Talk:H. P. Lovecraft/Archive 1

message: What a pleasant surprise it was find in Wikipedia a pithy, reasonably polished entry on H. P. Lovecraft! I've been expanding parts of the article with a sort of irritated joy, which is not a bad feeling at all, considering that it seems to be what compels most of us to improve anything in the first place. 
Now, enough terse and cryptic rambling, as there is a quandary. In a show of ostensible pure grumpiness, in a recent edit I excised a 20-item, partial list of Lovecraft's fiction. For this I make no apology, since the list was incomplete and contained only one story linking to an article (The Call of Cthulhu) that was not a stub of especially low value. Furthermore, I made mention of The Call of Cthulhu elsewhere in the entry in order to retain a link to it. 
But why not just amend the list with the rest of Lovecraft's fiction? Because he wrote a lot of prose fiction—not to mention poetry, amateur journalism, travelogues, and on and on—and so a complete list would be a cumbrous behemoth, whereas the short list that managed to survive previously was merely unhelpful, inadequate.
Only if someone around here derives "eldritch" pleasure from writing plot synopses—and dozens of them—should we give readers a list of Lovecraft's stories. Otherwise, I see no reason not to improve upon that which already exists. Chris Roy 06:22, 6 Dec 2003 (UTC)
replies: text: Sounds good; you'll probably want to link, somewhere in the article, to Call of Cthulhu (role playing game). BTW, although it was courteous of you to post here first, your proposed addition wouldn't very much alter the article's content, ergo it's unlikely that it would annoy anyone. :-) Be bold! Chris Roy 09:28, 21 Feb 2004 (UTC)

text: Don't worry about it. I've mutilated this article with varying degrees of elegance—whether by deleting the list of his fiction or by loading on a grotesque number of ISBNs—without really asking here. :-P Chris Roy 09:52, 21 Feb 2004 (UTC)
thread_title:  List of Lovecraft's fiction 

message: It looks like Cthulhu has claimed his latest victim in the form of ComputerBuker.  Isomorphic thinks he's safe, but he's next.  Cthulhu fhtagn! -- Walt Pohl 22:24, 14 Mar 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: Iä! Iä! :-) Chris Roy 22:30, 14 Mar 2004 (UTC)
thread_title:  Cthulhu's latest victim  

message: I removed the reference to Mark Twain's Huckleberry Finn.  In the case of Mark Twain, the argument *isn't* that literary merit override racism, but that Twain and Twain's work is actually anti-racist.  Wagner would be a possible better analogy.
Roadrunner 21:57, 9 Jul 2004 (UTC)
thread_title:  Mark Twain 

message: Minor point, but the couplet quoted as being from 'The Call of Cthulhu' (1926) first appeared in 'The Nameless City' (1921) - and in it's first occurence lacked the 'even' in the second line, but gains it at the end of the story.
My source for the dates and content: 
--Zippedmartin 00:32, 7 Aug 2004 (UTC)
thread_title:  The Call of Cthulhu 

message: This is in the article:
:A year before his death, Lovecraft found himself further defending against charges of racism in the suppression of a black poet named Alvin Georgetown. Georgetown had died in 1927, and his widow, Mira Ellis, a white woman, accused Lovecraft of loving her late husband's work but intentionally paying him not to publish it. These charges were never proven.
Do we have a source for this? This is a rather remarkable charge. Lovecraft could barely feed himself, but had money to pay off a black poet not to publish his work? And defending himself? In what court? -- Cecropia | explains it all ® 19:45, 17 Feb 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: I removed the questioned paragraph. Google shows no such person or connection with Lovecraft except in the Wikipedia article. I will also remove the Alvin Georgetown article just posted by this anon, unless s/he provides some kind of source. Otherwise it's not simple vandalism, it's fraud. -- Cecropia | explains it all ® 22:59, 17 Feb 2005 (UTC)

text: I should have looked this up myself - my bad. A quick look at S.T. Joshi's "H.P. Lovecraft: A Life" reveals no such person(s), either. -khaosworks 00:41, 18 Feb 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Suppressing black poetry? 

