that magazine: without his background presence its highly significant contribution to the development of US weird fiction would have been considerably weakened. His disciples included Robert BLOCH, August W. DERLETH, Henry KUTTNER and E. Hoffman PRICE. Derleth, with assistance fromDonald WANDREI, founded ARKHAM HOUSE to reprint HPL's work, and the imprint was later to provide a haven for other writers influenced by HPL, including Ramsey Campbell and Brian Lumley. Colin WILSON is another modern writer who has written Lovecraftian novels, notably The Philosopher's Stone (1969).Although HPL's primary reputation is as a HORROR writer, hislater works - those of his stories belonging to the Cthulhu Mythos - attempted to develop a distinctive species of "cosmic horror", employing premises drawn from sf: other DIMENSIONS, INVASION by ALIENS, and interference with human cultural and physiological EVOLUTION. He tried to convey a sense that the Universe is essentially horrible and hostile to humankind by means of a distinctive prose style which extends by gradual degrees from a quasiclinical mode into passages of dense, highly adjectival description. A notable essay by HPL on the historical roots of his fiction is Supernatural Horror in Literature(first magazine publication 1927; revised magazine publication 1933-35; 1939; 1945). HPL encouraged other writers to use the background of the Cthulhu Mythos; The Reader's Guide to the Cthulhu Mythos (1969; rev 1973) by Robert E.WEINBERG and Edward P. Berglund lists many such writers including (in addition to those already cited) Lin CARTER, Robert E. HOWARD, Fritz LEIBER, Robert A.W. LOWNDES and Manly Wade WELLMAN. HPL's principalCthulhu Mythos stories - which include his best works - are "The Nameless City" (1921), "The Festival" (1925), The Colour out of Space (1927; 1982 chap), "The Call of Cthulhu" (1928), "The Dunwich Horror" (1929), "The Whisperer in Darkness" (1931), "The Dreams in the Witch-House" (1933),"The Haunter of the Dark" (1936), The Shadow over Innsmouth (1936), "The Shadow out of Time" (cut 1936; 1939), At the Mountains of Madness (cut 1936; 1939; 1990 chap), The Case of Charles Dexter Ward (cut 1941; 1943; dated 1951 but 1952 UK) and "The Thing on the Doorstep" (1937).The first Arkham House HPL collection was The Outsider and Others (coll 1939), whichcontained all his major works except The Case of Charles Dexter Ward, which first appeared in book form in the subsequent Arkham volume Beyond the Wall of Sleep (coll 1943). Marginalia (coll 1944) included some stories HPL had revised for other writers as well as essays, fragments and appreciations; a complete collection of such revisions is The Horror in the Museum and Other Revisions (coll 1970; cut vt Nine Stories from The Horror in the Museum 1971; vt in 2 vols as The Horror in the Museum 1975UK and The Horror in the Burying Ground1975 UK; rev and corrected 1989). HPL's complete works can be obtained in 3 vols: The Dunwich Horror and Others (coll 1963; cut vt The Colour out of Space, and Others 1964; full text vt The Best of H.P. Lovecraft 1982; corrected text under original title 1985), a title not to be confused with The Dunwich Horror, and Other Weird Tales (coll 1945); At the Mountains of Madness and Other Novels(coll 1964; cut 1968 UK; again cut 1971 US; corrected text under original title 1985); and Dagon and Other Macabre Tales (coll 1965; much cut vt Dagon 1967 UK; UK edn again cut, vt The Tomb 1969 UK; corrected text oforiginal version 1986). The bibliography of the many other collections drawn from the corpus is inordinately complicated, and is supplemented by many chapbooks recovering all manner of trivia; the most frequently reprinted eclectic selections are The Haunter of the Dark (coll 1951 UK), which was a cut version of Best Supernatural Stories of H.P. Lovecraft (coll 1945), both ed Derleth, The Doom that Came to Sarnath (coll 1971) edLin Carter and Bloodcurdling Tales of Horror and the Macabre: The Best of H.P. Lovecraft (coll 1982). Several SMALL PRESSES have been and are dedicated to the celebration of his works, most notably the Necronomicon Press, which publishes the journal Lovecraft Studies ed S.T. Joshi, and,since 1990, when it took the title over from Cryptic Publications, the long-running Crypt of Cthulhu ed Robert M. Price. Several bibliographies of primary and secondary sources have been published, including Joshi's H. P. Lovecraft: An Annotated Bibliography (1981). These small presses havegiven a home to early work by several modern writers of note, including Thomas Ligotti (1953-).Derleth wrote many stories based on fragmentarytexts by HPL or on notes for unwritten stories, including the novel The Lurker at the Threshold (1945), the stories in The Survivor and Others(coll 1957) and 2 stories in The Shuttered Room and Other Pieces (coll 1959; cut 1970 UK), which also contains some HPL juvenilia and essays about him; it is not to be confused with The Shuttered Room (coll 1971). All the Derleth "collaborations" are assembled in The Watchers Out of Timeand Others (coll 1974); all but The Lurker at the Threshold had been in The Shadow out of Time and Other Tales of Horror (coll 1968 UK), alongwith the 6 which The Haunter of the Dark omitted from its parent collection. The Derleth stories are weak exercises in pastiche, and Derleth's editing of HPL's own stories came in for some criticism in the1980s on the grounds of alleged insensitivity and distortion, necessitating the corrected editions of the 3 Arkham House collections.

   BS

   Other works: This list is selective, not including all small-press publications, nor items of Lovecraftiana containing little or no actual fiction by him: Fungi from Yuggoth (coll 1941), poetry, not to be confused with vt of 1963 collection (see below); The Lurking Fear (coll 1947; vt Cry Horror! 1958), not to be confused with either The Lurking Fear (coll1964 UK) or The Lurking Fear (coll 1971), all 3 with differing contents, or with The Lurking Fear (1928 Weird Tales; 1977 chap), which reprints the story alone; The Curse of Yig (coll 1953); Dreams and Fantasies (coll 1962); The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath (1943; 1955), not to be confusedwith The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath (coll 1970) ed Lin Carter; Something about Cats, and Other Pieces (coll 1949), revisions, essays,notes, etc.; Collected Poems (coll 1963; cut vt Fungi from Yuggoth and Other Poems 1971); Selected Letters 1911-1937 (5 vols 1965-76);Uncollected Prose and Poetry (coll 1978) ed S.T. Joshi and Marc