H. P. Lovecraft: A Short Biography

H. P. Lovecraft has been the source of unending fascination since his death in 1937. He himself chronicled many aspects of his life in thousands of letters, and they reveal every aspect of his actions and beliefs. Born in 1890 in Providence, R.I., he was a precocious reader and writer, and also developed an early interest in science. Unable to finish high school, he became one of the greatest autodidacts of his time. Discovering the world of amateur journalism in 1914, he began writing essays, poetry, and fiction. The founding of the pulp magazine Weird Tales provided him with the opportunity to find a devoted readership for his weird tales, and he became a titan in the realm of pulp fiction as his tales of the “Cthulhu Mythos” attracted a wider audience. But he failed to find commercial success in his lifetime, and his work had to be rescued from oblivion by the devoted work of his friends. S. T. Joshi, long regarded as the leading authority on Lovecraft, has now written a succinct biography that focuses on the main events of Lovecraft’s life as well as the central features of his work and his associations with such colleagues as August Derleth, Frank Belknap Long, Robert Bloch, and others.