message: There was a psychedelic band in the 1960s that called themselves "H. P. Lovecraft" and based several of their songs on his writings.  ("The White Ship", "At the Mountains of Madness", etc.)  I thought this warranted a mention in this article, but couldn't find any obvious place to include it.  Any thoughts? Skyraider 23:10, 1 Mar 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: No responses, so I decided to be bold and add a brief section about the band.  If anyone comes up with a more elegant way to present this information within the existing structure of the article, I won't object. Skyraider 03:32, 15 Mar 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: I started an article on the band "H.P. Lovecraft (rock group)". Needs work. Anybody know how to make a disambiguation page? Can't seem to find it in the lengthy Help section around here. By the way, Vault Radio has been playing one of their numbers this week. BillFlis 12:42, 10 March 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: The simplest way is to put a note at the top of each article that says something to the effect of "This article is about the author. For the psychedelic band, see H.P. Lovecraft" There's some templates that can help with this: see Wikipedia:Disambiguation. -- nae'blis (talk) 17:23, 10 March 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Psychedelic Band 

message: That this should be such a large percentage of the Lovecraft article is fairly absurd.  He had some armchair opinions about "negroes" that were not only common in the 20s and 30s, but taken as obvious science by most educated whites, and many educated "negroes" as well...including Bertrand Russell in the 20s, who actually envisions menial labor being done primarily by blacks in "The Scientific Outlook," which was published as nonfiction by the way, and taken seriously, by the way, unlike say, any of Lovecraft's tales, which have--.000000001%--overlap with shaping the intellectuals and mores of the times.  Even the NAACP ideology, the "talented tenth," essentially conceded to this vision of africans being slightly "inferior" genetically.  What this "racism" heading is doing there, I just have no idea.  I ran across some of these startlingly ordinary opinions in his letters, but just about 0% of his stories have a flying fuck to do with race relations.  Lovecraft found humanity disgusting and his opinions may be noteworthy for unifying racism and general disgust, but the claim about "miscegenation themes" in these stories is fairly questionable--the miscegenation in question is organic perversion from another dimension, infection--a trope common to racist theorizing, and Lovecraft's twisted imagination the same.  Write a paper, but don't bog down Lovecraft's world with this speculative, authoritative sounding sullying.  This just smacks of the "wow, he was a racist!" perspective of someone mostly unfamiliar with the intellectual landscape of the time.      
"However, many scholars agree that the racism of his work does not detract from their inherent quality but for in a few instances, as in The Street or The Rats in the Walls, in which a cat is named "Nigger-Man"."  Sorry, that doesn't detract from the inherent quality at all.  That statement is simply objectively wrong--if there were themes about the evils of misegenation, that could possibly detract from the inherent quality, but ascribing magical, taboo offensiveness of our time to a name that was fairly common for pets in those days...uhm...what is this paragraph even doing there again?
These themes may arguably surface in a handful of his stories, but really...I find it RIDICULOUS that this should be a "finished" article with that jutting protruberance sitting so stupidly right in the middle.  Anyway, I'm going to edit it down a bit, feel free to revert it, but if you do, please add big, massive "RACISM CONTROVERSY" headings to virtually every thinker of the 20s. -- posted by anon, please sign your work and consider opening an account so you may fully partipate in the community.
:I cannot agree his racism is "WAY" overstated though we should better ask how it informed his work. He was not a hypocrite, as some writers of the era were, who proclaimed their love of man and freedom, but hated certain groups. The issue is important in the context of our own times and any writing of it should be affected but not suppressed by the knowledge that his attitudes were common then than now.
:One thing I would definitely support is moving the issue from the second heading. He was not a significant figure in writings or politics dealing with race and ethnicity, and the racism material should not appear in the article ahead of his writing. -- Cecropia | explains it all ® 08:52, 1 Apr 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Give me a break. I scan books for Project Gutenberg, and I read books a lot of books from that era. I've noticed racist tendencies in J.S. Fletcher and Freeman Edwin Miller's Oklahoma Summer and various old cartoons. But I've scanned H.P. Lovecraft's Writings in United Amateur, and I'm not touching him again. I don't recall reading anywhere else that all the Romans and ancient Greeks had been wiped out and replaced by the inferior modern Italians and Greeks. His writings--not just his fiction, but his writings as a whole--had a strain of racism that was not merely normal for his day.--Prosfilaes 23:05, 1 Apr 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Racism Issue WAY overstated 

