You’ve already encountered HP
Lovecraft, one way or another. Sinister
rites in sleepy towns, cursed bloodlines, and
all-powerful aliens: the imagery he conjured
lurks beneath the pixelated surfaces of some
of your favourite videogame worlds and
haunts the frames of many a big-screen fright-
fest. This isolated man, whose writing was
barely known in his lifetime and who died
in poverty aged just 46, left a legacy that
continues to inform modern horror. That is not
dead which can eternal lie/And with strange
aeons even death may die...
Born in Providence, Rhode Island in
1890, Howard Phillips Lovecraft developed
a fascination with astronomy and classical
mythology at an early age, eagerly absorbing
Gothic horror stories told by his grandfather
during a childhood marred by severe bouts
of ill health and by his father’s early death.
His writing career began in earnest after
his mother’s confi nement in the same mental
hospital in which his father’s life had ended,
an event that provided yet another of the
disruptions that appear to have left him in a
state of permanent psychological fragility.
Most of his life was spent in Providence,
apart from a brief and unhappy period in
Brooklyn, New York during the Twenties. His
marriage to fellow writer Sonia Greene did
not survive their frequent separations, as she
travelled for work following the collapse of
her business. Lovecraft died of cancer in 1937,
with most of his inheritance gone after failing
to scratch even a meagre living from the sale
of his short stories and novellas.
Lovecraft’s long-time friend, August
Derleth, founded the Arkham HouseCOMPLETE GUIDE
HP LOVECRAFT
090 | WWW.SCIFINOW.CO.UK
WORDS GEM WHEELERTHE COMPLETE GUIDE TO
HE DEFINED A SCI-FI/HORROR SUB-GENRE, INFLUENCING A LEGION
OF AUTHORS, FILMMAKERS AND ARTISTS. HE’S ALSO ONE OF THE
MOST PROBLEMATIC FIGURES IN LITERATURE. W SCOTT POOLE AND
VICTOR LAVALLE LOOK AT LOVECRAFT, THE MAN AND THE MYTHOSHP LOVECRAFT
publishing company with another writer,
Donald Wandrei, in 1939 in order to publish
Lovecraft’s stories. Derleth began to refer
to the strange universe created by Lovecraft
as the ‘Cthulhu Mythos’, named after the
terrifying cosmic entity fi rst described in ‘The
Call Of Cthulhu’, published in Weird Tales
magazine in 1928. By the Sixties, Lovecraft’s
status as a cult writer was assured. In the
decades since, the unforgettable imagery he
created has exerted a powerful infl uence upon
popular culture.
W Scott Poole assessed Lovecraft’s life and
work in his 2016 biography, In The Mountains
Of Madness: The Life And Extraordinary
Afterlife Of H P Lovecraft. He’s also examined
Lovecraft within the context of World War
One’s devastating cultural impact in his recent
Wasteland: The Great War And The Origins
Of Modern Horror. Poole views his subject as
“one of the primary sources for modern horror
in fi lm and fi ction. Borrowing from the horrifi c
times in which he lived, he
introduced the notion that
you do not have to fi nd
yourself in a haunted
mansion of some sort to
meet terror. Writers like
Arthur Machen infl uenced
him, especially in the
idea of imagining ancient
powers that break into the
modern world, or that seek
to do so. Lovecraft had the
ability to take such ideas to
their logical conclusion to
imagine the end of human
beings. This makes him awriter perfectly suited to our current culture’s
fascination with the end of human experience:
what’s been called ‘apocalypse culture’.”
How did Lovecraft achieve this level of
posthumous fame? “I think that his reputation
as an important writer owes much to having
an utterly devoted fan base, many of whom
passed from being simply fans to scholars
of his work. There’s a large body of criticism
on Lovecraft that’s really extraordinary given
that he never published his works outside of
pulp magazines in his lifetime, primarily in the
now-famous Weird Tales, begun in 1923 and
having one of the smallest circulations of any
of the pulps.”
Poole points out a complicating detail in
Lovecraft’s ongoing pop-cultural presence. “I
think it’s important to add here that the idea
of infl uence and its varied meanings plays
a crucial role in understanding the Lovecraft
phenomenon. There are more Lovecraft fans,
it seems, that people who have actually read
Lovecraft. Films, comics and
role playing have given him
an infl uence that goes far
beyond his actual writing –
for good or ill.”
Another issue is the
inauthentic nature of
aspects of the ‘Cthulhu
Mythos’, a term never
used to describe his
pantheon of ancient gods
by Lovecraft himself.
Poole muses upon
August Derleth’s role in
Lovecraft’s long literary
Lovecraft biographer afterlife. “It’s hard not
W Scott Poole.