H.P. Lovecraft

H.P. Lovecraft in 1934

**H.P. Lovecraft** was an American writer of weird and horror fiction, who is known for his creation of what became the Cthulhu Mythos.

## Biography

Born in Providence, Rhode Island, Lovecraft spent most of his life in New England. He was born into affluence, but his family's wealth dissipated soon after the death of his grandfather. In 1913, he wrote a critical letter to a pulp magazine that ultimately led to his involvement in pulp fiction. During the interwar period, he wrote and published stories that focused on his interpretation of humanity's place in the universe. In his view, humanity was an unimportant part of an uncaring cosmos that could be swept away at any moment. These stories also included fantastic elements that represented the perceived fragility of anthropocentrism.

Lovecraft joined the small "Kalem Club" of writers when he first moved to New York, and would later be the centre of a wider body of authors known as the "Lovecraft Circle." This group wrote stories that frequently shared details among them. He was also a prolific letter writer. He maintained correspondence with several different authors and literary proteges. According to some estimates, he wrote approximately 100,000 letters over the course of his life. In these letters, he discussed his worldview and his daily life and tutored younger authors, such as August Derleth, Donald Wandrei, and Robert Bloch.

Throughout his adult life, Lovecraft was never able to support himself from earnings as an author and editor. He was virtually unknown during his lifetime and was almost exclusively published in pulp magazines before he died in poverty at the age of 46, but is now regarded as one of the most significant 20th-century authors of supernatural horror fiction. Among his most celebrated tales are "The Call of Cthulhu", "The Rats in the Walls", *At the Mountains of Madness*, *The Shadow over Innsmouth*, and *The Shadow Out of Time*. His writings form the basis of the Cthulhu Mythos, which has inspired a large body of pastiches across several mediums drawing on Lovecraft's characters, setting and themes, constituting a wider subgenre known as Lovecraftian horror.

## Professional History

**H.P. Lovecraft** is most widely recognized for creating a pantheon of cosmic beings commonly known as the "Great Old Ones", and being the origin of the Cthulhu Mythos, though he never intended to do so, as stated by August Derleth (a fellow writer and correspondent of Lovecraft), who coined the name, structured the stories in that continuity, and greatly expanded it (through his publishing activity as Arkham House, and by writing his own Cthulhu Mythos.

**Lovecraft** corresponded many writers (and often became friend with them, with or without meeting them in person), with which he exchanged ideas, suggestions and corrections for their respective stories. Many of that "Lovecraft Circle" authors produced the basis of what became known as the Cthulhu Mythos. Aside from Derleth, who gathered the Mythos together after Lovecraft's death and produced many stories, most prominent were writer Robert E. Howard (who created Conan the Barbarian, Kull of Atlantis, Dark Agnes, Solomon Kane, and many other characters, some with more or less connection to what became the Mythos) and writer, poet and sculptor Clark Ashton Smith (who wrote the the Zothique Cycle, Averoigne, and the Hyperborean Cycle, among others).

Other authors included Robert Bloch and Frank Belknap Long, and the list could be extended Henry Kuttner, C. L. Moore, E. Hoffmann Price, Fritz Leiber, Donald Wandrei, among others.

## Influence on the Labyrinth Comics Universe

* The character Apokalypsi, who is the main antagonist in ALBIN Is A Strange Place, is based on the Cthulhu Mythos character Nyarlathotep.

## Quotations

* *"That is not dead which can eternal lie, And with strange aeons even death may die."*
* *"The oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fear, and the oldest and strongest kind of fear is fear of the unknown."*
* *"The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents."*
* *"The world is indeed comic, but the joke is on mankind."*
* *"From even the greatest of horrors irony is seldom absent."*
* *"Almost nobody dances sober, unless they happen to be insane."*
* *"Heaven knows where I'll end up - but it's a safe bet that I'll never be at the top of anything! Nor do I particularly care to be."*
* *"I fear my enthusiasm flags when real work is demanded of me."*
* *"To the scientist there is the joy in pursuing truth which nearly counteracts the depressing revelations of truth."*
* *"I never ask a man what his business is, for it never interests me. What I ask him about are his thoughts and dreams."*

## Trivia

* Born on August 20, 1890, Howard Phillips Lovecraft grew up under tragic, bizarre circumstances. His father, suffering from what was likely syphilis-induced psychosis, entered Providence’s Butler Hospital in 1893 and died there in 1898.
* When Lovecraft, at age 5, lost his grandmother, his mother and aunts wore eerie black mourning dresses. His subsequent nightmares may have inspired his black-winged, demonic Night-Gaunts.
* Metallica’s “The Call of Ktulu” and “The Thing That Should Not Be” invoke Lovecraft’s greatest monster, as does Cradle of Filth’s “Cthulhu Dawn.” Black Sabbath’s “Behind The Wall of Sleep” is inspired by a 1919 Lovecraft story. Morbid Angel guitarist Trey Azagthoth derived his stage name from Azathoth, one of Lovecraft’s gods. The list goes on.