message: So, which book should I start with? --Señor Cardgage
:The Necronomicon, of course!  But seriously. . . I've always thought "The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath" makes a good intro to Lovecraft's works. Skyraider 00:06, 16 July 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: My first Lovecraft was "Omnibus 1 At The Mountains Of Madness" , which has seven enojoyable stories. Alf 01:06, 16 July 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Dumb Question

message: Much of this article is dedicated, not to Lovecraft, but to the pop culture trappings of Lovecraftian horror. Is it, perhaps, time to slice off large hunks of the end of this article to crate that one? If no one has any strong feelings against, I'll probably be bold sometime in the next week or so... -Harmil 17:38, 13 August 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: I've felt like ripping out every two bit singer and webcomic that once made a toss-off reference to Lovecraft. But moving them to their own article would probably be the more friendly option. --Prosfilaes 18:25, 13 August 2005 (UTC)

text: Very good job, too (IMHO), thanks for taking the time and care it needed. Alf 17:32, 18 August 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Time to break off pop culture? 

message: Women in Lovecraft's fiction are rare, and the few leading female characters in his stories often turn out to be agents of some evil, alien force.
In fairness, that happens pretty often with his male characters too :-)
Um, there aren't any leading female characters, are there?
Oh, don't start the 'Lovecraft's sexist' thing with me, at least not until every femenist anti-male book is taken off the shelves. I'm just saying, the only woman who comes to mind in Lovecraft is the farmwife in "The Color out of Space", who didn't turn out evil so much as dead. -Anon. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 67.52.221.60 (talk • contribs) 09:05, 14 March 2006
No, Anon, there is not a single leading female character in Lovecraft's stories. In fact, I have yet to read a Lovecraft story that has a female character in it. - Star_9 11:22, 4 April 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: The only ones that leap to my mind are Asenath Waite ('Thing on the Doorstep'), Lavinia Whateley ('Dunwich Horror'), and Keziah Mason ('Dreams in the Witch-House'). Unless one wants to count Shub-Niggurath ;-) None are exactly sympathetic characters... --Calair 23:16, 4 April 2006 (UTC)

text: I don't see why racist or sexist fiction has to be propoganda.--Prosfilaes 18:07, 5 April 2006 (UTC)

text: I agree with you, though I wouldn't even call Lovecraft's fiction rascist or sexist. The man arguably was, and that reflected in his fiction at times, but that does not bend the whole of his work towards the label of racist or sexist. Jehar 18:24, 5 April 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: It would be interesting to examine Lovecraft's relationship to women in general. Even though though he was raised in a female household, and briefly married, women play almost no role in his literary universe. Then again, neither does sex, at least overtly. Mumblio 21:33, 24 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Women

message: The article states that Lovecraft's father died while hospitalised for general paresis. However, the introduction to a compilation I have here ("The Call of Cthulhu and Other Weird Stories", S T Joshi (Ed), Penguin Books) states that "Lovecraft was apparently told that his father was paralyzed and comatose during this period [in Butler Hospital], but the surviving medical evidence makes it clear that Winfield [his father] died of syphilis."
There is no source given for this claim, but neither is one given in the Wiki article. I wonder where one could verify which is the truth?  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.19.111.67 (talk • contribs) 10:46, 22 September 2005
Joshi and his gang of fellow biographers are pretty definite about implying that the cause for Winfield's death was syphilis, procured god knows where.--virinluster 18:05, 2 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  The fate of Lovecraft's father? 

message: From the article:
"Shortly after, he attended an amateur journalist convention where he met Sonia Greene. She was Ukrainian, a Jew, and, having been born in 1883, seven years older than Lovecraft. They married in 1924, though Lovecraft's aunts were unhappy with the arrangement. The couple moved to the Borough of Brooklyn in New York City. He hated it. A few years later he and Greene agreed to an amicable divorce, and 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."
That last sentence seems to jump out as rather peculiar and is not expanded on anywhere else in his biog section. I know nothing about Lovecraft so cannot appraise it as worthy of inclusion. As a casual reader, though, I'm left frowning. Anyone able to clarify/remove/rework it? --bodnotbod 06:45, 30 October 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Last sentence in this paragraph...

