Difference between revisions of "H. P. Lovecraft"

After his father's institutionalization, his grandfather Whipple became a father figure to Lovecraft. Whipple, who often traveled to manage his business, maintained correspondence by letter with the young Lovecraft who, by the age of three, was already proficient at reading and writing. In his old age, he helped raise the young H. P. Lovecraft and educated him not only in the classics, but also in original weird tales of "winged horrors" and "deep, low, moaning sounds" which he created for his grandchild's entertainment.

In 1916, Lovecraft published his first short story, "The Alchemist," in the main United Amateur Press Association (UAPA) journal, which was a departure from his usual verse. Due to the encouragement of W. Paul Cook, another UAPA member and future lifelong friend, Lovecraft began writing and publishing more prose fiction. Soon afterwards, he wrote "The Tomb" and "Dagon." "The Tomb," by Lovecraft's own admission, was greatly influenced by the style and structure of Edgar Allan Poe's works. Meanwhile, "Dagon" is considered Lovecraft's first work that displays the concepts and themes that his writings would later become known for.

It was later in 1920 that Lovecraft began publishing the earliest Cthulhu Mythos stories. The Cthulhu Mythos, a term coined by later authors, encompasses Lovecraft's stories that share a commonality in the revelation of cosmic insignificance, initially realistic settings, and recurring entities and texts. The prose poem "Nyarlathotep" and the short story "The Crawling Chaos", in collaboration with Winifred Virginia Jackson, were written in late 1920. Following in early 1921 came "The Nameless City," the first story that falls definitively within the Cthulhu Mythos. In it is one of Lovecraft's most enduring phrases, a couplet recited by Abdul Alhazred; "That is not dead which can eternal lie; And with strange aeons even death may die."

Not long after the marriage, Greene lost her business and her assets disappeared in a bank failure. Lovecraft made efforts to support his wife through regular jobs, but his lack of previous work experience meant he lacked proven marketable skills. The publisher of ''Weird Tales'' was attempting to turn the loss-making magazine profitable again and offered the job of editor to Lovecraft, who declined, citing his reluctance to relocate to Chicago on aesthetic grounds.

In August 1925, he wrote "The Horror at Red Hook" and "He," in the latter of which the narrator says "My coming to New York had been a mistake; for whereas I had looked for poignant wonder and inspiration [...] I had found instead only a sense of horror and oppression which threatened to master, paralyze, and annihilate me." Around this time he wrote the outline for "The Call of Cthulhu," with its theme of the insignificance of all humanity. With a weekly allowance Greene sent, Lovecraft moved to a working-class area of Brooklyn Heights, where he resided in a tiny apartment. He had lost approximately 40 pounds (18 kg) of body weight by 1926, when he returned to Providence.

Later, in August, Robert E. Howard wrote a letter to ''Weird Tales'' praising a then-recent reprint of H. P. Lovecraft's "The Rats in the Walls" and discussing some of the Gaelic references used within. Editor Farnsworth Wright forwarded the letter to Lovecraft, who responded positively to Howard, and soon the two writers were engaged in a vigorous correspondence that would last for the rest of Howard's life. Howard quickly became a member of the Lovecraft Circle, a group of writers and friends all linked through Lovecraft's voluminous correspondence, as he introduced his many like-minded friends to one another and encouraged them to share their stories, utilize each other's fictional creations, and help each other succeed in the field of pulp fiction.

Meanwhile, Lovecraft was increasingly producing work that brought him no remuneration. Affecting a calm indifference to the reception of his works, Lovecraft was in reality extremely sensitive to criticism and easily precipitated into withdrawal. He was known to give up trying to sell a story after it had been once rejected. Sometimes, as with ''The Shadow over Innsmouth'', he wrote a story that might have been commercially viable but did not try to sell it. Lovecraft even ignored interested publishers. He failed to reply when one inquired about any novel Lovecraft might have ready: although he had completed such a work, ''The Case of Charles Dexter Ward'', it was never typed up. A few years after Lovecraft had moved to Providence, he and his wife Sonia Greene, having lived separately for so long, agreed to an amicable divorce. Greene moved to California in 1933 and remarried in 1936, unaware that Lovecraft, despite his assurances to the contrary, had never officially signed the final decree.

In late 1936, he witnessed the publication of ''The Shadow over Innsmouth'' as a paperback book. 400 copies were printed, and the work was advertised in ''Weird Tales'' and several fan magazines. However, Lovecraft was displeased, as this book was riddled with errors that required extensive editing. It sold slowly and only approximately 200 copies were bound. The remaining 200 copies were destroyed after the publisher went out of business for the next seven years. By this point, Lovecraft's literary career was reaching its end. Shortly after having written his last original short story, "The Haunter of the Dark," he stated that the hostile reception of ''At the Mountains of Madness'' had done "more than anything to end my effective fictional career." His declining psychological and physical states made it impossible for him to continue writing fiction.

Several contemporary religions have been influenced by Lovecraft's works. Kenneth Grant, the founder of the Typhonian Order, incorporated Lovecraft's Mythos into his [[ritual magic|ritual]] and [[occult]] system. Grant combined his interest in Lovecraft's fiction with his adherence to [[Aleister Crowley]]'s [[Thelema]]. The Typhonian Order considers Lovecraftian entities to be symbols through which people may interact with something inhuman. Grant also argued that Crowley himself was influenced by Lovecraft's writings, particularly in the naming of characters in ''[[The Book of the Law]]''. Similarly, ''The Satanic Rituals'', co-written by [[Anton LaVey]] and Michael A. Aquino, includes the "Ceremony of the Nine Angles," which is a ritual that was influenced by the descriptions in "The Dreams in the Witch House." It contains invocations of several of Lovecraft's fictional gods.

He directly inspired several grimoires written by [[Travis McHenry]], including: ''[[The Grimoire of Dark Souls]]'' and ''[[The Grimoire of Heaven and Hell]]''.