Howard Phillip Lovecraft
(b.1890-d.1937)
His life as
described by Encyclopedia Britanica
Very disturbing writer--BUT NOT A SICK WRITER. There is a difference. One of the assumption Christians need to re-examine is that writers who deal with evil are not intrinsically or automatically evil themselves. How many times have I heard that Steven King or Edgar Allen Poe described as evil because of their subject matter.
Lovecraft's influence is broad. Not only is he read widely himself but his concepts of the cosmos have been incorperated in hundreds of ways in our culture. Any story, including Ghostbusters which describes ancient powers which once ruled and long to rule again is based on Lovecraft's story-lines.
I first read Lovecraft's material in the autumn of 1997. I was immediately struck by his broad historical and literary background (although my annotated collection has caught him in a couple of errors). Still more than once I have been thankful for the editors of his works who footnote. Not that his word choices are incorrect; my vocabulary just needs broadening. Lovecraft uses this wide breath of historical and literary knowledge to create an especially chilling quality in his writing. By pointing to mysterious places who have historical reality and by drawing from different works of literature, Lovecraft pushes the reader to accept his narrative as authoritative. And then he turns the reader's world upside down by contradicting assumed cosmic truths.
It is true that in the modern academic world there are no absolute truths, but most humans don't function that way. Christians especially contend that there are absolute truths divinely which are in part at least divinely revealed. Many of these truths, however, although they seem to be upheld in life's experience, exist primarily on faith. We believe them, but we can not prove them. What if we are wrong? That's the well-spring of Lovecraft's terror. What if much we assume about the cosmos and the divine nature is mistaken. In Lovecraft's universe his characters look and act like us, but their world is very different from our own. They live, in turns out, in a fragile transient bubble of wholesomeness and sanity surrounded by malevolent semi-divine dark powers poised to return to Earth from which they had been expelled.
The links and bibliography were taken from Alpha Ralpha Boulevard --an excellent source for fantasy and science fiction material.
The H.P. Lovecraft
Archive
H.P. Lovecraft
in the movies
news:alt.horror.cthulu
news:alt.necromicon (sic)
news:alt.necronomicon
news:alt.sex.cthulu (not one of the best)
H. P.
Lovecraft
Biographical essay. Includes a comparison of Lovecraft and Edgar
Allen Poe by Robert Bloch.
The H.P. Lovecraft
Archive
Profile of the life and works of the Lovecraft. Includes a brief
biography, family tree, and chronological lists of fiction, poetry, correspondence,
journalism, criticism, philosophical and scientific articles, and autobiographical
works. Provides indexes of published biographies and criticisms of his
work, a glossary of Lovecraft's fictional creations, and an index of modern
Lovecraft-inspired music, films, and products.
At the Mountains of Madness and Other Tales Short story collection. Not sure if it has the same contents as the above
January 1990 Ballantine Books Mass Market Paperback Reissue Edition ISBN:0-345-32945-7
Amazon.com ordering info and review
Best of H.P. Lovecraft: Bloodcurdling Tales of Horror and the Macabre Amazon.com ordering info and review
July 1, 1987 Del Rey Paperback Reissue Edition
The Case of Charles Dexter Ward Amazon.com ordering info and review
May 1995, Ballantine Books Mass Market Paperback Reissue Edition ISBN:0-345-35490-7
Collected Poems 1963
Dagon and Other Macabre Tales Short story collection
ISBN 0-87054-039-4
The Dunwich Horror & Others Short story collection
The Horror in the Museum Short story collection
ISBN 0-87054-040-8
H.P. Lovecraft
His name in full was HOWARD PHILLIPS LOVECRAFT (b. Aug. 20, 1890, Providence, R.I., U.S.--d. March 15, 1937, Providence), American author of fantastic and macabre short novels and stories, one of the 20th-century masters of the Gothic tale of terror.
Lovecraft was interested in science from childhood, but lifelong poor health prevented him from attending college. He made his living as a ghostwriter and rewrite man and spent most of his life in seclusion and poverty. His fame as a writer increased after his death.
From 1923 on, most of Lovecraft's short stories appeared in the magazine Weird Tales. His Cthulhu Mythos series of tales describe ordinary New Englanders' encounters with horrific beings of extraterrestrial origin. In these short stories, Lovecraft's intimate knowledge of New England's geography and culture is blended with an elaborate original mythology. His other short stories deal with similarly terrifying phenomena in which horror and morbid fantasy acquire an unexpected verisimilitude. The Case of Charles Dexter Ward (1928), At the Mountains of Madness (1931), and The Shadow Over Innsmouth (1936) are considered his best short novels. Lovecraft was a master of poetic language, and he attained unusually high literary standards in his particular fictional genre.