message: The article divides HPL's work into 3 phases: macabre, dream cycle, and Cthulhu Mythos. According to scholarship, HPL himself referred to distinct phases within his work based on the writings of Dunsany and others, respectively.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 67.161.115.23 (talk • contribs) 21:36, 1 March 2006
:A lot of his dream cycle work is very obviously influenced by Dunsany, in any case. Sir Ophiuchus 17:11, 2 March 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  phases 

message: I just completed an edit , re-formatting the book, film, and radio sections. I removed Lovecraft's own work, as we cite it inline and have it referenced from this page on List of works by H. P. Lovecraft which is referenced in its own section on this page under Bibliography, there's no sense in having the major items 3 times, nor the minor items (those not referenced inline) twice. Besides that, it's just terribly long, and the page is already ureasonably long. I then merged all of the sections that contained work about Lovecraft into Works relating to Lovecraft, and did a small amount of copyediting on the entries (one documentary film was a real mess, and needed to be cleaned up. -Harmil 16:00, 5 March 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I find it interesting that Lovecraft's work has not adapted particularly well to film.  One would think that the visual nature of his style would be well suited to cinema.  With the exception of his influence on designers like HR Giger, Lovecraft seems to have had remarkably little direct impact on the horror film genre.--ben-ze'ev 08:25, 11 March 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I don't find that too astonishing... how would you model an "undescribable horror" in papier-mache, let alone a polygon model? ;-) --790 10:19, 21 March 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Good point.  When Lovecraft really goes over the top he is often quite sparing in visual details.  Maybe his type of horror is impossible outside of literature.--ben-ze'ev 06:52, 22 March 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: While it is true that many of his stories would be difficult to take to film (though someone with a good imagination might do a decent job), there are some that would work perfectly.  I am currently reading through his works on Wikisource, and I think that "The Temple" would not only work on the screen, it would be great!  One of those classic WWI submarine stories, but with a supernatural touch and a sort of twist ending.  A bit like Sphere (novel), I guess.  There are a few of his stories (from what I've read so far, starting from the first he wrote) that just seem poorly written.  I think "The Green Meadow" was more or less a waste of ink.  But others are very well done, including the first one: "The Beast in the Cave".  All in all, I'm enjoying his works, and some of them are surprising and fairly eerie, but I have yet to be truly scared.  I am only up to "The Temple", though.  --Cromwellt|talk|contris 04:32, 5 June 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Well, this one always seems to work for a scare. Procure a copy of The Rats in the Walls, proceed to a dilapidated old building at night, then sit and read. CABAL 12:42, 5 June 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Books and such 

message: Can anybody procure that pencil sketch image of Cthulhu that floats around the internet and in the Del Rey books?  I think it would fit nicely into the Cthulhu Mythos section of the article.--Mikepope 07:24, 9 June 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Could you describe it in more detail, like the pose Cthulhu is in? It'd make searching a lot easier. CABAL 07:37, 9 June 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: It's the one in which Cthulhu (his majesty!) is sitting on a miniature monolith or column like the one described in the first pages of "The Call of Cthulhu".  He looks as if he's sulking (or waiting!).  I have it in a Del Rey book, and I think I've seen it on the internet a few times...--Mikepope 20:03, 9 June 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Wait... Lovecraft's original sketch? CABAL 23:33, 9 June 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: That's the one.  Should we put it in the article, or is it not necessary?--Mikepope 03:06, 10 June 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: That depends. What's the copyright status on Lovecraft's original works? CABAL 05:43, 10 June 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I haven't the slightest clue.  I just thought it would go well with the article.--Mikepope 04:37, 11 June 2006 (UTC)

text: That's not an answerable question under American law. If a work by George Washington was first published in 1999, it'd still be under copyright. It depends on where and when it was first published.--Prosfilaes 16:34, 11 June 2006 (UTC)

text: That specific picture was never actually published, but has been floating around with absolutely no copyright status for the longest time. Likely, it is copyright H.P. Lovecraft himself. I assume it would be alright to put it on the page, due to its lack of any real copyright. --Jesse Mulkey 17:46, 11 June 2006 (UTC)

text:  But it was in "the Del Rey books", so it was published. If it were never published, it would still be under copyright until 2007, 70 years after HPL's death.--Prosfilaes 05:00, 12 June 2006 (UTC)

text: You may be able to make a fair use case. Adam Cuerden talk 02:32, 15 September 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Image of Cthulhu 

message: Did Lovecraft have a religion? If he did, what was it? Any answers would be appreciated.
:According to one biography and a website dedicated to him, he was nominally brought up a Christian (protestant, I believe) in Rhode Island.  He eventually married a Ukrainian Jewess for a (very) short time.  Later in life, I think it is safe to say he disavowed all faiths and was a non-committed atheist or at least an agnostic.  Either way, religion, at least in his adult years, was not very important to him.  It is important to note, however, that he DID NOT believe in the strange faiths and religions of his fiction, as some may portend.--Mikepope 02:07, 16 June 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Update.  Another website makes no mention of any religious faith at all in the household.--Mikepope 02:14, 16 June 2006 (UTC)

text: IIRC, Joshi's footnotes in one of the collection quotes a letter where Lovecraft claims to be an agnostic in theory and an atheist in practice. JöG 19:15, 23 July 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Religion 

message: I addedd Eternal Darkness: Sanity's Reguiem to the Lovecraft-inspired videogames. The game, only available for the Nintendo GameCube, has many references to the man and his work, for example: the main goal of the game is to prevent that interstellar gods will devour Earth in their eternal darnkness. For more, see the trivia-section on the page of the game.--83.118.94.73 13:00, 19 June 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Kid's got a point. Why was it deleted? --Soetermans 13:16, 19 June 2006 (UTC)
replies: text:  Can't comment as to why it was deleted, but I missed this comment on the discussion board and re-added a day or 2 ago. Maybe it doesn't/Didn't fit in well with the rest of the article? It doesn't take a lot of space to mention, so if "trimming the fat" was the idea, there are other places that could be done. I dont think it would do much as a seperate article, though a lot of the other sub-subjects in this article could warrent seperate articles. RickO5 23:37, 5 July 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: There is already a whole article on the Cthulhu Mythos in popular culture, which contains a section on Lovecraftian video games. Eternal Darkness is already there. Nareek 23:57, 5 July 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Added a game: Eternal Darkness 

message: I've yet again gone through and pruned some material that belonged on Lovecraftian horror and Cthulhu Mythos in popular culture. My first edit was too agressive: I deleted the whole adaptations section. I've restored that, but it does bring up the point that we eventually need to move even the adaptations into their own article.... -Harmil 04:39, 21 June 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Pruning again 

message: http://mysite.verizon.net/hplovecraft/
Hodgson 19:49, 7 July 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Added link for Pictorial Bibliography 

message: I remember as a child hearing that Lovecraft suffered from a rare disease that meant he was "cold-blooded" to some degree. A search online suggests that this was poikilothermism. Does anyone know if that was in fact true?
This from http://experts.about.com/e/h/h/H._P._Lovecraft.htm
"Lovecraft was frequently ill as a child and was said by his biographer (L. Sprague de Camp) to have suffered from a rare disease known as poikilothermism, the result of which made him always feel cold to the touch."
:Hmm... CABAL 12:10, 21 July 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Cold-blooded 

message: Please take a look at the Necronomicon, Abdul Alhazred and The Dunwich Horror pages if you get a chance--it's one of those special WP problems.Nareek 19:36, 2 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Never mind--the problem has gone away, at least temporarily. Nareek 21:48, 2 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Help! 

message: I'm thinking about starting an article about Lovecraft's revisions, and I'm wondering what to call it.  Lovecraft's revisions? Lovecraft's revision stories? Lovecraft's revision tales? H. P. Lovecraft's revisions, and so on? Or just Revision stories or Revision tales?  Those might be most useful in terms of linking. (Don't think Revisions would work by itself.) Any thoughts at all would be welcomed. Nareek 04:26, 23 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Are you talking about his ghost-writing efforts? If that is the case, wouldn't Lovecraft's "Revisions" be a... somewhat more accurate term? CABAL 11:30, 23 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I'm a little concerned about scare quotes as being POV--they seem to suggest, "Here's what people call them, but they're wrong to call them that."  I'm leaning toward H. P. Lovecraft's revisions, which seems to be the most common way they're referred to. It would be good to have a name that worked well for linking--as in "'The Mound' is one of H. P. Lovecraft's revisions, stories he ghost-wrote under other people's bylines." Does that work? Nareek 21:45, 24 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Revisions 

message: Or does he look a bit like tall Liverpool and England forward Peter Crouch in the picture?
:No, I think you have a point! :-) Angmering 19:13, 9 September 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Is it just me? 

message: In this section it mentions that in The Shadow Over Innsmouth Robert Olmstead, the narrator, had no direct contact with a Lovecraftian monstrosit, only the cultists.  This is not true as he sees Deep Ones in clear view and it causes him to faint.  Amy thoughts about this?  It should be stricken I think. Capeo 18:18, 13 September 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: He not only has contact with Lovecraftian monstrosities, he is one himself! Nareek 18:49, 13 September 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Precisely, so should we ammend this?  Any other opinions?Capeo 20:52, 13 September 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: nonhuman influences on humanity

message: This is a strong, well-researched article, but needs one more copyedit, I think. Nearly there! 
* The opening paragraph is somewhat weak - I've read a fair bit of Lovecraft, and whilst it's accurate, it doesn't seem to encapsulate his work very well. It would be useful to, perhaps, mention him as inventor of the Cthulhu mythos, and mention one or two of the major themes of his writing here.
* Some sentences are very oddly phrased, for instance, the second sentence of "Shortly after, he attended an amateur journalist convention where he met Sonia Greene. Born in 1883, she was of Ukrainian Jewish ancestry and seven years older than Lovecraft." - The second sentence is very overloaded, and has an unusaual structure.
* Disjointed thoughts: "Lovecraft's aunts may have been unhappy with this arrangement, and, although initially enthralled, Lovecraft himself came to intensely dislike New York life."  This relates back to the previous sentence, and would work better, with less repetition, if attached to the previous sentence written something like "...moved to New York, which may have upset Lovecraft's aunts. Lovecraft himself was initially enthralled, but came to intensely dislike New York life."
*In regards to the previous, is this speculation on Lovecraft's aunts from a cite? A reference would be useful. 
*Too many conjunctions: "A few years later he and Greene, who by this time had already been living separately, agreed to an amicable divorce, which was never fully completed, and he returned to Providence to live with his aunts during their remaining years."  This sentence is far too long. Cut it and others like it, into pieces.
*Poor comma use. There's a lot of grammatically incorrect commas, for instance "Lovecraft's stay in New York came to be marred by financial difficulty, because his efforts to find employment failed." A comma indicates a pause in speech, and there should be no pause between "difficulty" and "because".  Lots of similar examples.
*It is not necessary to use full sentences in parenthetical notes. "(This is the address given as the home of Dr. Willett in The Case of Charles Dexter Ward.)" would work better as "(the address given as the home of Dr. Willett in The Case of Charles Dexter Ward.)"
*Odd word order: "Despite his best writing efforts, however, he grew ever poorer." should be "However, despite his best writing efforts, he grew ever poorer." or even better, "However, despite his best writing efforts, he grew ever poorer and was forced to move to smaller and meaner lodgings with his surviving aunt."  
*The death of his aunt is hinted at, but never mentioned.
*Disorganised paragraphs: "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 of the intestine and he also suffered from malnutrition. He lived in constant pain until his death on March 15, 1937 in Providence."
* This sentence is only comprehensible to people who know the information already: "Some critics see little difference between the Dream Cycle and the Mythos, often pointing to the recurring Necronomicon and subsequent "gods"."
That's my notes up to the point where I stopped. Factually, you have a strong, very workable article. Do a couple more copy-edits, leave a message on my talk-page, and hopefully you'll get that GA within a week. Adam Cuerden talk 02:27, 15 September 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Also, looking at the reason this lost FA status, I'm surprised that important biographical knowledge of his father like "When Lovecraft was three, his father became acutely psychotic at a hotel in Chicago, Illinois where he was on a business trip and was brought back to Butler Hospital in Providence, where he remained for the rest of his life." was removed. It is an overloaded sentence, but it worries me that facts are being removed when the problem was poorly-written sentences, particularly a fact so very relevant to a horror writer. Adam Cuerden talk 02:39, 15 September 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: GA-rating

message: I'm afraid I'm only allowed to put an article on hold seven days, and, as none of the points above have been dealt with, not even sentences I pointed out as problematic. Hence, I fear this article, well researched as it may be, fails the readability requirement of GA. Please fix it up and resubmit: I'm a huge fan of Lovecraft and want to see him re-reach FA. Adam Cuerden talk 03:09, 24 September 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: GA Failure